What To Look For in Your Next Desk Management Solution

With the growing popularity of unassigned seating and agile workspaces, many companies are evaluating solutions to seamlessly shift into a new way of working. If you’re committed to making that change for the benefit of your workforce, the thought now has to be: “What desk management solution is right for you?”

To make this process easier, here are 3 things you should look for in a desk management solution. For each, we’ll break down the challenge executive teams are facing as well as present an ideal solution to consider based on your priorities. 

☑ Robust Integration With the Rest of Your Workplace Tech Stack 

The Tech Challenge: An ever-growing list of tools that don’t talk to each other. From Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, and Slack to any number of internally-developed company software, companies under 50 employees often have 40 apps they work with — and those with 1000+ employees can have over 200. These are all tools you’ll need to potentially integrate with your desk management solution so you can monitor data on workplace usage and employees can easily see desk and conference availability. 

Your Ideal Solution: An open API with native integrations.

The solution you work with needs to not only indicate a willingness to let you customize those connections through an open API, they should be actively supporting you by developing integrations of their own. 

VergeSense was built to be open. That’s why we have integration partnerships with some of the leading workplace technology providers today and are constantly working on building new ones based on feedback from our clients.

☑ People-Counting Across a Variety of Space Types

The Tech Challenge: Common occupancy sensors can’t accurately track desk usage.

If one of your top priorities is tracking activity across both open workspaces and conference rooms — to gather workplace optimization data and  confirm compliance with company and state COVID-19 policies — many sensors simply can’t accommodate that. 

Common footfall sensors, for example, rely on Passive Infrared (PIR) to count movement at entries and exits. But, desk-level sensing is a level of granularity they were never designed for. The same can be said for badging systems. Useful for monitoring overall entries and exits, but not ideal if you’re looking for desk-level accuracy. 

Your Ideal Solution: AI-powered vision-based occupancy sensors. 

Vision-based sensors translate optical data into data points to create an accurate real-time map of desk usage and occupancy in any workspace. There’s never a gap in coverage and it can accommodate whatever space you put it in. 

VergeSense’s ceiling mounted sensors go beyond the doorway. Each sensor creates a field of vision covering several hundred square feet and provides a more accurate count across open office seating, in conference rooms, and more. Our patented computer vision model is uniquely capable of processing ultra-low resolution imagery, ensuring the highest degree of accuracy while remaining 100% anonymous.

☑ Truly Accurate Real-Time Occupancy

The Tech Challenge: Unreliable real-time sensors lead to an unhappy workforce.

A desk management solution is only as good as the employees who use it. If the tools are unreliable, break down, or actually decrease productivity, you’ll get calls to switch back to your prior setup. 

The closest common sensor that can report desk usage and offer reservations are under-the desk sensors. However, because they typically rely on motion detection, they’re not good at accurately detecting people if movement is stagnant for a long period of time (such as, say, someone working at a desk).  And, there’s nothing worse than booking a desk you think is available only to find it’s occupied. 

Your Ideal Solution: A tamper-proof sensor with guaranteed real-time views of desk usage.

The solution here is to once again rely on vision-based occupancy sensors. If you can guarantee accurate reporting of desk usage, you can connect it to a desk reservation system that’s consistently up-to-date. 

VergeSense sensors are optimized to provide the industry’s most accurate readings of true occupancy. Additionally, because our occupancy sensors are deployed on the ceiling, they’re less likely to be damaged when compared to the alternative under-the-desk sensors. 

Where to Go From Here

When you’re choosing a desk management solution to partner with, it’s important to consider every use case. This not only includes the data you’ll need to continually optimize your workspace, but the tools that employees will need to utilize and integrate with in order to easily transition to the new system and improve productivity. 

If you want to get a better understanding of how a vision-based desk management solution could work for your business, request a demo with the VergeSense team. We can talk more about our technology and contrast it against other partners you’re looking into so you can make a decision that works best for your needs.