How essensys helps operators thrive through best-in-class workspaces

Over the past few years, the flight to quality in commercial real estate has become more and more prevalent. Tenants are exercising a growing preference for high-quality, well-equipped, flexible office space. According to CBRE, over 50% occupiers want landlords to bundle access to shared building services, amenities and/or flex spaces into their lease(1) – with new types of space (meeting, amenity, flex) and new types of tech (touchless, connected) being the most desirable building amenities(2).

Delivering these types of spaces can be challenging – you’re often dealing with monolithic systems, a lack of data, manual and error-prone processes, security risks and more. We recently sponsored IDC to create an InfoBrief, “Thriving Through Best-in-Class Workspaces”, to outline a framework for what employers and their employees want from their office space – and what providers of these spaces need to do to deliver it.

The IDC InfoBrief uses research from IDC’s Future of Work practice, resulting in five key elements that enable effective hybrid work and accommodate the changing needs of employees, management and space providers.

1. Flexible space management, analysis & reporting

Flexible spaces come in many different shapes and sizes – spec suites, coworking spaces, meeting rooms, amenity spaces, and so on. Each of these different space types requires slightly different types of management. It’s also crucial to have access to data and reports that help you understand how your spaces, and the services within them, are being used.

How essensys helps:

With essensys Platform, you can co-ordinate occupiers, spaces and services across your whole portfolio. It uses automation to help improve your operational efficiency, replacing time-consuming, manual tasks. Your ops and facilities teams can handle day-to-day operations without technical expertise – such as spinning up private networks for new occupiers and allocating them to a space, ensuring all digital infrastructure is configured and assigned. You also get access to detailed data and insights that allow you to understand your occupiers and their journeys through your spaces.

2. Digital services

Tenants leasing premium office space are increasingly expecting digital services to be included – things like connectivity, WiFi access, room booking capabilities, and so on. The spaces that are shared by multiple occupiers (meeting rooms, coworking spaces) must also provide the digital services required by those using them. Operators of these spaces need to have a solution in place that enables them to provision, manage and configure digital services on-demand.

How essensys helps:

essensys Platform gives you the ability to quickly and easily co-ordinate occupiers, spaces and digital services. Digital services can be spun up (or shut down) instantly – making tasks like occupier onboarding or reconfiguring a space much more efficient. When paired with essensys Cloud, you get the added benefit of a smart connectivity solution. This gives you access to essensys Cloud’s enterprise-grade (secure, resilient compliant) connectivity and voice services, and allows you to provision and manage them on-demand via essensys Platform.

3. Security

One consideration when operating shared spaces is digital security. As an operator providing connectivity and other digital services, you’re also responsible for ensuring you keep your users data private and secure. For many occupiers, shared WiFi networks with shared passwords, providing access to standard internet connectivity, doesn’t meet their needs.

How essensys helps:

With essensys Cloud, you connect to a secure-by-design global private network. Data travels over our private network, avoiding the public internet and keeping it secure. With essensys Platform, every tenant is set up with their own private VLAN, so they’re not sharing network access with other tenants in the building. Each user is also provided with their own unique login credentials, avoiding the need for shared passwords. Our solutions are also compliant to leading global standards – ISO 9001, ISO 27001, SOC 2 – meeting the needs of tenants with strict security & compliance requirements.

4. User experience

Providing a frictionless user experience in your spaces is critical. In flexible spaces, occupiers have more freedom to work from different places – from the coworking floor, to the coffee shop, to the roof garden, or even from another location. They expect to be able to interact with you (and your spaces) digitally, essentially self-serving via apps or portals that can be accessed on their phones and/or laptops. And, importantly, these experiences need to “just work” without any friction.

How essensys helps:

With essensys Platform, you can give your occupiers the ability to work from anywhere within your buildings, or across your portfolio. Instant WiFi authentication and connection ensures that users stay connected when moving between spaces within a building, and automatically, securely connect when they enter another permitted site or location. There’s no need to use the guest WiFi or login again – it just works. Also, with essensys Cloud, you can monitor the digital experience of your users with visibility over your networks, applications and devices performance. Using both essensys Platform and essensys Cloud gives you end-to-end visibility, right the way down to end-user devices.

5. Marketing, sales & billing

To provide a best-in-class workspace, you need to ensure your marketing, sales and billing processes provide a great experience too. From the promotion of your spaces and point of sale, to charges and invoicing, it’s important that everything works efficiently and is accurate. When you’re providing different types of spaces – from desks or meeting rooms bookable by the hour, to monthly leases on spec suites and multi-year terms on entire floors – it’s important you have the technology in place that supports the products you offer.

How essensys helps:

With operate, you can manage your complex licensing and invoicing requirements – designed to handle the needs of hybrid spaces and leases. This means that you can ensure your occupiers are invoiced correctly for the spaces and services they use. It also integrates with payment providers and accounting software, as well as other essensys software. Our entire suite of products are designed to work with whatever your optimal tech stack consists of. That’s why we take an open approach to integrations – providing an open REST API that enables you to integrate your other systems with your essensys software. This allows you to create powerful workflows that result in seamless customer journeys and more efficient operations.

Read the full InfoBrief to discover more about delivering best-in-class workspaces, and how the five elements explored in this blog can be put to use to achieve them. You’ll also find a maturity model to benchmark your operations against, and some essential guidance to any landlords or operators looking to provide premium workspaces.

essensys software & technology is used by some of the world’s leading CRE brands to help them provide the types of spaces and services that occupiers are demanding. Click here to speak to one of our experts for more information on how our solutions can be used to drive better experiences, remove complexity from your operations, and give you better visibility – across your whole portfolio.

1. CBRE “Spring 2023 U.S. Office Occupier Sentiment Survey” May 2023
2. CBRE “2023 Office Occupier Sentiment Survey: Global Summary” Sept 2023
3. #EUR151362723 IDC InfoBrief “Thriving Through Best-in-Class Workspaces” December 2023, sponsored by essensys