10 Questions To Ask Before Investing in Workplace Management Solutions

“The Great Resignation” has made talent recruitment and retention much more important. The way to navigate this challenge is to establish an explicit people-oriented culture. Great pay, benefits, career advancement, time off… they all matter. But even in a hybrid world, a strong workplace culture requires a great workplace experience too.

To create them, HR and business leaders first need data-backed insights into how, when and where employees work best. Enter: Workplace Management Solutions. These software tools help organizations optimize every aspect of the workplace. If you aren’t familiar with them, you’ll get a good overview on our website.

Of course, “optimizing every aspect of the workplace” sounds great. But if you’re just getting started on this journey, you surely have a lot of questions, such as:

Are Workplace Management Solutions right for my organization?
If so, which ones?
How can I be sure I’m working with the right vendor?

This blog answers those questions. The first six will help you determine your needs. The rest will help you pick the right vendor.

1. Are you a large multi-location organization?

Workplace Management Solutions work best for mid-sized and large organizations. Generally, these companies have more than 1,000 employees. They also manage more than a million square feet of real estate across many locations.

Prime examples include financial institutions, large tech companies, and government entities. Hospital and healthcare organizations, universities, and pharmaceutical firms also fit the bill.

2. Do you want to create ideal hybrid workplace experiences?

The hybrid workplace requires purpose-designed spaces that meet new expectations for in-office work. Making the right adjustments requires real-time visibility, rich insights, and accurate forecasting. Workplace Management Solutions provide the capabilities you need to adjust to how, when and where work actually gets done.

3. Do you need help refocusing and rationalizing your real estate portfolio?

One thing is clear: no one knows with certainty what the workplace will look like next year or in five years. There’s no “one size fits all” approach that will work best for every organization. And what works today for your company, or even for one of your locations, may very well not work tomorrow.

The best Workplace Management Solutions rely on deep workplace utilization data and predictive analytics. The insights they provide enable you to right-fit your organization’s real estate with ease. Given the tremendous costs of real estate, getting this right is business-critical.

4. Are you ready to recharge your workplace management?

Want to operate your business at max efficiency? Then optimizing workplace operations has to be part of your strategy.

Workplace Management Solutions provide quick access to the accurate data that decision makers need. Without them, you’ll be stuck in endless best-guess cycles. With them, you’ll enjoy better customer service, lower costs and greater performance from increasingly dynamic facilities.

5. Do you want to optimize the visitor experience?

The security risk inherent in hosting visitors in your buildings isn’t new. But now, hybrid work means employees and guests are now coming in on different days and at different times. All these people now act like visitors.

Robust, flexible visitor management solutions make it easy and quick to handle these visitor interactions. They support consistency in security and safety protocols. They also create an ideal environment for high-quality work and productivity for all occupants.

Free resource: Workplace Management Platform Buyer’s Guide >

6. Do you struggle to track your workplace assets?

Maximizing the utility and value of fixed and mobile IT assets takes on greater importance in a hybrid environment.

Facility asset management solutions automate the tracking of any asset class. This allows leadership to maintain asset counts across their entire team – wherever they work. Doing so also ensures that staff have what they need, when they need it. This improves productivity, and the return on investment for each asset.

7. Does customer value come first to your vendor?

Everything your vendor does should support your short- and long-term success. Don’t just listen to what they say. Look at their their behavior and review customer success stories. Test your impressions by asking:

How customer feedback informs their roadmap
If they have a customer advisory board or formal customer group
For customer stories about their experience working with the technology and vendor team

8. Does the vendor offer the full suite of Workplace Management Solutions?

Companies with one point solution may not offer enough functionality for you long term. They may be able to solve a tactical issue today, but won’t have a way to solve your longer-term, enterprise-wide needs.

When looking for a vendor choose one that offers all five digital workplace functions:

9. Is the vendor committed to security?

Hybrid work means workplace applications move to the cloud. It also means employees need remote access. The result is that zero trust networks are replacing corporate data stores and VPN-controlled access. This poses security risks. In response, focus on vendors that offer:

Written information security policies
Third-party audits and accreditations
Proof of secure policies for their own vendor selections
Active software and source code management (where appropriate).

10. Does the vendor have the right experience?

While of course not a disqualifying factor on its own, experience matters. Vendors with thousands of deployments have the knowledge, stability and resources to deliver cutting-edge innovation and a great user experience. Growth-stage companies do not.

Some vendors have made a series of rapid acquisitions to fill out their offerings. This often means they manage competing products. This strategy boosts their revenue in the near-term, but profit-hunting down the road might result in a discontinued solution.