Technology and Innovation’s Role in Reimagining the Workplace

Francisco Acoba 00:02
Okay, excellent. All right. Well, thanks, Jennifer, thanks for joining us today.

Jennifer Heath 00:08
My pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right. Well, we have, we have Jennifer Heath here, Director of Product for FM:Systems. Jennifer is a creative problem solver and very passionate about smart buildings and the workplace experience. She’s also very much passionate about the power of smart building technology to drive sustainability builds. Jennifer, I believe you have some some slides you wanted to go through before we jump into some questions. Yeah, and I did choose today to focus specifically on sustainability. There’s a lot of different smart building technology, but I think this is a particular area where we can really improve the way we think about our facility management, the way we approach our workplace design, and really generate some exciting results. So I’m siding with my slides here a little bit. Give me just one second.

01:17
So Ian, on the back end, you might have to advance my slides. For me, they’re not wanting to cooperate here. All right, so starting off, we are going to, just to kind of set the stage here about smart buildings and how we think about them and talk about them at FM:Systems, we see most of our clients are on this journey, moving from the left hand side, where you have a traditional building with standalone systems, into a connected building, where maybe you have a building control system, you can access certain elements of your building controls through a single dashboard. Maybe you have some manual integrations of systems. And then the next phase is really the smart building, where you start to see greater use of sensors, more cloud applications, direct integrations, the use of APIs, and all of that is leading to kind of that holy grail that we talk a lot about at FM:Systems, which is the autonomous building. And at that point, you are leveraging AI and machine learning to empower your building to recognize problems proactively, to recommend the remedy, even to execute that remedy and solution on its own and to echo some of the things that some of the other panelists have said, the real key in autonomous buildings and having an effective AI and machine learning strategy is really all about the data. So wherever you are in this journey, we find that most people are somewhere between the connected and the smart. As you’re thinking about the different technology solutions that you want to implement, maybe there are specific point solutions that are going to solve a certain workflow challenge within your organization. It’s important to also think about what is the underlying data that I’m going to be able to harvest and use in conjunction with other data sources to ultimately power and drive those AI strategies that machine learning model, because that’s where you really are going to get those results next slide.

03:16
So why sustainability? So Johnson Controls is now the parent company of FM:Systems, and this statistic is from their 2024 sustainability report. Office buildings account for nearly 40% of global CO two emissions, and when we think about the impact of those emissions, the impact they’re having on the climate, the severity of weather events that we’ve experienced in recent years, the propensity of wildfires that we’ve experienced, I feel in the facility management industry, the real estate profession, we have a calling, and really just a huge opportunity, to take steps within our own organizations, to make small changes and collectively, we can have a huge impact. Next slide,

04:07
so facility managers can impact sustainability goals at their organization in a variety of ways. Some key aspects are energy consumption, building emissions, air quality, water conservation and waste management. These are all areas where you can leverage smart building technology to improve your efficiency and impact your overall emissions and reduce waste, save money, all those good things. And Laura did such a great job of really setting me up, because there are so many aspects that you can have a direct impact within your organization, you can have some kind of a game, an outcome, a business outcome. Maybe it’s all about saving money, but on the other side of that, you’re still advancing those sustainability goals and having a positive impact on the environment.

04:55
So on our next slide, I want to lean into the topic of air quality a little bit, I heard the most amazing statistic just last week. Human beings take an average of 22,000 breaths every day, and that is an equivalent volume of air to a swimming pool of water. That’s how much air we take in every day. And so it really begs the question, what is the content of my air. Air doesn’t have a smell, mostly it doesn’t have a taste. It’s hard to know just by experiencing a space what kind of air quality you really have. Air quality sensors are an amazing way to hone in on different aspects of your air quality, as well as measure the effectiveness of your remediations. Oftentimes, when it comes to air quality, the reflexive response is to increase the air conditioning. So when you detect maybe a high level of CO two, the thought is, if I run the air conditioner more, if I pump more air through that space, it’s going to level out. But that’s not always the case, and technology can really help you measure the effectiveness of whatever your solution is. So I’ll give a specific example. We had an organization that had that exact scenario. They were seeing high levels of CO two. They couldn’t pinpoint the problem. The more they ran the air conditioner, the worse the problem got. So they’re using more energy, they’re increasing their building emissions, they’re increasing their overall energy spend, and the problem was getting worse. What they discovered was one of the air ducts had a hole in it, and that particular air duct was adjacent to a space where they used forklifts, so the exhaust from the forklifts was being sucked into the H back and then propagated throughout the building. So technology immediately identified that this solution isn’t working. There has to be another problem. So that’s an important way that air quality can really be a leading indicator of your HVAC performance, which is going to help you further those sustainability goals. Furthermore, improving your indoor climate really does benefit employee health Mark and I have the exact same statistic here, that 20 at 26% improvement in cognitive ability inside LEED certified buildings. This is a reason that air quality is incredibly important in schools right now, because it has a direct impact on that learning environment and the ability to focus, to stay focused. So air quality continues to be just an incredibly important component, and Francisco is here, so I know he’s ready to ask me some questions, but I want to point out too that 6% improvement in sleep quality is one of my favorite statistics. You’re improving the air quality and the experience during the day, and then they’re also able to take that benefit home at night, Francisco. I know we are kind of watching our time here. I have a couple more slides, but if you have some questions, I can defer.

Francisco Acoba 08:05
Yeah, there were a couple of questions that want to make sure we try to get in here, but if you have a couple of key points you want to wrap up on, yeah, so I just wanted to mention briefly here on digital twins, that’s another smart building technology we really are leaning into at FM:Systems and Johnson Controls, because it’s creating the opportunity, going back to the conversations about AI and the importance of data, it’s creating the opportunity to centralize so much data, and then you can simulate different scenarios. And if we look at the next slide, I think one of the most powerful things we can do right now, thinking about the environment and again, specifically these extreme weather events, digital twins, when you fill them with all the different data sets, it allows you to use AI to simulate different climate scenarios, and you can identify vulnerabilities inside your facilities. So smart building technology is really emerging as a very important component of the emergency response, and it speaks to the importance of centralizing your data, because if you in an emergency situation, a crisis situation, time is very much of the essence, and so understanding how you can quickly access the data, how you can quickly access the building control systems is incredibly important. Great, excellent. Okay, great, thanks. Jennifer, so I guess one question here then for you, just as we look at, you know, and your your your context from FM:Systems and and the workplace management, IWMs world and so forth. But then also thinking about, you talking a lot about, you know, IoT and and broader technologies in the marketplace, we’re certainly seeing a convergence right around these two sets of technologies now, right? Um. Um, so maybe, if you could, maybe just take a minute or so and tell us, give us your thoughts on on that, that convergence, and how we’re seeing those types of technologies coming together. Because even two, three years ago, those were two very, completely separate domains, right? But, but now it’s really, uh, you know, that because of the need to integrate and use the data together. It’s a different world.

Jennifer Heath 10:27
Definitely. There is an ongoing challenge for most organizations managing disparate data. How do you bring all these different things together? I think one critical component is leveraging cloud applications and APIs to make it easy to transfer data back and forth. But I do think it’s very important to look at that broader ecosystem of software, hardware and IoT devices. How do all of those components come together? Oftentimes, your software and hardware is really kind of the workplace management side of things, where you’re able to kind of build, you know that outer structure of, how do we manage our facilities? How do we maintain our facilities and our operations? IoT devices are like the lifeblood that comes in. It’s real time, or near real time data that is informing all these different sorts of activities that are happening inside your space, if it’s bookings, data utilization, data flow, sensor data, understanding the flow of people through a space, badge data, Wi Fi, data. There’s all these different components, and as you can layer data together, and we talk about it as multi data point analysis, the more data sources that you can aggregate, the richer and more complex view you’re going to get a building performance. It’s really want to hone in on utilization is really a key indicator of your building performance, but when you layer that in with, say, your maintenance tickets, your lease cost, the overall bookings, reservation badge data, it creates a really different view of what’s happening inside your space.

Francisco Acoba 12:12
Okay, excellent. All right, very good. Thank you for that context. Jennifer, okay, well, let’s transition now to our panel discussion. So Ian, if you could help us bring everybody, bring everybody back here, and for the audience participants here, please do take the opportunity to add any questions to the chat or send those over to to chuck by email. And well, we can get those addressed by the panel, anything that we do not get to in the in the discussion today, we can look to get you a response afterwards. But alright, I think we have everybody, everybody on here. We’re still waiting for Laura. Okay, excellent. We have everybody on. Very good. Okay, so Laura, let’s start. Let’s start with you. So we’ve gotten a lot of context from the panelists today on from various different perspectives here, but let’s start with you. So with regards to expectations. Okay, so how have occupant expectations shifted over the past few years, there’s been a lot of efforts to modernize or digitize the workplace, and these are continuing to evolve, right? But how have the expectations of the occupants shifted in the past few years? And what’s the what do you see as the impact of that?

Laura Dominguez 13:50
Yes, so from from my perspective, some of the expectations have changed, from being nice to haves to table stakes. They are really just more of a demand of like these are the things that that I need if you want me to come back to the office, that you want me to be there in person, if not, you see a strong resistance, where it’s increase in dissatisfaction, or even more turnover when it comes to your workforce. So I think that people are clear on on what they want. They know that there are different organizations that might have more flexibility. So I think that because things have shifted from nice to have to must have, organizations need the to to really prioritize some of the transformations that are taking place now.

Francisco Acoba 14:42
Okay, all right, so David, as you based on that context from Laura, broad question for you, I guess, how would you define then, the digital workplace.

David Asker 15:06
How would I define it?

Francisco Acoba 15:08
Yeah, multiple ways to look at it. But how would you define the digital workplace? What does that mean to you?

David Asker 15:14
Yeah. I mean, I think the digital workplace now, to me, means that the tools in the output that allows people to be to, you know, to interface and interact with their, you know, their surroundings, but also too, with each other in a much more efficient and frictionless way. Right? So I think one of the things that when we look at what brings people back into the office is one, well, you gotta have the right kind of space, you have to have the right kind of amenities, but they want that experience to be as frictionless as possible, so it’s not a challenge of well, I couldn’t find a spot to park. There was no spot for you know, I couldn’t find a workstation. It’s uncomfortable in the building. It’s too hot, too cold, right? So our friends with with their systems will will take care of that for you. But I think it’s all those tools that allow you to have that experience in the workplace that makes it frictionless as as much as possible for you, right? There’s always going to be something that comes up, but then that allows you to interact with your colleagues in a much more in a better way. But we need that information from the facilities, and that facility needs that information about your preferences in order to make that happen. So that would be my, my overall, general definition of it.

Francisco Acoba 16:52
Okay. Jennifer, how about you? From your perspective? How do you? How would you define the digital workplace?

Jennifer Heath 16:59
So I agree that it is a lot of the digital tools and applications that we use in during our work day, you know, as we go through our different tasks and activities inside the space. But I think it extends beyond the physical facilities, because so many of us now, even pre pandemic, we are remote to our facilities, so I’ve been a fully remote employee Since 2016 and so for me, the digital workplace is very much how I connect with my colleagues in a digital way. So it’s tools like GoToWebinar, it’s teams, it’s zoom, it’s all the different channels I use to communicate. And one of the things that I think we have really made great progress on since the pandemic, now that this is something more people experience, it’s the concept of advancing digital equity. So whether or not you’re physically in the meeting room, you have an equal presence in the meeting. So it used to be years ago, when I first was note, you would dial in, and if they started having a sidebar conversation, you couldn’t keep up. You didn’t know what’s going on. You were just sort of this disembodied voice. But now you have wonderful technology to video conference, and you know cameras that will move and respond to what’s happening in the room, and it does create that equity. So even if teams are not physically together, they’re still able to collaborate and connect. Okay, so, so, David, you, you mentioned the concept of reducing the friction, frictionless workbook, you know, frictionless environment. There was no friction in the workload. Let’s elaborate a little bit more on that. So what does that really mean for the for the occupant when they come into the office? What does that mean? Anybody have any thoughts on that?

David Asker 18:53
Well, I can start off. I think it means, you know, well, we can’t do anything about the commute. We can’t do anything about the travel traffic on the highway. But once you, once you get to, you know, to the campus or your building, or wherever it’s, you know, being able to aid you and have assistance for making everything maybe just a little bit easier, right? So I know we have some clients that are looking at parking apps. So you know, they might have you pull into the garage, it’ll tell you right away there’s a spot available on level four in this location, right? Make it easier for you to park, right? You know, reservation systems. I mean, everyone’s got those. But sometimes when you walk into the building, if you’re from another office, it might recognize you right away and pop up and say, Can we help you reserve a space today? Right? You need a conference room. Do you need this? Do you need that? Lots of times, people have different apps for lunch, etc, right? So all. All these little things from the user side, for the occupant, trying to make their life a little bit easier so that they don’t have they don’t lose some of that time, or some of those delays. And that would be from my perspective, just like one piece of it. So you know, Mark, Jennifer, I’m sure you’ve got other ideas on that.

Laura Dominguez 20:23
I can also elaborate on on that a little bit like back up of the thoughts that was sharing. I think one of the things that we need to think about sometimes is that we don’t actually need to actively interact with the technology. Some of the best enabling technologies, technology that we don’t even interact with at all. So I heard a long time ago this analogy of what a good experience is, if we think about like getting into our cars, right? Like you get into your cars, automatically turn the lights, connect to Bluetooth to you know your Spotify what you’ve already listening to. It’ll pull up, like power play and give you the directions in which you know to navigate, like all these things automatically that you didn’t have to do. And you just get in and go right. You don’t have to do all this more. And we can think about kind of the same experience. When it comes to to being at the office, if there’s anything that can just be completely streamlined, where the person doesn’t even have to do anything, it’s just one less thing to think about, especially when it comes to, you know, decision fatigue and all the things that we have to be doing at once, if you can remove some of those completely, would be great. And I know David shares some some examples of some of the interactions and things, but one that we can think about in that a lot of people are looking into now is leveraging like occupancy sensors to do your automatic checking for your reservations, right? So half the time when I go into a reservation, I actually forget to go and click check in if you have like auto relief, you know, all of a sudden you’re squatting in a room that’s no longer reserved for you. So that’s an example of one of those things that you could potentially take out to make more seamless and remove some of the friction points,

Jennifer Heath 22:22
I would add to that concept of that that passive interaction, especially for checking in, it improves the integrity of your data. So if you’re looking at check in data, and you’re trying to understand planned utilization versus actual utilization, if half your people forget to check in, then your actual utilization is inaccurate. But when you can build in these passive experiences, it improves overall data analysis at the end of the day, because you have more sound data.

Francisco Acoba 22:55
Okay, all right, good.So Mark, let’s, let’s turn to you. So you know, one of the things that I’m sure that our, the folks on the webinar are thinking about is when they, when they think about all the all these ideas that are coming up around the around the workplace, workplace technology.

Marc Olson 23:15
What about the concept of having to do an assessment right around, around their knees, and what they what they might need to do, what sort of preliminary assessment might they need to look at when they when they think about their their next workplace technology project? What might that look like? From your perspective? You’ve gone through a lot of these, a lot of these projects.

Mark Olson 23:39
I think at the out that the focus should be thinking big and starting small, but assessing the current states, understanding what the current state is from a technology perspective, from a data connectivity perspective, and then the orchestra, and then the review And the normalization, you know, of the various data and and literally mapping that out and finding a baseline to where, and this is the thing you know that you know over my decade in industrial IoT in general, and analytics is really thinking big, but understanding what is the First value add? Is it air quality? Is it energy savings? What is, what is the the first nugget, and building from there, but making sure there’s a framework across that framework that can then pivot into other areas, not developing yourself into a corner, per se. So yeah, just some thoughts around that. But the other thing, and again, this comes back to my presentation, is the connectivity in IoT. I think Jennifer talked about it, and Laura and David connectivity is extremely important, but it’s the orchestration of the insights that really can deliver on workspace efficiency.Quality, air quality, whatever, because you, if there’s, you know, removing that friction is important, but having the right data at the right time with the right insight, and orchestrating that across a process within within your organization, is important. It’s all positive. Okay, yeah, so we think we like to think about it as select, select a particular set of use cases, right? Go for those use cases and then demonstrate value and expand from there, right? So,

Francisco Acoba 25:32
Okay, excellent. So earlier on, Laura gave us some thoughts on on the use of AI in the workplace and and how that’s evolving.Jennifer, want to pose a similar question to you, so what are you seeing relative to AI, and how that’s being leveraged right now, and what the what are the possibilities?

Jennifer Heath 26:01
Yeah, I think there are so many possibilities when it comes to AI, and it can be a little bit overwhelming to think as a Facility Manager, as a real estate professional, how do I incorporate this? Where do I even start? And I think a couple of things that are important. Number one, it is truly, ultimately, all about the data that’s powering your AI and your ml models. So even if you don’t quite know what you want to do with AI yet, go ahead and start collecting that data and thinking about how you can apply these data sets to different scenarios, what they might reveal to you. Another thing about AI that I think is really interesting since COVID One of the most challenging aspects of managing our facilities is that things are very unpredictable. Now, previously, you could assume that X number of people would be in the office on these days between these hours, and now there is a layer of unpredictability that makes it incredibly hard to be efficient. And I think AI is really going to help us in that way in the long run, as we move more towards autonomous buildings, because AI is going to be able to recognize patterns and anomalies that we wouldn’t see. So for example, if over time, your building has learned that you know the Tuesday after a Monday Holiday is always low utilization. Or days that are rainy have low utilization. In time your buildings can start to recognize we have this weather forecast. We had this event on the calendar. We have this other factor. We know utilization is going to be low. We’re going to not power up, you know, the top five. So we’re going to set our temperature slightly higher than we normally would. And these are all things that you it’s very difficult to pick out some of those patterns and anomalies when you have all of these massive data sets. But AI can really help you there. Okay, okay, great. Well, let’s, let’s think a little bit then beyond the core, or traditional, I should say maybe workplace, digital, workplace elements. David, let’s turn to you here and think about beyond the the again, most traditional elements.

Francisco Acoba 28:20
What can companies look at to help create a better overall workplace experience beyond those traditional elements? So you mentioned before, you know, you can’t, you can’t impact the commute, right or but you know, what are some things that the organization can do, like maybe leveraging some of the data that they’re collecting in the workplace, or about the about the experience, but maybe leveraging that more broadly. What are some perspectives there?

David Asker 28:56
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I think a lot of it as we as we go forward, folks are going to have to just get more creative about how we think about where and how we work. And, you know, that was one of the things that to me, that’s why, when we work with clients, that utilization information is so important. Because, you know, for a lot, lot of time, everyone thought, Oh, well, we’re going to have, you know, everyone comes to central location and and, you know, we’re going to collaborate together there, and, you know, we’ll make it better there, and we’ll, we’ll collect data about people’s experience and whatnot. But I think we need to think about, you know, what’s been brought up is, how do I go through and have a seamless experience from I’m at home, I’m in a meeting, and I feel like I’m part of it, I then can go to, like, a large city center and be part of it, and then maybe in some markets. Yes, because of traffic and everything else, we set up full service offices around the metro area, and we tell people, okay, we’ve got drop in space there, right? Because we’ve got, you know, a group of people who all live in close proximity. So we offer that as an option, and allows us to ramp those up quickly or take them down quickly, right? And so we’re not into a long term lease and things like that. And so I view it like, you know, people are just going to have to start to think as an organization, well, okay, how do we best provide people the support that they need? Right? Part of it, part of what we are seeing a lot with clients, is when everyone is working remotely, so much it works out for some but a lot of folks mental well being is a challenge, right? Because they’re isolated and they’re by themselves, and so I think that’s one of the things that companies need to start to think about is alright, what do we need to do? And I think R touched on this earlier in her presentation about our our well being, right? The employee well being, what do we have to do to make sure that our folks feel, you know, connected part of the team, you know that they’re mentally doing okay, because when people are working in isolation, so much, you know, it can have negative side effects on some folks. So I think some of this data, if it can help us to support that as well, in addition to some of the other things I was talking about, you know, those are some, some different ways to think about it. Okay, so, leveraging the data that you’re that’s actually being collected in the workplace to identify, maybe, you know, programs, or you know, services, right, that can be offered to to the workforce, that can help actual programs, but they can be Help, help them with right, well being, yeah? Because, if you right with well being, because then if you might say, oh, you know, we got a lot of people who are having some challenges out, you know, the lot of these folks are, are isolated in this part of metro area or something. Why don’t we just set up, you know, a small office drop in that they can come in, right? So that you get some of that balance, right? It creates a humanistic perspective from the employer to the employee.

Francisco Acoba 32:25
Okay, alright, great to add. Oh, please yes.

Laura Dominguez 32:29
But David was mentioning that sometimes is overlooked, and it goes in parallel to to this, this efforts, and it’s really having a change management plans in a way to to make sure that we’re considering how we’re going to promote adoption. Because sometimes these technologies can be great. They have so many upside, but if we don’t think exactly like how we’re going to make sure that people know that they’re even available to them, or that they’re going to be excited about using them, and we’re going to really see the return on investment, or not just investment, but some of the benefits, like the well being, that people can get out of of these things. So I think that’s one thing, that is that is that is really important. And there’s so many tools, as you were mentioning earlier, Francisco, outside of the building environment. What else can we look at? There’s so many tools out there when it comes to duty, like using the metaverse. One of the things that we’ve done at Accenture is creating replicas of some of our buildings in the metaverse, and then before the buildings go live, whereas people get onboarded, giving them the opportunity to go inside the building in a virtual world, and gamified it in a way that they can do a scavenger hunt, and they get familiar with all the different tools and areas in the cafe before they even get there. So it’s kind of like building some of that excitement and just thinking creatively, you know, finding your influencers that can kind of spread the word around, like, why things are cool. So really, just kind of coupling all the great things that we’re we’re talking about with a change management and adoption plan.

Francisco Acoba 34:14
Got it? Okay? Very good. All right, Mark, let’s, let’s turn to you and talk a little bit about the broader what’s going on the broader industry here, we’re continuing to see a lot of m&a activity. We just lost somebody, David, you’re back. Okay? We continue to see a lot of m&a activity in the workplace, technology area, right? So your perspective, how is this activity impacting workplace technology and you know, and what’s going on in the in this, in this space?

Mark Olson 34:52
Yeah, there. There, absolutely, thanks. There absolutely is a ton of M and A activity in this workspace.Holistically, in my humble opinion, I’m seeing independent organizations that have a I’m not under using this, but a snowflake kind of technology, right? And they do one thing very well, but holistically to this workplace, they don’t integrate effectively to be able to use those insights, you know, across bringing a building to life, you know, and an energy efficiency building. So we’re definitely seeing consolidation, I think, from a market perspective. You know, we had this discussion yesterday at another forum around you know, clients and organizations are looking for one throat to choke right in vendors and consultancy firms per se that can give them direction on this holistic approach As this M and A activity continues, but yes,overall is I, as I mentioned around AI and insights, it’s extremely important that these solutions effectively talk to each other to remove the fix friction, you know, for for the workspace. Thank you. Okay, all right. Laura, from your perspective, any additional thoughts here? You clearly, you see a lot of the lot of the different technologies and what’s going on there.

Laura Dominguez 36:28
Yeah, I think I echo some of what, what Mark was, was saying. It’s, it’s very, very interesting. Definitely some consolidation, some the consolidation that we’re seeing. It’s harder when a company is kind of expanding the functionality that they’re offering. Some of them are still very, I would say, immature on the additional functionality that they’re that they’re starting to provide. So it’s, it’s hard to, you know, kind of petition themselves as they can one solution for many things, because their functionality is not at the same maturity level. So we have to just, you know, remember that just as we are on a journey, they are too. So, you know, keeping in touch with some of this vendors around their roadmap and what they’re planning to do, what’s coming what’s coming up. I think it’s very important as you plan the roadmap, because you can find things right, like if you need a certain level of maturity, is it worth doing something that is not assured now in keeping the same vendor, or do I go ahead and deploy something else that’s giving me what I need right away, and then some set it later on? So you know, it’s something definitely, definitely to consider is a very fast changing environment, and I think that’s why, not only staying up to date with what’s coming out up there, what new players are in the market, but also our new assistant players, what do they work on? Look like? I think it’s very

Francisco Acoba 38:13
Okay. All right. So along those lines, Jennifer, maybe you could give us some thoughts on some examples of workplace tools or technology that are, you know, at this point again, there’s so many, so many technologies and tools out there, right? What are some things that are now? They’re not necessarily naming particular vendors, but just types of tools or technologies that are now outdated and and maybe no longer being being used so much. And maybe, are there other new things that are coming into play that are that are taking their place?

Jennifer Heath 38:53
Yeah, it’s a really interesting question. And really the first thing that comes to mind for me is not a traditional workplace management solution that we, all you know, probably would think of. But one of the things I have found to be outdated at this point, truly is email. I have been really surprised in the last year my number of workers that we not communicate via email at all like much more likely to call each other now via teams, because we are so remote, we’d rather just have that direct conversation channels like Slack or teams. It’s much more rapid fire. People are working more from their smartphones, likely to maybe just send a text or send an im email, like a really antiquated tool at this point, and it’s obviously very fundamental. You know, we’re never going to not have email. Sure, the usefulness of it has really shifted. I know I’m bombarded every day with stuff or care about or I don’t even know how they got my email address. And I think that that aspect of it makes it really complicated to use. I think another kind of solution set that has been aging out for quite some time, but it’s still an obstacle, frankly, or on prem solutions. If we want to be talking about integrations, we want to be talking about aggregating data sources creating these, you know, richer views of performance you have to not not just not have disparate systems, but if all those systems are on prem, it makes it infinitely harder to try and integrate things. It makes it so much harder to try to bring data sets together, the more you can leverage cloud technologies and APIs as as a means those data sets, you’re going to be much more successful.

Francisco Acoba 40:46
Okay, all right. Any other thoughts on outdated technologies in the group, or new technologies that are like new, exciting technologies that are just coming into play that we should be on the lookout for.

Laura Dominguez 41:06
So I have one interesting one that was actually a meeting on this one a little bit earlier, and it’s the concept of because we’re talking so much about the preservation systems that do more make it easier for you, like AI and a lot of companies are looking into this, this other, this other companies actually pitching the idea of, like, do we need actual reservation systems at all in a way, or do we just Take a look at people’s space availability in their interactions, usually sit and just autonomy, reserve spaces for them and just tell them, like, here you go, here you go. So it’s kind of like, you know, we as humans love to have control, and we like to sit like, you know, I’m gonna whatnot. So we love the idea of control, but at the same time is, could something like this work? Could people shift and maybe give into this and potentially actually be beneficial, beneficial to them? And at the same time, the other benefits around like operations, congrat people to improve connections and and all these different things. But I think where becomes really interesting is really taking that away from being an actual student. But also, are you willing to give up that control? It’s very, very interesting. Some new things out there, and it’s purely leveraging things with AI sounds like a change management exercise, more than anything else, everything goes back to change management. Everything goes back to

Francisco Acoba 42:51
So we do have a question from the from the audience. I wanted to make sure we get we in here. It’s interesting. So given, it says given, given, 40% of CO two emissions are from office buildings, and 40% of those emissions come from HVAC. Are there other disruptive technologies that are coming from manufacturers to help address this, besides AI? So open that up to the group. Any thoughts on that?

Marc Olson 43:23
I can take the first pass of this absolutely from it’s actually a symbiotic relationship. You know, we talk about chillers or rooftops that are inefficient. How do you determine that they’re inefficient? Right? With analytics and insights from that. But there’s a multitude of of new initiatives that carrier has in in process, in tow, you know, from the acquisition of Eastman or vice men internationally, that is bringing into the into the equation, you know, other systems that are, you know, much, much more efficient from an HVAC perspective across the board. So, yes, there’s a ton of hardware. We’ll call it equipment that is being developed, in addition to the digital side.

Francisco Acoba 44:09
Okay, all right.

Jennifer Heath 44:14
I think the use of sensors, particularly equipment monitoring sensors, the more data you can collect, and you can identify maybe a spike in temperature or a change in the vibration rate, that’s trigger a notification to somebody that something’s a little bit off, and the or you can identify those little hiccups in performance, and you can fine tune that piece of equipment you’re just going to continually stay in front of bigger issues, 100% optimization. Jennifer, absolutely.

Francisco Acoba 44:48
Excellent. Okay, all right, well, before I turn it back to to Chuck here for closing out, I did want to just do a quick speed round final question. So what’s one final piece of advice that you’d like to provide our listeners today as they look at at their digital workplace enablement programs? So we’re going to just do a quick, quick round robin. So Laura, I’m going to start with you 20 seconds.

Laura Dominguez 45:21
I think one of the main things would be just ask yourself what you’re willing to action on, versus what is just interesting to know before you make decisions and what technologies you’re going to implement and just align across your organization again before maybe do some pilots as well. Short and sweet.

Francisco Acoba 45:44
Okay, excellent. David?

David Asker 45:47
Yeah, no similar, similar type of thought, you know, align with the business. What are you trying to achieve? What are they trying to measure? What’s important to them? And then these programs go a whole lot better. They get the type of support that you need, the change management goes better. If they can see the the alignment with their larger business objectives, they just work out a whole lot better.

Francisco Acoba 46:12
Okay, Marc?

Marc Olson 46:14
I echo the business outcome. Understand what the compelling event, what the business outcome is, work backwards from that. Think big, start small. Sorry for using that a cliche, multi multitude of times in order to effectively change and get the organization involved in the change process.

Francisco Acoba 46:34
Okay, last but not least, Jennifer?

Jennifer Heath 46:37
I think it’s important to remember that it is always going to be an iterative process. You’re going to measure, you’re going to detect something, you’re going to make a change, you’re going to measure the effectiveness of that change, and then you’re going to measure again. You’re constantly going back to the beginning, sure and assess and adapt. You’re never going to get it right the first time. And one solution is not going to last forever. You’re going to constantly need to adapt as your workforce changes, as the goals of your business change. Excellent, okay, Chuck, yeah, give you back the last 40 seconds.

Moderator 47:10
All right, Francisco, thank you, and thank you to all of our panel. You guys are awesome and really address so many of the issues. I was very sure that the idea of predictability, and I think Mark You talked a little bit about predictive insights and the components of that when you know, I mean, we can look on our phone right now, you know what the weather is going to be, where you are right now, four hours from now, and you can start to factor in those things. Like you mentioned, it’s going to when days that it rains, this is the characteristic of what happens in a workplace and days that it’s sunny. Here’s a characteristic that happens days that people have meetings. These things happen and they become very predictable. And then now you can leverage some of that with today’s technology to create a better workspace, better and make it make it much more effective for people, and sometimes worth their drive to come in and interact with the with the business. So we can take this for a little while longer, but I do have to close it out here again. Thank you Francisco for moderating. Thank you all of our panelists, and thanks to our our audience, the live audience, and for be asking questions, we really do appreciate all of that. And whether you’ve joined us live or you’re watching this as a recording, just want to make sure we would thank you also for becoming part of the Realcomm community. And we ask you to register for future events, like we’ve got another webinar, final one for the years. On December 5, we’ll be looking backwards, what some reflections on 2024 and predictions for 2025 CoreTech, 2024 coming right up November 19 and 20th in San Jose, California. And look, look at this. You may not have seen this. This is the Realcommm conference, Realcommm IBcon conferenceIt’s going to be in Savannah now, at the convention center, June 3 and fourth, with pre con events, just like always, always a great time, and always highly recommended for people to get together. So that’s it. That’s it for us today. We wish you well, be safe, and thank you all again for joining us today.

49:20
Thank you. Bye, thank you, thank you. Bye.