#ElevateYourself – iOFFICE User Conference 2017 Recap

by Tiffany Bloodworth Rivers on May 4, 2017
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In the past 10 days …

  • The Houston Texans drafted a QB
  • The Houston Rockets stole home court advantage from the Spurs
  • The Houston Astros went two games up against the Rangers
  • And Houston’s own iOFFICE hosted their second annual User Conference

What an amazing time for this Texas city!#ElevateYourself iOFFICE User Conference 2017 Recap

Customers check in to receive their name badges at ELEVATEYou might be asking yourself, “What is the iOFFICE User Conference?” Well, it’s one of our favorite times of the year (obviously). But more specifically, the iOFFICE User Conference is an opportunity for us to get to know our customers better and for our customers to get to know us better, too.

It’s a day filled with real facilities management success stories, hands-on product demos, peer-to-peer networking, enlightening discussions about the future of the digital workplace and so much more. It was certainly a whirlwind day with great conversations and illuminating presentations. Here are a few of the highlights.

Our Fearless User Conference Leader

The conference kicked off with an address by Elizabeth Dukes, EVP & Chief Marketing Officer, who set the theme for this year’s event: ELEVATE. Our goal with the user conference was to invite iOFFICE customers to share ideas with us and one another to help them elevate their workspaces and workforce. After all, in order to elevate, we need to collaborate!

During the event, Elizabeth discussed some of the biggest trends of the past year.

  • The employee experience. How can companies elevate the employee experience to attract and retain talent? With technology.
  • The digital workplace. the digital workplace “offers companies tremendous potential if they are strategically prepared to take advantage of interconnected trends like the consumerization of technology, digital dexterity, changing work models, information intensity and the desire to share and collaborate.”
  • Using technology to empower collaboration and innovation. Tech pros want to achieve “the death of silos” and create more innovative, holistic solutions.
  • The power of business intelligence (BI). BI empowers organizations to make better decisions, cut costs and increase efficiency. Using data mining, analytics and reporting, they can satisfy the needs of the business and the workforce.

Goals and Challenges of iOFFICE Customers

As we mentioned before, the User Conference is the perfect opportunity for our customers to talk to us face-to-face about their challenges, goals and what matters to them most. Here’s what we learned:

  • Goal: Increase employee engagement by giving them the apps, tools, information and spaces they want and need — for example, digital signage and wayfinding
  • Goal: Use the Internet of Things (IoT) to get better insight into the use of workspaces
  • Goal: Take advantage of smart workplace technology to improve employee wellness — for example, lighting and temperature control
  • Challenge: Efficiently managing assets and equipment
  • Challenge: Using all of the data workplace leaders collect to actually do something

Customers played games and shared laughs at ELEVATEThe Fun Stuff

To give everyone a little energy boost and stave off the post-lunch slump, we played two games using the iOFFICE Mail and Asset Manager mobile apps. Once each person was assigned to a team named after one of iOFFICE’s furry friends, they worked together to check-in and sign for a package. Some teams had a little bit more success than others, but everyone did very well.

After that, everyone ventured out into the hallway and the nearby conference rooms to see who could use the iOFFICE Asset Manager app to scan the most “assets” (i.e., printouts with pictures of various office equipment taped to walls and tables) and enter those assets into the database. This game definitely brought out the competitive side of a few of our customers!

Breakout Sessions

Once the victors were crowned, it was time to learn more about some of iOFFICE’s Marketplace partners as well as some of the impressive features of our own solutions.

SpaceTrak is a SaaS-based planning software that extends the capabilities of the iOFFICE platform. Integrated with iOFFICE’s open APIs, SpaceTrak receives data directly from the iOFFICE IWMS to assist the customer with creating forecasts, automating the assessment process and identifying the relationships between departments as well as adjacencies. The SpaceTrak team showed how customers can use the data from iOFFICE in SpaceTrak to facilitate improved occupancy planning and support cost effective real estate decisions.

Planview’s Projectplace is a collaborative work and project management solution that shows facilities managers and their teams how to effectively coordinate and manage large capital improvement and maintenance projects. Planview’s representatives showcased how items in iOFFICE can be organized as tasks that are integrated into a single project, enabling users to manage the individual project elements as well as properly allocate resources across specific timeframes.

Teem is a room reservation and workplace analytics platform designed to optimize the workspace and enhance employee collaboration. The representative from Teem demonstrated how the solution helps customers collect utilization data and better understand how employees are using the workspace. He explained how this insight, along with the data gained from the iOFFICE Space and Service Request modules, helps workplace leaders create environments that more effectively support employee needs.

Customers enjoyed learning about various partners in the breakout sessionsOur very own CTO Kenton Gray hosted a breakout session on how iOFFICE helps customers leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) to enable wayfinding. With wayfinding, workplace leaders can give their employees and guests the information they need to navigate the workspace. Wayfinding also gives workplace leaders data they can use to improve space planning.

Glenn Hicks, iOFFICE Business Development team’s newest member, walked us through the lease administration capabilities of the Space Management module, which come with the module at no additional cost to the customer. Glenn demoed the various features, such as the ability to register real estate leases and equipment contracts and link these to buildings in order to track important dates, contacts, payments, allowances, lease durations and a whole lot more.

Note: If you’re an iOFFICE customer who currently uses the Space Management module and are interested in extending the lease administration functionality with straight line and FASB reporting, get in touch!

To our customers who made it out: thank you for making the second annual User Conference truly amazing and (dare I say it?) even better than last year’s. To those who couldn’t attend: we missed you and hope to see you in 2018. Let’s get to work to make next year’s conference even more brilliant!

Interested in learning more about the iOFFICE solution? Request your free demo!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tiffany Bloodworth Rivers

Tiffany covers leadership and marketing topics and enjoys learning about how technology shapes our industry. Before iOFFICE, she worked in local news but don't hold that against her.

Capterra Ratings: ★★★★★ 4.5/5