How To Maximize Your CAFM With iOFFICE

Many facility managers use computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) to visualize their space and optimize space utilization.

If you’re already comfortable with your CAFM software but your organization is considering another facility management solution, we have great news: iOFFICE not only integrates with your CAFM; it also helps you get more actionable insights from it.

Here’s how.

CAFM Basics

A CAFM system stores computer-aided (CAD) drawings, which allows you to visualize your current office layout and determine how a move will impact it.

CAD drawings are important for giving your organization accurate space measurements.

CAFM systems like AutoCAD use polylining to draw a perimeter around the inside walls. This ensures every inch of space is labeled correctly and gives you a better depiction of your true usable square footage.

A CAFM can help with many aspects of facilities management, including:

• Calculating building costs
• Visualizing available space
• Easily identifying emergency exits
• Identifying electrical cabinets, plumbing and essential infrastructure
• Planning office moves

All this makes a CAFM valuable in itself—certainly a better alternative to keeping stacks of printed floor plans and marking them up each time you’re planning a move.

But unless your CAFM connects to other technology that’s collecting data about your workplace, you’re still getting a limited view of true space utilization.

Getting More Value From Your CAFM

When CAFM is integrated with iOFFICE’s space management software, each polylined space of your CAD drawings becomes a data point.

This allows you to associate it with valuable information, such as:

• The location of the space, including building and floor
• Who occupies the space
• Real-time space utilization collected via IoT sensors
• The assets associated with that space

This gives you greater insight into your entire real estate portfolio, as well as individual buildings, floors and rooms.

With that information, you can make adjustments to your space as needed and plan for future growth.

Our space management software also integrates seamlessly with other tools that allow you to:

• Easily plan and manage office moves
• Track every detail of critical building assets and determine the total cost of ownership
• Reserve conference rooms or individual work stations
• Manage, track and analyze maintenance tasks related to your space
• Give employees an easy way to find people, reserve space, request service or receive mail or visitors via a mobile app, conference scheduling panels or wayfinding kiosks

When you’re sharing floor plans and data between different software systems, you need to make sure any changes made within one system will be reflected in the other. You need a bridge between the two. Luckily, iOFFICE has already built those bridges with our custom-built CAD plugins. Our proprietary plugins for AutoCAD and Revit are both free and easy to use.

Isn’t it nice to know you don’t have to choose between your CAFM and iOFFICE?

You can have the best of both worlds!