Avanade - Best IoT Analytics Solution

Company: Avanade
Company Description: We aim to be the leading digital innovator, creating great experiences through the power of people and the Microsoft ecosystem. We’ve transformed businesses for the digital world. We’ve helped them create compelling experiences for their customers and employees. We’ve reduced costs, increased productivity, enabled collaboration and enhanced agility – and ultimately improved performance.
Nomination Category: Product & Service Categories - Business Technology Solutions
Nomination Sub Category: IoT Analytics Solution

Nomination Title: Smart Building Accelerator

If this is a brand-new product, state the date on which it was released. If this is a new version of an existing product, state the date on which the update was released:

We’rethe leading provider of innovative digital/cloud services, business solutions and design-led experiences. As such, our clients rely on us to be at the forefront of innovative solutions and emerging tech. So, whentheyrequested help to create a workplace of the future that would reduce meeting room and desk costs and increase productivity, we knew we were up to the challenge.

Following extensive researchand planning,andafter many months of designs and development, inOctober2020, weofficially releasedour Smart Building Accelerator into the market, meaning for the first time ever, we’ve been able to combine the workplace experience, the employee experience and the buildings facility management experience into one unique system.

Having a seamless user experiencewas a major priority of the project and was achieved through:

UTILISING IOT DATA

In our clients’ physical buildings, we install lots of monitoring tech such asunder desk infrared sensors to see how much desks are being used, sensors to count people in the building, meeting room monitors, etc. This technology gives us the IoT data needed to create 3D andvirtual reality (VR) replicas of the office, providing real-time data.

CREATING A DIGITAL REPLICA OF THE BUILDING

Quite often with(VR)tools, when you drop someone into a virtual environment they don’t know where they are,sothey’re not sure what to do and tend to stand in one place. Whereas when we droppeopleintofamiliarvirtual officespaces,they know exactly where they are and end up walking around the space.

So, whenanew company comes on board, we map out their entire office and create an exact digital replica in a VRspace, integrating the IoT data.This ensuresusers of the acceleratorare familiar with their surroundings, therefore providing a seamless user experience.

GLOBAL MEETINGS

Throughout lockdown employees from across the globe have had to use Zoom/Teams or similar tools to hold meetings with their colleagues. The problem with this is the people appear in a different order on the screen for each user, so doing round robins can become challenging.

BETTER EMPLOYEEAND WORKPLACEEXPERIENCE

Rather thanjumpstraight to thesolution,we looked at the type of benefits people might want. We alsoinvolved user experience researchers and service designers from the start and tried to solve things by figuring out what the problems were first.In fact, the amount of planning and research that went into this project is unheard of for a project like this.

Beforewe launched our Smart Building Accelerator into the market, wealso tested it andcreated a virtual replica of our London office,andso we heardfirst-hand from our employees the difference it’s making to them. For example, they’ve said that:

Being in the VR environment is less stressful than being on webcam/screen.

They’ve felt relief at being able to return to the office when they want to as theycouldview the IoT data and come into the office when occupancy is low.
They can truly feel a sense of physically being in the same working environment, giving themthe sense of togethernesswhich was lacking on tools like Zoom/Teams.

BUSINESS IMPACT

Whilst, in theory, the technology could be utilised by any size company, the accelerator works by optimising the use of office space, so the biggest impacts tend to come from the larger enterprises,with large office spaces and lots of employees.Our clients have seen several business impacts as a direct result of the Smart Building Accelerator, including an average:

Our supporting document includes:

Appendix 1: Images of thefeaturesandfunctionsof the Smart Building Accelerator described in section 4.
Appendix 2: Client testimonials.

We have also included a link to a video of the XR environment.