IBM brings AI to real estate tool, looks to improve workplace management
IBM has introduced artificial intelligence (AI) into its TRIRIGA solution to enable intelligent real estate and facility management.
TRIRIGA is an Integrated Workplace Management System. It includes TRIRIGA Building Insights, and combines occupancy data from sources, such as WIFI and/or IoT sensors, with newly embedded AI.
This provides customers operating large real estate portfolios with insights to help them make data-driven decisions about the way they manage their workspace, IBM states.
Greater visibility into space management can help organisations improve facility utilisation to reduce space wastage, which can potentially result in savings on real estate operating costs, according to IBM.
Real estate today represents an increasing expense for organisations, yet older, siloed systems can make it difficult for facility operators to understand space usage throughout their properties, IBM states.
According to a report from commercial real estate services firm JLL, 30 - 40% of commercial space is underutilised based on organisations surveyed.
With TRIRIGA, customers can have an enterprise-wide view of their valuable workspaces. Embedded AI can help identify occupant trends and patterns, down to a single floor, to better anticipate and manage employee occupancy needs, adjust office layouts and address relocation requests.
Building occupants will now have access to the new TRIRIGA Assistant, a smart, conversational AI tool which uses natural language processing to help users quickly and easily engage with the spaces around them.
TRIRIGA Assistant can help remove the hassle of coordinating with colleagues to schedule and reserve conference rooms, submit service requests such as lighting and catering, or locate a colleagues assigned workspace.
IBM general manager AI Applications Ph.D. Kareem Yusuf says, "Employees and real estate are key elements to organisational growth and development, driving companies to create cost-effective and engaging workplaces that help attract and retain top talent.
"The implementation of TRIRIGA with embedded AI provides corporations and facility managers with insights into how they can more effectively utilise space across their enterprise. This technology can help companies address the growing expectations of today's modern workforce and achieve better business results.
The IBM Global Real Estate (GRE) team is tasked with overseeing approximately 1,300 office locations that cover 78 million square feet, disbursed across 110 countries.
With such a large, global footprint, the GRE team is beginning to integrate new AI capabilities from TRIRIGA to help overcome the challenge of creating a portfolio that addresses the needs of employees while helping to control costs and deliver the best value to the business, the company states.
In the past, each office location used its own applications to manage space that often resulted in manual and time-consuming workflow.
TRIRIGA enables the GRE team to create a single source for data that provides an instant view into its diverse portfolio that includes space for offices, labs, data and educational centers, and warehouses.
Consolidating space and lease information provides the GRE team with a holistic view of IBMs real estate portfolio data and prepares the way for AI-generated insights, IBM states.
Applying AI to understand how employees are actually using office space will help GRE improve overall utilisation by offering the right mix of space and amenities.
Global Real Estate Integrated Solutions director Miranne Flores says, "TRIRIGA's embedded AI will allow us to collect and analyse information quickly at a global level.
"With this information, we will be able to address one of our biggest challenges balancing our portfolio while creating an environment that is attractive to our employees, helps boost their productivity and improves our bottom line.
