Throughout industries, facility and office leaders are actively embracing AI-backed options. 68% of buildings and services managers plan to implement AI in customer administration inside the subsequent 12 months, and 67% {of professional} and monetary companies organizations have already employed a digital office chief. But most are nonetheless caught within the early phases, “primarily deploying it for chatbots, dashboards, and diagnostics,” in response to the 2025 Office Index report.
What’s holding these firms again isn’t an absence of curiosity. It’s the problem of integration. “As an alternative of driving effectivity, fragmented tech stacks create decision-making bottlenecks, making it tougher to streamline workflows, analyze information successfully, and adapt to evolving enterprise wants,” explains Eptura Chief Govt Officer Brandon Holden within the report.
By transferring to a unified answer, organizations can totally leverage cross-platform information analytics and embedded AI, whereas additionally addressing the opposite misplaced alternatives that come from making an attempt to handle a number of single-point techniques.
What are the results of getting so many single-point techniques?
In response to the report, 50% of companies are utilizing a median of 17 separate applied sciences to deal with office operations. As a result of these techniques are silos, firms should spend important assets making an attempt to leverage their information. In truth, about 37% of organizations make use of 11 or extra full-time workers to collect, analyze, and report on worktech information.
Even with all these assets invested, organizations nonetheless wrestle to create the info units they should successfully implement AI. When requested, “What challenges do you face implementing AI throughout your group?”, two of the three high solutions have been “Inadequate cross-platform integration” and “Inconsistent information for AI to ship significant values.”
The issue of too many platforms extends past implementing AI, although, affecting varied departments and enterprise processes by means of extra alternative prices.
As a basic idea, alternative price is when an organization allocates assets to 1 challenge and provides up advantages that might have been gained elsewhere. Each hour a corporation spends on one job is an hour misplaced to a different. If a supervisor focuses closely on one challenge, they could neglect strategic planning, group improvement, or pressing points elsewhere.
Particularly associated to the report, greater than a 3rd of firms mentioned they’ve 11 or extra full-time workers devoted to making an attempt to extract worth from worktech information. If the techniques have been unified and the processes automated, those self same 11 staff might be delivering extra strategic worth to the group.
Each single-point system requires a separate choice course of
The choice course of for any software program answer is a multi-step cross-departmental challenge that requires the time and a spotlight of key stakeholders from throughout the group.
The choice group identifies the precise wants and necessities of the enterprise, which regularly includes in depth stakeholder consultations and a radical evaluation of present techniques. As soon as the necessities are clear, the group researches and evaluates varied options in the marketplace, contemplating components similar to performance, compatibility with present techniques, and safety features. They then conduct detailed technical assessments, together with pilot checks and demonstrations, to make sure the answer meets the corporate’s requirements. Lastly, they have to work carefully with the chosen supplier to make sure a clean implementation, which incorporates coaching periods, system integration, and ongoing help.
For the authorized division, the choice course of includes an in depth evaluate of all contractual and compliance points. They could begin by reviewing the phrases of service and end-user license agreements to make sure that the answer complies with all related legal guidelines and laws, together with information privateness legal guidelines, industry-specific laws, and any inside compliance insurance policies. The authorized group should additionally negotiate the phrases of the contract, specializing in areas similar to information possession, legal responsibility, and repair degree agreements. The authorized division should additionally coordinate with the IT group to make sure that all authorized necessities are met in the course of the implementation section, they usually should monitor the continued relationship with the supplier to make sure continued compliance and adherence to the agreed phrases.
Each time you add a brand new single-point system, the group repeats all the choice course of, diverting time and a spotlight from different initiatives.
Each single-point system comes with its personal set of idiosyncrasies
Every answer comes with its personal help system, requiring IT groups to navigate totally different assist desks and help channels, which might result in delays in concern decision and a better threat of system downtime. Every supplier has its personal replace schedules, which might create a cycle of upkeep and compatibility checks. This not solely will increase operational prices but additionally diverts helpful IT assets away from strategic initiatives.
The authorized group should monitor compliance throughout all of the totally different techniques, whereas the finance group offers with the extra complexity of monitoring invoices and funds for a lot of totally different suppliers. Even at bigger organizations the place many of those processes are automated, departments have to take a position time and expertise into establishing workflows each time the corporate provides a brand new system to its present office tech stack.
For the staff who use the totally different techniques as a part of their on a regular basis workflows, each new system means extra coaching. As a result of they’re leaping between so many alternative techniques, there are various alternatives to develop into confused or pissed off with system-specific necessities or idiosyncrasies.
Unlocking the worth chain begins with a single key
By implementing a unified answer with key worktech options like customer administration, desk reserving, and asset administration, organizations can considerably enhance operational effectivity. With real-time insights, organizations can optimize useful resource allocation, area planning, and upkeep schedules, resulting in extra environment friendly and cost-effective operations. In an episode of the Office Innovator podcast, Dean Stanberry, previous chair of the IFMA World Board, explains the advantages of AI-backed workflows. “When AI has entry to good high quality information it will possibly begin supplying you with indications to say when a chunk of kit is reaching finish of life … it will possibly truly provide you with that crossover level the place the price of sustaining it’s now greater than the price of changing it. AI can do in milliseconds what would take people probably hours of study,” he says.
Implementing a unified answer is about greater than what you achieve. It’s additionally about what you may keep away from. Transferring to a unified answer helps organizations keep away from the frequent alternative prices of making an attempt to handle a number of single-point techniques, decreasing the necessity for software program choice groups and extra administrative work from the IT, authorized, and finance departments.
By Jonathan Davis
Jonathan writes about asset administration, upkeep software program, and SaaS options in his function as a digital content material creator at Eptura. He covers traits throughout industries, together with fleet, manufacturing, healthcare, and hospitality, with a give attention to delivering thought management with actionable insights. Earlier in his profession, he wrote textbooks, edited NPC dialogue for video video games, and taught English as a overseas language. He holds a grasp’s diploma in journalism.
