Reading the Room: Uncovering the Data Behind WWT's Office Spaces

World Wide Technology (WWT) operates more than 60 office buildings worldwide, including our global headquarters (GHQ), a multistory campus in St. Louis, Missouri. Like most enterprises with a large footprint, our facilities team had long relied on badge access data for occupancy metrics and real estate planning. This data showed who entered a building but not where they went, how long they stayed or when they left. 

Our Facilities leaders could not say which floors were busiest, whether a floor plan matched how people worked or whether an office was ready for more employees.

-Steve Krekeler, WWT director of corporate properties and facilities

The facilities team needed a way to see inside our buildings and continue to elevate the office experience without introducing new hardware to manage. As Cisco's largest and most strategic global partner, we knew Cisco Spaces was the right solution for our needs. 

Solution

Cisco Spaces is a cloud-based location services and smart building platform that runs on wireless and collaboration hardware an organization typically already owns. We connected it to existing Cisco Catalyst access points and Cisco Webex video devices, turning everyday equipment into a live source of building intelligence. Today, the platform gives us:

• Real-time and historical occupancy, including workday length, visit frequency and dwell time by room, floor or building.
• Indoor wayfinding. Digital kiosks near GHQ's elevators display turn-by-turn directions for employees and visitors. Visitors can get turn-by-turn directions on their phones by scanning a QR code at the kiosk; there's no app to download.
• Asset tracking. Bluetooth low-energy tags let staff locate shared equipment instead of searching room to room.
• Smart building integration. Cisco Spaces connects to GHQ's building automation system, so a room's temperature adjusts when occupied and resets after everyone leaves. The same sensors also report humidity, air quality and noise, and can recognize returning devices to show how often guests come back.
• Seamless guest Wi-Fi. Using our existing access points, Cisco Spaces speeds up guest network onboarding by allowing visitors to connect automatically instead of re-entering credentials every time they're in the building.

Watch how Cisco Spaces provides employees and visitors with turn-by-turn directions to their destination without downloading an app.

How we did it

Here's how we implemented Cisco Spaces at our own offices:

We aligned three teams around one blueprint.

WWT's wireless team owned the access point layer, the collaboration team owned the Webex endpoints in each meeting room, and facilities owned the occupancy data and insights. Getting those three functions aligned made the work possible.

We turned existing hardware into a sensor network. 

We designed GHQ's 2018 Wi-Fi for location services from the start, with enough access points in place to support the collection of accurate location data. The only refresh required was a one-for-one swap of 260 Wi-Fi 7-capable access points across seven floors.

The Webex devices already mounted in meeting rooms for collaboration became occupancy and environmental sensors. Conference room analytics come directly from those endpoints; everything else comes from wireless client association.

-Tim Cappel, technical solutions architect on WWT's collaboration team

We bridged the digital layer and the physical building.

WWT doesn't own or manage the infrastructure behind its building systems. Connecting Cisco Spaces to heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and other controls meant working with outside contractors and Cisco engineering to configure firewall rules and access lists. 

We mapped every room. 

Facilities mapped floor plans into 3D layouts, naming every conference room to match its Webex device. Security reviewed every floor plan and wayfinding path before it went live, deciding what shouldn't be shown, and leaving points of interest, like an executive's office, off the map entirely.

By the numbers

• 1,500+ Cisco access points and 442 Webex devices onboarded into Cisco Spaces across roughly 62 buildings
• 4 buildings use Cisco Spaces' location services
• At GHQ: 78 conference rooms and 140 meeting room endpoints across seven floors provide occupancy and environmental data.

Outcomes and benefits

• Real estate decisions backed by data. Our facilities team now has the information they need to make data-driven recommendations on real estate investments. For example, occupancy data showed our Chicago office was already heavily used before it absorbed employees from our acquisition of Softchoice, supporting the case for expansion.
• Space planning that matches how people work. Cisco Spaces data showed that large conference rooms are often used by only one or two people. Additionally, at GHQ, only 37% of room time was reserved on a calendar; sensors picked up the other 63% of walk-in and ad-hoc use that booking data alone never showed. We're also seeing that room use varies sharply by day of the week. All these insights help our team rethink and reimagine spaces.
• A blueprint for what's next. WWT is applying the same implementation approach we did at GHQ and the findings we've uncovered so far as we build out our new Toronto office.

Areas of expertise

Deploying Cisco Spaces in our own offices drew on the expertise we bring to clients pursuing smart building strategies, including:

• Wireless network design
• Cisco Webex collaboration integration
• Cisco Spaces deployment and configuration
• Internet of Things (IoT) and smart building integration
• Indoor wayfinding and asset tracking

How can we help you?

Most facilities teams already own the pieces that Cisco Spaces requires. Wireless access points and video endpoints are installed on the ceiling and the walls. What's usually missing is the connective layer, and the cross-team experience to make network, collaboration and facilities work as one system. WWT can help you:

• See real-time occupancy across every floor and room, without a separate sensor network.
• Build the data case for real estate decisions, from expanding an office to redesigning underused space.
• Give employees and visitors turn-by-turn wayfinding on their own phone.
• Connect occupancy data to HVAC and other building systems for a smarter response.