Indoor Location

Data captured by our leading WiFi-based indoor location platform enables companies to take advantage of their two greatest resources: people and property. Here, we explore the right way to measure density. 

Nearly 60 percent of employees will return to a physical workplace, according to recent stats from the International Data Corporation (IDC). Still, as with all the uncertainties faced by businesses set to emerge from a pandemic, it’s not clear how often those people will actually be onsite.  

Now more than ever, we all want to visit grocery stores and other essential businesses when they’re not crowded. Before the pandemic, this information helped us to save time and avoid lines.  Now, knowing how busy a place is adds an extra layer of safety and comfort.

Outdoors, when walking, driving or cycling, apps have replaced paper maps when it comes to figuring out where we are in relation to where we are going. GPS technology is omnipresent – except when it comes to the indoors. In offices, malls, museums and airports, it doesn’t work. 

Twenty chairs at a long horizontal boardroom table. Six more lining the back of the room, never used. A TV screen on one wall that only half the attendees can easily see. Arteries of cords running from two speaker phones pumping a handful of expansion mics across the table. Soon, this will be a distant memory. As companies look to return to the office, flexibility will be a primary focus that transforms meeting spaces.

There’s no question that real estate remains, well, expensive. Of all the line items impacting a business, real estate is one of the most pressing – one that companies are now doing more than ever to control.  

In a way, 2021 is the year for everyone to start fresh. Not long ago, executives were focused on finding ways to reduce their real estate footprint, and/or grow headcount within it. Now, business leaders have the opportunity to embark on a thoughtful pivot to create flexible spaces that will boost productivity, ensure safety, and serve the needs of employees. 

Data captured by our leading WiFi-based indoor location platform enables companies to take advantage of their two greatest resources: people and property. Beginning now in this series of posts, we will explore each powerful metric available through InnerSpace’s technology that business leaders can analyze and leverage to affect meaningful change.

As the future of work evolves, so too does the role the office will play and this raises questions critical to its evolution:  How much office space is needed? How should it be designed? What is the purpose of the office? How can it help improve culture, communication and productivity? How will it serve my company’s growth?

Changing information. Indecisive governments. Unclear direction. While our modern lifestyle thrives on instant knowledge, it is taking a long time to understand how this new coronavirus threatens the way we live and work – even for those who are best equipped to give the answers. 

The honeymoon phase of working from home is officially over. And despite misleading headlines touting that most companies will move to permanent virtual operations, the reality is that we’ve learned something during this pandemic. The office is a desired destination that provides opportunities for greater team cohesion, collaboration, social connection - and yes, even actual work.

We’re now six months into a global pandemic. Spring lockdowns gave way to gradual reopenings, and now the threat of closures loom large again as case numbers in many regions creep upwards. 

Just as society is opening back up in stages, InnerSpace believes the workforce will follow a phased approach too:

Whether an office has already re-opened, is planning to re-open, or never fully closed during the COVID-19 crisis, each business shares two common goals: 1) keep employees and visitors safe; 2) keep the doors open. 

A popular question as we think about going back to the office is: how will I know if someone I work with has been infected? For the executive team, the question becomes: how do I avoid shutting down my business should one of my employees become ill?

In cities across America, office towers are vacant. Museums are empty. Sports are cancelled. Live events postponed. Many of us, the ones who can, have put outdoor adventures and office life on hold to help stop the spread of an extremely contagious virus. The escalating health and economic consequences of COVID-19 are ones we will talk about for a very long time. 

Mist Expands Vision of Universal Standards-Based Indoor Location

In the lead-up to a big game or high-profile concert, city stadiums can see an influx of tens of thousands of people, often arriving en masse. For fans, picking the “wrong line” isn’t cut and dry and, as we all know, wait times have a direct link, whether positive or negative, to the fan experience. 

InnerSpace Awarded Patent for Automated Indoor Map Generation Capabilities US Patent Office recognizes indoor location platform’s technology to support maps for indoor navigation

How One Major Coffee Chain Used Indoor Data to Improve Service, Slash Wait Times: An InnerSpace Study  

Indoor location platform enhanced citizen safety and first-responder speed-to-response

HOW INDOOR LOCATION TECH ENHANCES PRODUCTIVITY AND IMPROVES EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING: AN INTERVIEW WITH INNERSPACE CMO CERYS GOODALL At the start of spring this year, InnerSpace announced the close of a $3.2 million seed round led by BDC Capital’s Women in Technology Fund. 

In 2002, a film starring a certain Tom Cruise which was based on a 1950s short story, the future was imagined as a somewhat dystopian police state that featured an extreme lack of privacy. It’s not hard to see how plots like that of Minority Report can influence how people perceive indoor “tracking” technology and what it actually entails.

From Collision to Queens University and the upcoming DC5G, our CEO James Wu has enlightened audiences across North America about how we’re dramatically changing the way indoor space is used – and the powerful benefits it brings to companies. 

Satisfaction in any company’s product or service often boils down to one key factor: ensuring an excellent experience. Looking after all the details that lead to happy people –  while simultaneously managing deliverables and operating costs – is both tricky and critical to a company’s success. Yet knowing what and where to tweak and improve can be difficult to discern on a day-to-day basis – and relying on customer feedback alone can prolong percolating issues, or be misleading altogether.

Tech titans like Google and Apple have made significant investments in mapping and navigation. They’ve taken their expertise in location data and started applying its value to the indoors. And over the last few years a number of startups have emerged to provide insights around indoor location data - primarily in retail. All claiming to have built breakthrough solutions. But yet, indoor data isn’t ubiquitous. Adoption of indoor location to create Smart Buildings remains highly customized and consultative. 

For thousands of years, people have flocked to stadiums and arenas to see exciting live events, and in those thousands of years—virtually no major updates have been made. Whether an ancient Roman at the Colosseum or a loyal Cubs fan at Wrigley Field, the experience is more or less the same. You arrive at the venue, find your seat, then and watch the action in front of you unfold.

 One of the questions we often get here at InnerSpace is why did we create our own sensor, why not use beacons? It’s a great question…

The InnerSpace sensor is the first of its kind in the IoT/indoor location market. It captures a massive amount of data including location, positioning, and 3D data so that we can provide businesses with traffic metrics, patterns, and predictive modelling. This data - and its fancy math - mean we can use the information to fundamentally change how buildings operate and how people work.