Leveraging Smart Office Capabilities for a Worker-Friendly Environment

What the smart office looks like and how it functions depends on the company’s purpose and objectives. Today’s technology and current office trends supports an array of industries:

• A financial planner wants new insights on a client and uses a smart CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
• A manufacturing firm streams data to schedule equipment maintenance and conserve energy consumption.
• A local school district troubleshoots connectivity issues
• A warehouse uses autonomous robots to pull customer orders off shelves.
• A video game firm and police department can use a technology like Virtual Reality to create simulations for completely different purposes.

What is the Smart Office?

A smart office gives employees the technological tools needed to work effectively in support of what the company wants to achieve. Office trends today strongly exhibits that working smarter isn’t just based on human intellect anymore.

Today’s technology is amazing, but the end game is meeting the needs of people. A well-planned smart office is responsive to the needs of workers and customers.

In the world of online retail and logistics, companies that deliver packages quickly make customers happy and are positioned to compete well and win future orders. Making it easy for a customer to place an online order is an important part of success in the supply chain. Warehouses use autonomous robots to quickly pull items off of shelves and package them for quick shipping.

Technology can work at a personal level, too. In a school, imagine a student who suffers from the fear of mathematics using a device equipped with Artificial Intelligence to map the student’s learning patterns. It can offer feedback and take the student through a step-by-step process to gain confidence and answer correctly.

Technology is made to function for an established purpose and fit within a workplace strategy.

Smart Office Benefits

The tech start-up coming out of one of the nation’s robotic hubs will certainly use the latest connective technologies, but mature industries like life-sciences, financial services, and education are sending and pulling from the Cloud.

Sensors have dropped in cost along with vision systems to collect constant streams of data in split second intervals to make decisions. Think of a self-driving or autonomous vehicle. Australian mining giant Rio Tinto uses self-driving trucks weighing 46 tons to transport iron ore. They can operate safely 24 hours a day if necessary and use a myriad of sensors to gauge the shortest distances to save on fuel.

Technology is responsive and unifying. Los Angeles has used a “centralized business intelligence system” to create efficiencies among more than 500 datasets spread across multiple city agencies. The data is accessed to work with private businesses, nonprofits, and universities.

Office Trends Point to Smart Office Furniture

Chairs and desks are no longer static objects. Estimates say that 26 billion “Internet of Things” devices (every day objects with embedded computing devices interconnected via the Internet, enabling them to send and receive data from one another) will be connected to office furniture in the next five to six years.

Offices already have access to innovative furniture. Height-adjustable desks are a reality and promote health by allowing staff to change positions while working. How about getting a reminder to stand now and then by a Bluetooth-enabled desk? Some desk models now have touchscreens embedded in the table to prompt workers with reminders for lunch and tasks to complete.

Sensors can also be implemented to determine the temperature and humidity at a desk for maximum comfort and energy efficiency.

Wireless charging panels will grow in popularity, too. Place a smartphone on a desk or table to power it up with no wires required. This can eliminate trip hazards like extension cords.

Stay up-to-date on office furniture innovations with the experience of 2010 Office Furniture, totaling more than 40 years in planning office set-ups and working with management teams to furnish entrepreneurial start-ups and established corporations.

Read Also: Digital Workplace Trends for 2019
Main Photo: AIS Calibrate Conference Table
Resources & Special Thanks to Respective Product Manufacturers: AIS