Case Studies

may – june 2016 76 gbdmagazine.com gb&d FE ATURES john vivadelli ceo & foun der, agilquest AgilQuest's Quantum Leap: The I ntern et of Things an d the Sharing Economy "It's like Airbnb for office space, but it's more than that. Who would have thought that a company could have legitimized hitchhiking? It's called Uber. Who would think that they would share their home with somebody else and charge them a fee to stay there? Three years ago you would say you're absolutely mad. But now it's not unreasonable to think that a company with excess office space would share it with workers from outside the company for a fee." FE ATURES AGILQUES T Of course CBP's employees didn't just self-organize themselves into the new space sharing system. That part was left to AgilQuest, a Richmond, Virginia-based company that provides technology and professional services that support mobile workforce development and eliminate wast- ed office space. AgilQuest is well known among Fortune 500 companies throughout the world, as well as its many government clients, for OnBoard, its cloud-based workspace reser- vation software. Employees can reserve the space they need from their desktop tablet or mobile phone, as well as keep track of their colleagues' schedule of meetings and whereabouts. The software also integrates with common workplace needs, such as catering, along with building automation systems that manage electricity, lighting, and HVAC usage. "AgilQuest provided us with a very proven solution for facilitating that whole idea of sharing space. Their online reservation platform makes it easy," Beninghove says. CBP also made use of AgilQuest's Com- mander BI software, which collects data about workspace utilization from the OnBoard system and identifies trends in workspace utilization so that managers can make informed decisions about future proj- ects and glean insight into how different workspace configurations affect employee behavior. CBP is using that feedback to assess the success of their two pilot proj- ects and develop a suite of best practices for implementation across the real estate portfolio. "We are already working on a bunch of other CBP spaces to help build them out in a more mobile configuration," Beninghove says. "[Commander BI] allows us to pull metrics and statistics that show that our methods worked, that we designed and programmed the correct number of workstations per person. It's an opportuni- ty to validate a lot of the assumptions that we made." John Vivadelli, AgilQuest's CEO and founder, launched the company in 1994 af- ter reading study upon study showing that the average office worker in the US and Eu- rope uses their office only 50% of the time during working hours. Prior to AgilQuest, he worked for IBM, who he says "in the late 80's and early 90's had a little problem of the stock price dropping by 70% and huge BELOW AgilQuest's CEO and founder, who launched the company in 1994 after working on the team that developed the workspace management tool that helped bring IBM back from the brink of insolvency. may – june 2016 77 Office Hoteli ng: a method of office management in which workers dynamically schedule their use of workspaces such as desks, cubicles, and offices. It's an alternative approach to the more traditional method of permanently assigned seating. PHOTOS: COURTESY OF AGILQUEST On Board: AgilQuest's cloud-based workspace reservation software Software snapshot: Com man der BI: The company's software, which collects data about workspace utilization from the OnBoard system and identifies trends in workspace utilization so that managers can make informed decisions about future projects and glean insight into how different workspace configurations affect employee behavior agilquest.com: In essence, is a way for businesses to monetize the excess space that they have by renting it out to anyone who needs it whenever it is unoccupied AgilQuest's software and service solutions support today's mobile workforce and eliminate wasted office space. For more information visit www.agilquest.com.

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