On April 3, practically 100 office leaders from throughout North America gathered at Convene Rockefeller Heart for a packed day of conversations, insights, and connections at Flex/25 New York. The occasion welcomed actual property, amenities, and expertise executives who have been keen to attach with friends, find out about trending worktech improvements, and study finest practices for navigating the altering work atmosphere.
Conversations at Flex/25 New York mirrored a broad cross-section of industries going through related office challenges. In a stay viewers ballot, most attendees recognized their organizations as monetary {and professional} companies (43%), adopted by expertise (23%), public sector, and industrial companies. Whereas their industries various, a shared focus emerged: the necessity for higher methods to streamline office operations.
Transferring AI from summary to actionable
Eptura CEO Brandon Holden’s keynote emphasised that with shifting employee demographics and organizations pressured to do extra with much less, companies are turning their focus to consolidating and integrating worktech methods. He framed Eptura’s imaginative and prescient as constructing an “working system for the office,” uniting folks, locations, and belongings by intelligence and automation. For enterprises, which means visibility into what’s taking place and the power to behave on it, bettering area utilization, worker expertise, and operational decision-making at scale.
Eptura’s Chief Market Officer Meg Swanson shared 4 finest practices on how organizations are realizing this imaginative and prescient.
- Insurance policies requiring in-office attendance 2-3 days per week ought to embody both a Friday or a Monday coupled with bodily check-in on the workplace to degree occupancy in the course of the working week.
- Implement workforce days to extend visibility to who’s within the workplace to nudge workforce members to attend and centralize seating to create power throughout the area.
- Create a seamless connection between in-office employees and facility administration repairs by integrating work order requests into cellular apps.
- Setting a cross-functional AI roadmap for the office to scale back on a regular basis friction for workers and office groups.
The thrill about AI isn’t nearly new tech — it’s concerning the potentialities it may unlock. Whether or not it’s robotically reserving workspace, coordinating workforce days, or managing constructing entry, AI can imply fewer guide steps for workforce members and extra adaptable workplaces that reply in actual time.
Reeves Davis, President of Expertise Options at JLL Applied sciences, challenged leaders to align their AI methods with enterprise worth, not novelty. He famous that we “so usually roll out tech like we’re amassing badges. However AI needs to be about creating actual enterprise worth, not checking bins.” He emphasised that AI will solely ship if the foundations — knowledge, construction, technique — are in place, reminding attendees that AI isn’t a shortcut. It’s an amplifier.
Fireplace chats illustrated how office leaders are efficiently implementing change
Flex/25 New York featured a collection of hearth chats with professionals from Synovus, Arup, and Linea Architects. These periods addressed transformation, together with what it takes to open a brand new HQ, standardize office expertise and expertise globally, or design for the way forward for the constructed atmosphere.
Lisa Ames, Regional Amenities Supervisor for Synovus, talked concerning the launch of the corporate’s new company headquarters in Columbus, Georgia. A southeastern regional financial institution that grew from group banking to handle over $60B in monetary belongings, Synovus just lately moved into an deliberately designed stay/work/play atmosphere with a deal with facilities to attract folks again to the workplace. The enterprise thinks of this area as a solution to reenergize groups, get them out of previous habits, and reconnect colleagues with each other. Ames emphasised that as the novelty wears off, facilities received’t essentially act as a long-lasting draw to the workplace, however connection will.
As a part of the teachings realized from the method, she emphasised that human change administration is simply as vital as technical enablement. She spoke candidly about how reintroducing workers to shared areas — lots of whom weren’t accustomed to scorching desking — required hands-on coaching and persistence.
Mark Simply, Head of Expertise Providers at Arup, spoke about their deal with unifying office expertise and operational expertise throughout 90 places of work and 20,000 workforce members by bringing distinctive areas collectively below a cohesive technique. Arup has transitioned to an agile atmosphere and moved 80% of its expertise to the cloud, which has helped in streamlining its numerous tech property.
Beforehand, every area operated independently, managing their very own expertise and office wants with restricted budgets, resulting in a disparate system panorama. This meant that when workers traveled between international places of work, they skilled totally different expertise to entry and guide areas, in addition to totally different workspace sorts and inconsistent layouts. Following a directive to extend in-office time, Arup discovered that as a member-owned group, groups are excited to come back collectively in individual however that inconsistent office experiences are presently a barrier. To handle this, Arup’s imaginative and prescient is to standardize globally, which begins with creating clear necessities and securing buy-in and settlement throughout the group.
Barbara Calamusa, proprietor of Linea Architects, suggested leaders in her fireplace chat to have a versatile mindset in the case of how areas are designed and used. “Youthful generations have totally different expectations,” she mentioned — an statement she’s been in a position to make after designing tens of millions of sq. toes of workplace area in New York since her agency’s inception in 1987.
The deal with how areas are designed, operated, and skilled got here to life in the course of the back-of-house tour of Convene Rockefeller Heart. Attendees had the possibility to go behind the scenes of a high-performing, hospitality-forward office venue, observing firsthand how versatile design, seamless expertise, and day-to-day operations align to assist a contemporary workforce. From customer stream to service logistics, the tour grounded lots of the day’s discussions in a tangible instance of what’s doable when expertise and infrastructure are deeply built-in.
A shift from tech stack overload to unified intelligence
Many attendees shared that they’re managing many office instruments without delay — usually 15 or extra. However when these instruments don’t discuss to one another, it’s exhausting to get a transparent image of operations or make choices for the long run, akin to actual property portfolio wants or capital investments on constructing belongings. That message echoed all through the day and was strengthened by findings in Eptura’s newly launched 2025 Office Index report, which revealed that over 50% of organizations are presently utilizing a median of 17 standalone worktech options.
At Flex/25 New York, the main focus wasn’t on including extra tech — it was on making higher connections between methods that exist already. Eptura’s audio system communicated the worth of integration not simply as an IT initiative, however as a technique to unlock smarter outcomes throughout the enterprise.
Attendees participated in an interactive exercise to discover what “unifying office operations” may imply throughout departments. Grouped into groups, attendees labored collectively to determine how finance, IT, amenities, and the C-suite may align round shared targets and what roadblocks they could face alongside the best way. The session sparked significant conversations about possession, accountability, and the cultural shifts required to interrupt free from departmental silos. For a lot of, it was an opportunity to reframe the concept of office operations as not simply infrastructure, however a key facilitator throughout the enterprise.
Virginia Senf, Director of AEC Information Technique at Autodesk, described the issue of knowledge silos, illustrating how most firms are sitting on mountains of knowledge, but it surely’s scattered, inconsistent, and underutilized.
“We’ve reached a tipping level the place the amount of knowledge isn’t the problem. It’s the fragmentation. We’d like structured, standardized knowledge to make AI work and to cease paying to transform the identical data in 20 totally different locations,” she highlighted.
For a lot of office groups, fixing for construction and readability is the primary actual step towards automation. Eptura and Autodesk’s strategic partnership helps a full constructing lifecycle administration course of the place vital knowledge is shared from architects, engineers, and contractors to facility and asset house owners and operators.
Virginia Miracle, Eptura’s Chief Buyer Officer, constructed on this by sharing how Eptura is enabling companies to get extra worth from their current expertise. By means of assist redesign, AI-enabled service, and higher buyer schooling, Eptura helps cut back friction and giving clients confidence of their instruments and their knowledge.
Matt Fox, VP of Product Administration, added that integration is about consumer expertise. He described how enterprise groups are shedding time to inefficient reserving, reactive upkeep, and poor service visibility. By means of unified office instruments, Eptura is enabling amenities and IT groups to go from chasing points to anticipating wants. That shift permits organizations to be extra aware of worker expectations and extra environment friendly with their sources.
Hybrid realities, shifting expectations, and a brand new perspective on sustainability
In accordance with knowledge from the most recent Office Index report, 34% of firms plan to extend the variety of in-office days in 2025. With that shift comes a brand new set of alternatives — significantly in area optimization, worker engagement, sustainability, and operational effectivity. A stay ballot at Flex/25 New York confirmed that over half of attendees (51%) recognized sustainability as considered one of their group’s high office outcomes, second solely to operational effectivity. This displays a significant shift: sustainability is shifting from being a compliance guidelines to a strategic enterprise driver, particularly as leaders look to make hybrid work useful and future-ready.
Tony Gelber, Director of Administrative Sustainability and Power Administration at Pratt Institute, mentioned sustainability and capital spending, displaying how emissions targets, New York Metropolis’s power and carbon legal guidelines, and good constructing operations can coexist throughout a time the place such investments are exhausting to justify. He famous that “there’s a variety of alternative to make use of software program to handle these targets higher and extra effectively.”
Fred Kraus, Eptura’s VP of Product Administration for asset administration, identified that the power to function extra sustainably begins with realizing how and the place your belongings are performing or underperforming. He shared that organizations utilizing predictive upkeep and mobile-first technician instruments will not be solely extending the lifespan of vital infrastructure but in addition saving hours of labor every week. For patrons, this implies shifting from reactive firefighting to strategic foresight — slicing prices whereas additionally assembly carbon targets and uptime expectations.
Different discussions centered round levelling out mid-week attendance peaks, giving workers extra company over their office expertise, and utilizing AI and analytics to adapt workplace areas in actual time. Many expressed that they’re now not debating whether or not hybrid is right here to remain — they’re centered on methods to make it higher.
By Gabi Bellairs-Lombard
Gabi is a London-based author with 8 years of expertise in copywriting and technique throughout numerous verticals. She has been immersed in tech for 2 years, beforehand writing for a fintech firm. Her specialities lie in long- and short-form writing, search engine marketing writing and technique, and market analysis. In her present function at Eptura, she covers the most recent worktech and office expertise traits.
