Today Rafa Guevara, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Professional Services at Office Space Software, is joined by his colleagues CJ Frey, Solutions Consultant, Ali Stewart, Director of Client Success, and Hardeep Singh, Client Success Team Manager. Together, they delve into the dynamic shifts occurring in office environments and stress the significance of data-driven decision-making. They discuss the challenges posed by current data sets, introduce innovative solutions for gathering reliable data on employee behavior and office utilization, and highlight the importance of collaboration and continuous learning in adapting to the future of work.
Today Rafa Guevara, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Professional Services at Office Space Software, is joined by his colleagues CJ Frey, Solutions Consultant, Ali Stewart, Director of Client Success, and Hardeep Singh, Client Success Team Manager. Together, they delve into the dynamic shifts occurring in office environments and stress the significance of data-driven decision-making. They discuss the challenges posed by current data sets, introduce innovative solutions for gathering reliable data on employee behavior and office utilization, and highlight the importance of collaboration and continuous learning in adapting to the future of work.
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Ali Stewart: [00:00:00] We're scientists right now, right? Like we're creating hypothesis and we're putting a plan together and we're rolling it out and we're testing. And if you don't have a way to know that your theory, your hypothesis is right, what do you do, right? You just have a really good idea, but you need a way to really validate the results and also pivot.
You need to be quite agile right now and know this worked. It didn't. What did we learn? There's no failing. We're just all learning together. It's like a completely new era, and you know, you sort of, you create your hypothesis, test it, and then know what those results are, and know what is gonna be an indicator of success.
Host: Welcome to Connected FM, a podcast connecting you to the latest insights, tools, and resources to help you succeed in facility management. This podcast is brought to you by IFMA, the leading professional association for facility managers. If you are ready to grow your network and advance in your career, go to ifma.org to get started [00:01:00] today.
Rafa Guevara, senior Vice President and General Manager of professional services at Office based software is joined by his colleagues, C.J Frey Solutions consultant. Ali Stewart, director of Client Success, and Hardeep Singh, client Success Team Manager. Together, they delve into the dynamic shifts occurring in the office environments and stress the significance of data-driven decision-making.
They discuss the challenges posed by current data sets, introduce innovative solutions for gathering reliable data on employee behavior and office utilization, and also highlight the importance of a collaboration and continuous learning in adapting to the future of work. Now let's get into it.
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Rafa Guevara: Hello, I'm Rafa Guevara. I'm SVP and GM of services over at office based software, and I'm here with my colleagues, Ali CJ n Hardeep. Thanks,
Ali Stewart: Raffa. Yeah, Ali here. I manage the client success team. I'm just really excited to have a chance to kind of get together here and talk. It's been interesting, you know, with Office Space being around for like 15 years and now we're going through this really, uh, monumental shift in how we come into the office and the purpose and the intention behind it.
And I think it's really interesting while we take a moment and just kind of pause and [00:03:00] reflect on maybe where we've come from and talk about where we're going and where we think we're gonna end up and how we sort of enable people to make those decisions and that support.
CJ Frey: My name is CJ Frey. I am a switch consultant.
We're seeing the sales team, but also supporting client as well. Bridging really from the pre-sales process to the client implementation to client success. I am really interested in really how we're moving towards. post-COVID, the data collection data being so the forefront of all of our clients' minds, but also prospects needing that data to really make the actual decisions.
That's how I talk about that today and where we're going. Awesome.
Hardeep Singh: Um, my name's Hardeep Singh. I manage the strategic accounts for office space and ultimately we are looking to just help our clients actually leverage the software to the best of their ability. But we've got our finger on the pulse and we, we kind of understand.
What are the key problems and the areas that they're evaluating and they're looking to solve right now. So [00:04:00] we're really looking to share a bit about the trends that we've been uncovering and how we are looking to help our clients in a be, provide a solution to get those answers.
Rafa Guevara: And Ali, I feel like your team is always like so hands-on, in, in talking to clients and understanding, you know, whether they're being challenged with, right?
I know there's a huge appetite for data, but what are those data points like? I mean, I also, it almost makes me wonder that. Like everyone wants data, they want accurate data, and they want to use that for the employee's benefit and to improve the employee experience. But what are some of the challenges with the current data set?
Ali Stewart: I think it's reliability, right? So knowing that the data you have is accurate, 'cause you're gonna make a lot of decisions based on that and really impactful decisions in terms of real estate spend. So you wanna make sure that it's right and if you're basing it on maybe. Human-led behavior, then we're finding that it's not really telling the full story.
Hardeep Singh: Yeah, couldn't agree more Ali. So that's what we've been hearing quite a bit. I mean, [00:05:00] hoteling desk booking, 'cause a lot of people refer to it, it is dependent on the end user actually forming that task and that end-to-end process. So what we've developing right now is a way for us to gather present data for from either via a badge data.
From either badge data or actual network connectivity. When like an employee comes on office and they actually connect to your wifi system, that gets registered as presence on site. And we developed a suite of dashboards that can help leverage insights that can be surfaced with combination of different data sets like your department to help you understand the behaviors of your employees.
Like when are they coming in? Who's coming in, how often are they coming in, which debaumments are coming in more often than others. Just to name, but a few of those, and
Rafa Guevara: these are the challenges. I mean, I put my facility management professional hat on and I'm like, well, I'm gonna have a conversation with A COO, or you know, chief people officer, head of hr, and they want to know how the building is being utilized and who's coming in [00:06:00] and why, and how to build a more productive work environment.
And I don't have the answers, right. I don't have the answers because I'm walking the building and it looks semi-empty. And it's probably because we have some sort of hybrid strategy that we've been, you know. Thinking about for the past couple years, post-Pandemic, but it's hard to answer those questions.
Right. With moving, it feels like the role is moving from like very tactical, like firefighting and always dealing with the emergencies and being in crisis management mode to like, okay, strategically, where is the building going to be four or five years from now with the current utilization model? And is this in alignment with our company culture?
Right? And these are super strategic conversations for people in facility
Ali Stewart: management. Yeah, exactly. And what we're seeing and what we're hearing with a lot of the clients, I think Cardi that you were working with just recently is this new sort of dashboard that we have, that collates, that presence. Data is saving them like 10 hours a week or more.
And now they can use that to spend time being strategic because it's not just that reactive [00:07:00] stage anymore. We actually have to go to leadership and prevent. Like present proposals, like how are we going to use our space? What is our intentions? Free lunches aren't bringing people into the office anymore, right?
Why am I gonna sit in a commute? How are we actually going to utilize our space, and how does that inform our culture? It's very connected. Yeah. I
CJ Frey: mean,
Hardeep Singh: I, I knew we had a great solution, but I didn't really appreciate the true value of that solution until we actually start connecting with our clients and getting feedback.
So one of the global leaders in holiday accommodations and short-term rentals let us know that they can spend. Up to 10 to 12 hours per week, exporting badge data, cleaning it, combining it with other data sets before it is even in a position where they can actually conduct analysis. So can you imagine that 10 to 12 hours per week recurring on a weekly basis spend on generating this report when once you're set up with our solution, it's actually just up and running.
So, and then there's also another client of ours who's a leader in the POS hardware and software space for restaurants. They're [00:08:00] spending one hour per week. Report, and that can be anywhere. That can vary from anywhere to four to five reports per week. So you can imagine that's a huge time saving. And as Ali mentioned, more time spent on analyzing your employee behavior so you can, you know, make some adjustments that would make the workplace more and attractive.
Place for the employees to come in more often, or
Ali Stewart: really, we're scientists right now, right? Like we're creating hypothesis and we're putting a plan together and we're rolling it out and we're testing. And if you don't have a way to know that your theory, your hypothesis is right, what do you do, right? You just have a really good idea, but you need a way to really validate the results and also pivot.
You need to be quite agile right now and know this worked. It didn't. What did we learn? There's no failing. We're just all learning together. It's like a completely new era and you know, you sort of, you create your hypothesis, test it, and then know what those results are and know what is gonna be an indicator of success, right?
Do you [00:09:00] need to increase your utilization in a particular location? You can set that as a goal and roll that out and have the right data to make the right decision.
CJ Frey: I think even with our workplace intelligence, we have the means to have that utilization data actually be displayed. Instead of going through Excel working these, you know, off of PDFs, a more manual way, our dashboards can show you your utilization rates.
Now with easy-to-access badge data and Wi-Fi, you're, you're not looking at buying additional hardware. You have all these data streams already at your fingertips. We take the hard part out of taking that data and making it actually usable, tangible data. You can see, you know, in your New York building or your Hong Kong site, what's your actual utilization based on real data?
Badge data, Wi-Fi presence, even networking data as well to some of our other dashboards. So we're taking the hard part out of it and giving you the actionable data points so you can take to leadership, take the teams to inform them of, Hey, is it a regime? How do we now action [00:10:00] this going forward or respond to
Ali Stewart: this?
I think that elevates the role of the FM, right? You're part of the strategy.
Hardeep Singh: And ultimately that's what we're here for. We wanna make our FM's lives easier and if we can handle all of this reporting side for them or preparing these reports ahead of time, and then they just need to conduct that analysis, put together a chart and share it with their leaders.
Senior leadership. Yeah, that that's what we're here for.
Rafa Guevara: Ultimately, I would actually like give it a little bit to like people, I tend to overindex people, right? And everywhere we go, we hear people first, right? So let's talk about people, right? I. People were working from home, right? And then they're presented with a hybrid solution and everyone wonders like, well, why am I commuting?
What used to be a mindless part of our day, which is like you just have to commute to work. Like you just go to into the office like, period. That's life. It's a fact of life, right? We move from that to like, well, why am I doing this? Where's the value? Right? And the value is no longer in like, oh, I get coffee, right?
Or I get a [00:11:00] food spread, right? The value needs to appeal to a higher level, right? To a higher need. I need to connect, I need to collaborate, I need to, to learn from senior leadership on our teams, right? To connect with others, to learn from them. All these informal cafeteria conversations, you know, water cooler talk, right?
Those things are gone because our days are super structured with Zoom meetings or virtual, you know, and encounters where like everything is on an agenda and we need to do these things. And I think there's a room for that for sure, but there's also a room for that connection at the individual level. So like all these idea of getting data.
So we can understand our people and then give them the right working experience. Everyone wants a productive, collaborative workplace. We're all striving to provide that. Yeah,
Hardeep Singh: last year we saw Ali. We saw a lot of our clients actually conducting surveys, and those are valuable. You want to hear from your people, you want to hear like what's important to you, what do you like about being in the office?
What are things that we can improve on? But that only tells half the story. So just to like back up what Rafa [00:12:00] said, you need some like tangible. Hardline data to back up other areas of your utilization, and so that completes the picture With both of those. You can actually like analyze that for your particular organization and you can help make some more strategic, more effective strategic decisions and nuts, just basically remove some of the guesswork out of it.
Ali Stewart: I think it creates a very intentional strategy too, right? You're able to go to your employees and say, this is why the office is important and your leadership, this is why this is important. This is what we're trying to achieve. Just not getting people in for the sake of getting people in. There's intentionality, and I think that's really powerful and I think it's actually really exciting.
I like that concept of, I'm coming in because I wanna collaborate with you, Hardy. We wanna sit down in person and solve this problem, or someone else is, maybe more junior, can come in and have that. So that career development experience where you can get to sit down with someone in leadership and have very meaningful conversation.
And I think that helps explain to people why it's, you know, the mindless commute. Right. You were saying there Rafa, because I, [00:13:00] we just, yeah, you're right. We're all just did it automatically and now we don't have to. So why am I coming in and how do we support that as leaders in this space to make sure that we're presenting it in the right way?
Almost
Rafa Guevara: makes me wonder if we're entering a new age in, in, in kind of like how we manage facilities and support our teams. One that, you know, is really pushing for thought leadership, where more and more, again, what was a very reactive, you know, for the majority of the day kind of job now is being looked or sought after for answers.
Like, help me understand our people. Help me lead the chart here and how we're gonna behave as a company. You're now, if you're a facility management professional, you're now more than ever involved in culture involved in dictating the pace of your company and understanding why. You know, we are coming into an office two, three days a week, or zero days a week, or five days a week.
And how that plays into the overall strategy, right, and the productivity and the vibrancy of the workplace. [00:14:00] So it's a whole new era in terms of like, you know, the different departments is looking for that leadership. And also that implies a consolidation of tools and processes and procedures and workflows at that level.
You can no longer manage eight different processes at the facility with eight different tools. It's almost like it's an age of consolidation and thought leadership. Try to find a platform that, you know, scratches all those itches, right? That helps a char that helps, you know, people doing maintenance in your building that helps your vendors interact with your people, that help people interact with people within the company, right?
And you need to provide the thought leadership of how they interconnect, right? So it's a lot of what I've seen is consolidation and thought leadership, and that's basically people and tools, you know, coming together and you're picking the right tool, uh, for this learning experiment in that alley was talking about.
Ali Stewart: Exactly. It's gotta, it's gotta be able to shift it and be agile with you. Right? Because if we're going to be like the scientists that we're testing and proving or disproving our theories, we need to make sure that a software [00:15:00] solution can also pivot alongside you and not get you locked in just in one single solution.
Hardeep Singh: Yeah. I think based on that, it's okay if you don't have the answer right now. Ali would you say, right? Yeah.
Ali Stewart: Yeah. We're all learning right? It's kind of exciting in a lot of ways too. We're part of, we're all part of this monumental shift.
Hardeep Singh: Yeah. Learning together. But, yep. Just to circle back, you definitely need a foundation of like good, reliable data and then make the adjustments that you need.
Do some tests that, and you know, gather, do surveys as well. Still continue to do those things, but be ready to pivot and shift and then see how that impacts that data that you're analyzing on a recurring basis, because. That's gonna be critical for you in being able to make the right decision and be like, you know what?
This actually worked. Maybe I can like enhance this in some way. This did not work. So maybe I can do a little bit of an adjustment here.
CJ Frey: I think some of the data you're seeing as well, through Badge or through Wi-Fi could prompt some [00:16:00] questions like, should we test Hotel Deskbooking and some locations? Do we need to have assigned seats moving forward?
It prompts some questions that maybe we hadn't thought about. As a business in exploring, but you know, gives you the platform to say, Hey, the data we're seeing here could support us testing some new policies or new ways of working in some of our sites
Rafa Guevara: that are open to it. I mean, the surveys help
CJ Frey: dictate our employees open it as booking or being more hybrid.
So taking that more human aspect, blended with it, actual data, the hard data of, you know, the more subjective pieces with the
Rafa Guevara: objective
CJ Frey: you get. These storylines that could help you make informed decisions down the road, test and pilot new strategies
Rafa Guevara: moving forward. Is that our takeaway? It's an exciting time to be in the space, be in facility management and trying to answer all these questions, have that growth mindset, that posture of learning.
And just, you know, roll with it as we all find out what the ultimate strategy will be, which will be different for all businesses, I guess, [00:17:00] and
Ali Stewart: sharing those learnings, right? We're all in it together. We're all learning together, and I think we can all learn from each other and share what's working, what's not, and how we're testing things and what we're thinking, which is I think also why IFMA so exciting.
Like having everybody coming here and learning together.
Rafa Guevara: Yeah. It feels like it's the intersection of like where product meets workflow meets management, right? And then it all comes together for your workplace
CJ Frey: experience. That's where facilities sits right
Ali Stewart: in the middle. We're the center of the hub.
Great. Well this has been great and nice to sit down. I just gonna have a mo take a moment during a busy trade show to chat and thank you everyone for listening.
Host: Thank you so much for listening. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. And as always, please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast for more incredible content.