{"id":14856,"date":"2024-06-17T10:53:13","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T14:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eptura.wpengine.com\/?p=14856"},"modified":"2024-10-08T12:51:29","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T16:51:29","slug":"digital-stages-shape-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eptura.com\/discover-more\/blog\/digital-stages-shape-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"2024 Workplace Index report: How digital stages shape challenges, aspirations"},"content":{"rendered":"

New propriety research from Eptura reveals a four-stage model of implementing worktech solutions. The value of this new model is descriptive and prescriptive. First, workplace and operational leaders can now establish their current location, giving them a realistic picture of past progress and future possibilities. Then, by understanding the challenges, goals, and near-future planning common to each stage, they can begin to confidently chart their route to greater collaboration, reduced operational costs, and increased asset revenue.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Eptura\u2019s <\/span>H1 2024 Workplace Index<\/span><\/a>\u00a0incorporates independent research on enterprise companies across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, with insights from C-level, vice-president, and country-head leaders across departments, and leverages anonymous user data from more than 5,000 companies, including\u00a019,000 buildings, 95.5 million desk bookings, and 25 million room bookings.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Digital connection evolves in four stages <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Based on conversations with workplace and operations leaders, Eptura\u00a0developed a four-stage model to describe how an organization moves toward a connected workplace.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Stage 1 is the initial jump from manual methods to a single point digital solution. For example, you might go from a paper-based visitors log to a stand-alone\u00a0digital visitor management system. Or you could move the preventive maintenance schedule from email-attachment spreadsheets to a dedicated software solution. Although there are operational efficiencies \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s now easier to capture data and harder to lose it \u2014 you\u2019re not yet sharing data outside of set silos.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s more visibility, but the view is\u00a0still narrow.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At Stage 2, organizations\u00a0bundle multiple solutions from one vendor, cutting management and software costs. By Stage 3, they\u2019re at a single platform that creates integrated use cases for cross-platform functionality, digital mapping of the workplace, and access to cross-functional data. By sharing data across workflows, organizations can discover new operational efficiencies.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The big picture is now coming into sharper focus, making it easier to spot opportunities for improvement and leverage data for better decision-making. You might be using occupancy data trends to schedule preventive maintenance inspections and tasks for times you know the offices are mostly empty, for example. Or using room booking data trends to help guide capital projects planning.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Stage 4 is when everything comes together across the enterprise with an integrated ecosystem delivering\u00a0real-time predictive analysis and modeling backed by Internet of Things (IoT) asset communication and digital twins.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the final evolution, organizations can leverage a smart, interconnected system to deliver optimal outcomes for facility, assets, and employee experience at all their spaces, across multiple locations.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Technology requirements change at each digital stage for asset management<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Facility and maintenance professionals already know the basic benefits of moving from reactive to preventive maintenance. By finding and fixing small issues before they grow, you can cut overall costs by reducing unplanned downtime and increasing useful life cycles. When maintenance is planned and scheduled, technicians arrive onsite with the tools, time, and knowledge they need to close out quickly.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, Eptura\u2019s latest data reveals technicians require roughly twice as much time to complete reactive\u00a0versus preventive work.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to understand why. Much of reactive maintenance is \u201cputting out fires,\u201d and maintenance technicians must work under many of the same constraints as firefighters. Because they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re dealing with until they arrive on scene, they default to bringing too many tools and supplies. On scene, they\u2019re making best guesses with limited visibility of fast changing facts.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But how they hope to implement or improve their ability to deliver preventive and predictive maintenance over the next 12 months depends on their digital stage.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Organizations at Stage 1\u00a0are most interested in delivering data analytics, likely because they have never had them before. Paper- and spreadsheet-based attempts to manage work orders are too scattered and too error prone to facilitate reliable reports. At this stage, there is also a lot of interest in supporting technicians with mobile apps, maximizing the utility of the newly captured data by making it easy for maintenance teams to access it from anywhere.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the multiple digital stage, organizations were also interested in data analytics, but they showed more interest in integrated workplace platforms than mobile apps. In fact, only 11% of companies at this stage said they were interested in mobile apps, which was the same percentage as those in the ecosystem stage. It\u2019s likely the number is low because they already have mobile apps implemented. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What the data suggests is that at later stages, companies are hoping to connect more groups and larger systems \u2013 and even assets. By the ecosystem stage, the two most important technologies are integrated workplace platforms and IoT, tied at\u00a018%.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Digital stages also predict perceived challenges for connecting revenue-generating assets<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

When we spoke with operational and maintenance leaders, the most common answers to \u201cWhat barriers do you face digitally connecting assets?\u201d were:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n