The current corporate CRE zeitgeist is the emphasis on utilization as the primary office metric. When office presence versus hybrid versus work-from-home is still a debate in motion and the economy is in question, executives want to know how much floor space they need to pay for.
VergeSense is trying to tap into all that with what it presents as a new software offering beyond its sensor and workplace analytics origins, although the description sounds somewhat similar to ones it used in 2020, so seems more a new version or rebranding.
The company announced its Occupancy Intelligence Platform, which has two parts: Occupancy Intelligence for Portfolio Optimization and Occupancy Intelligence for Space Optimization. As in the past, using the company’s sensor products, the software can count the number of people in a given space.
The company says that the portfolio optimization product “ensures that every office within your portfolio is properly sized, located, and ready to support your future workplace needs,” according to its website.
Real estate executives can “reduce costs by making data-driven decisions on where they need more office space and where they need less,” according to the company’s press release, while a “right-sized office” helps employees “connect with colleagues and enjoy the space.”
The space optimization portion can “generate insights around passive occupancy, active occupancy, and people count for more effective space planning, design, cleaning, and availability” and “create a commute-worthy experience that fosters collaboration and productivity.” A company can “generate insights from real-time occupancy data to improve space planning, design, cleaning, and availability” and provide insight into passive occupancy.
“VergeSense allowed us to understand which spaces best support the way our employees work,” the release quoted Andrea Diieso, Director of Workplace Experience, Rapid7. “Applying what we learned from space usage data enabled us to adjust our design plans to reflect our teams’ needs, and the data drove us towards flexible furniture solutions that would allow us to continue to iterate our workplaces.”
“As we’ve talked to our customers, what became loud and clear is that in these past few years the world of occupancy has completely changed,” wrote CEO Dan Ryan. “Occupancy has become inconsistent, unpredictable, and dynamic. And as a result, the jobs of workplace, real estate, and facilities leaders has never been harder, and the old approach for addressing the most common use cases are no longer effective.”
