Aquariums In New Orleans - How Software Can Help Solve The Office-Layout Puzzle

Source     - http://online.wsj.com/
By            - RACHEL FEINTZEIG
Category   - Aquariums In New Orleans
Posted By - Homewood Suites New Orleans

Aquariums In New Orleans

Crafting a dynamic office layout that reflects a company's culture and image (think gleaming mahogany conference tables for a law firm, ping-pong tables for a quirky startup) can encourage collaboration, productivity and creativity, and lead to improved morale and reduced turnover. Doing it in as small a footprint as possible can save a company big bucks on rent.

But crafting the perfect office is tough work. Every time you rearrange people, you have to rearrange all the "stuff that goes along with them," says Katherine Jones, a lead analyst with research and consulting firm Bersin by Deloitte. That includes everything from copy rooms to coffee machines. Throw in additional challenges, such as remote workers who need a desk only once a week, and deciding where to carve out communal space and cluster desks quickly becomes a complex puzzle.

Luckily, as office technology has evolved, so has the technology to help set up offices. Software from companies such as OfficeSpace Software Inc., Qube Global Software Ltd. and Fox RPM Corp. has made it a whole lot easier to design office layouts and coordinate employee moves.

ExactTarget, a digital marketing company owned by Salesforce.com Inc. CRM -0.64% and based in Indianapolis, used to use Excel spreadsheets and white boards to map out moves—a manual, labor-intensive process, according to Tami Koch, its director of corporate and global facilities. Ms. Koch sought a software solution that was "intuitive" and "sustainable"—something the average worker at the company could tap into. 

She turned to OfficeSpace software, a highly visual, Web-based program that gives people across the company a bird's-eye view into the workplace. Employees can scout out emergency equipment or see how many seats are in a conference room. Facilities staff can point maintenance workers to the exact wall that needs to be painted. And Ms. Koch can coordinate moves—like one that shuffled 159 people from one building to another—by dragging and dropping workers from their old desks to new ones. That action triggers messages to the employees who are being moved, as well as their managers, and sends the necessary information to the facilities team. Since the company is expanding, it runs a space-usage report weekly to determine when it's time to push into a new floor or building. 

The International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organization with employees scattered across more than 40 countries, uses OfficeSpace to help deploy staffers to locations where crises have erupted. You can pluck a worker from a spot in the New York office and move him or her over to a desk in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, with a click of the mouse, says Adrian Grad, the organization's director of facilities and operations. It's easy to track and classify vacancies, she adds, enabling her to determine which seats are free for use by workers who may be in town for just a few days and which can house a long-term occupant. 

By getting a better handle on the organization's vacancies, Ms. Grad was able to squeeze more work groups into existing space. 

"Because of that, we were able to grow within our footprint and not take another floor in this building," she says, saving the organization money. 

Ms. Grad says she can also easily group employees together who are working on a major project, testing out various scenarios with department heads and then settling on the one that works best. She considers worker habits and needs as she lays out the space: Many employees sit at long benches to encourage collaboration; others, like employees who meet with donors, need private offices.