September typically marks many things – the end of summer, a return to school, the resumption of routine. Yet, amidst an ongoing pandemic, it also marks another important milestone: getting back to some semblance of normalcy.  The rising concerns over the Delta variant, however, have placed a cloud of concern over how to safely facilitate the return “back” to all of what we used to know.

Among the many hot button issues for companies leasing office space is rationalizing their real estate portfolio. It was a big ticket item before the pandemic, and it remains so today, in the thick of return-to-work planning.

Companies face the challenge not only of reopening offices, but restructuring them to suit how they expect teams will want to use them. But how can they prepare when there are more questions than answers?  To understand how people use the office, we conducted a study for one of our clients that looked at two different teams.

What’s your strategy to return to the office? If you’re like most of our clients, you’re likely most focused on the short term goal of simply getting people back to the office. Longer-term decision-making seems like a luxury and yet you’re probably also tasked with rationalizing your portfolio while stepping forward as a workplace transformation leader.

So what happens when the physical nature of your office, the people in it, and legal policy collide? A new requirement of workplace and facilities teams emerges - corporate compliance data and reporting.

As companies look to return to the office, flexibility will be a primary focus that transforms meeting spaces. Collaboration, as we recently wrote, will be why offices remain essential to businesses, and the primary driver of why employees visit the workplace. Now as we rethink the role the office plays, meeting spaces will need to evolve to support collaboration, socialization and creativity.

Summer 2005: the San Francisco Coworking Space opens. Two years later, “coworking” appears as a Wikipedia entry, and 75 coworking spaces materialize around the world (according to this timeline). By the time the calendar flipped to 2012, that number had ballooned to more than 2,000.

There’s no question that real estate in cities around the world is, well, expensive. Of all the line items impacting a business, real estate is one of the most pressing – and one over which companies often have the least amount of control.  

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. But how? Indoor location data.

The pandemic has changed how we've worked for the foreseeable future. Companies are determining how, when and why they'll return to their office space. 

This is the final article in a three-part series exploring what lays on the other side of COVID-19 for businesses.

We have arrived at age the of the Smart Building – where we advance far beyond LEED certification technologies to a world of unprecedented operational efficiencies. By 2024, the smart building market is expected to approach USD $106 billion.  And there is a humble technology making much of this – and much, much more, possible: WiFi.

The new rollercoaster. A book signing. The emergency department. The latest Johnny Cupcakes t-shirt release. People are willing to wait for certain experiences, products or services. And then there are lineups that are deemed simply not worth it. For most businesses, what they offer often sits in the latter camp. People don’t like to wait!

Last fall, the world’s largest coffee chain opened a new concept store in Manhattan. At “Starbucks Pickup”, customers must use the app in advance to order and simply pick up their beverage. A second such grab-and-go model just opened here in InnerSpace’s home city of Toronto.

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 outfitted one such multinational coffee franchise with our indoor spatial intelligence platform. By studying customer traffic patterns, we wanted to uncover opportunities to improve operations and boost revenue by making data-driven adjustments.

In the age of innovation, with our increasingly sophisticated technological advances, the ‘P’ word – privacy – rightfully starts to enter the discourse. Indoor location itself has prompted a lot of discussion which we break down into one key topic - the exchange privacy vs value exchange.

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.  Recently, InnerSpace Chief Marketing Officer Cerys Goodall sat down with Anthony Lacavera of GlobalLive in partnership with BDC to discuss how the platform enhances productivity and improves employee well-being. 

At InnerSpace, we built our platform on the premise of effecting positive change through the use of location data. We take strategic aim at securely capturing data with privacy at its core.

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. We caught up with James between travel to get his thoughts on our company’s progress and why indoor location is the way of the future.

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.

Adoption of indoor location to create Smart Buildings remains highly customized and consultative. Indoor location technology is really hard to make autonomous and scalable. Using our platform, decision makers can understand insights related to their indoor spaces. The creativity ahead is unlimited.

Smart Stadiums are the digital transformation of sporting and entertainment events. We found a million ($) reasons for one client to go Smart.

Flexible work solutions including hotdesking and hotelling can help save on real estate and enable growth without expanding your foot print. Is it right for you?

This past week has been a blur! The global tech community had their eyes on Toronto as Collision marked its first year in our gorgeous city. Hosted at the Enercare Centre, the conference hosted the likes of Prime minister Justin Trudeau, Seth Rogan talking about Houseplant, Joseph Gordan-Levitt from HITRECORD, and more. Designed to be the perfect intersection between tech, investors, government, and media, Collision didn’t disappoint!

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.

Smart buildings drive new digital experiences for employees, while the backend data informs critical operations.

There are three things you need to focus on if you want to create a beneficial workplace experience that improves employee satisfaction and productivity, and supports your bottom line. Check out our latest blog post to find out what they are!

Managing commercial real estate with the power of people analytics, occupancy, time on site, and visitor frequency is critical to leasing structures and providing tenants with awesome service.

Your employees are wasting 45 minutes every day trying to find somewhere to work. Help employees find desks, meeting rooms, collaboration spaces based on their needs.

Win the war for talent with a focus on employee hospitality, seamless booking systems, and smart building technologies. InnerSpace uses wifi to capture people analytics and deliver employee services.

Indoor location is the backbone to smart building initiatives. A single solution can drive a multitude of operating solutions and end-user experiences. Invest once and innovation is limitless.

What are the three things you need to create a great office? The environment, office design and technology can make your office superior. Do your employees love your office space?

Even though most people think about GPS when they think about location-based technology, it has evolved beyond GPS and is now heading indoors. After all, people spend a lot of time in places like shopping malls, grocery stores, office buildings, museums, hospitals, airports and more.

Find out how indoor location can be used to improve your business simply by incorporating intelligence into your decision-making, products and services.

Apple stepped up its position for indoor way finding. But there's a fundamental problem with the company's approach. Scalability. Find out how new technologies have overcome the pitfalls of disparate technologies that plagued indoor location in the past.

Using GPS and triangulation technology, Enhanced 911 (E911) has been successful in pinpointing locations. But only outdoors. When calls are made from malls, museums, warehouses, office towers and other indoor spaces, accurately pinpointing someone’s location is next to impossible.

Using location intelligence and mapping can transform campus dining services by delivering a new perspective on your customers.

Indoor location intelligence can help property owners and managers deliver a better experience - while saving reset costs - for prospective tenants.

The demand for warehouse space has exploded in recent years as eCommerce continues to grow. But it's not just about the space. Customer expectations have evolved, which means warehouses need to operate more efficiently and extend services that reflect the customer journey.

On the surface, the retail crisis seems relatively simple. The rise in eCommerce has eliminated the costly real estate, staffing, inventory and franchising issues that plagues brick-and-mortar stores.

In 1998, a group of healthcare professionals stood in front of a map of the hospital where they worked. They unspooled a ball of blue yarn, which they then used to trace the path that a typical cancer patient had to take to receive chemotherapy. What they discovered shocked them.

InnerSpace showcased the future of commercial real estate technology with other industry leaders during the CRETech New York symposium. The event host CRETech is a information firm committed to being the best source of emerging and innovative commercial real estate technology.

5 years later stepping indoors still feels like stepping in to the 20th century - we huddle around kiosk directories for directions and use physical signage for way finding. Why? We aren't moving fast enough to solve the root problem - the maps.

We present this graphic in some of our pitches to potential customers who are considering building an indoor location experience based on a beacon infrastructure. It's useful, as it quickly communicates the idea that our BrickTrackers eliminate the need to compromise when deploying an indoor location.

The indoor location [aka indoor navigation] space is a hot market and the competitive landscape is certainly a busy one. Moreover, it has been for a couple of years now. As latecomers to the game, how can we expect to carve out a business?