Lex de Grijs, our sales director for western Europe, had the spotlight turned on him at the main stage of the ISE yesterday. The topic? Tools, trends & transformation of the modern workplace. What does he know about this? A lot. How does this relate to Joan? Well…
It’s actually what we are: a tool that follows the current trend of transformation in the workplace to foster a more efficient and productive environment. To help with that, Lex brought a practical example: the case of a major car manufacturer.
Now, the car industry is widely known for optimizing its manufacturing process to the tiniest little detail. It is in the nature of their business. They set out to have everything work like clockwork, and yet, they are losing a consistent amount of money due to workplace management.
A research by Knoll shows that a square foot of office space costs an average of $57.40 per year ($36 per square foot in lease costs, plus $21.40 per square foot in operating costs) in the US. At the moment, we are working closely with one of the Big Three US car manufacturers to optimize their workspace. This is, by all means, a company that has optimized every facet of their business and they have 71 thousand meeting rooms. Seventy-one thousand.
Data showed that this car manufacturer only fully uses and utilizes 50% of their offices and their meeting room occupancy is about 50% during working hours. Now some quick math.
Let’s say that an average meeting room size is 300 sq. ft. Consequently, they’re losing $611,310,000 a year. Over six hundred million dollars.
If our car manufacturer, who is known for their business diligence and perfectionism, is doing such a poor job at optimizing and managing their bookable working assets, it is only logical that the loss produced by smaller and less organized companies is proportionally much higher due to the same issue.
Consider this, even if that company was a thousand times smaller, they’d still be losing $611,310 per year.
Maybe time to consider optimizing your meeting rooms?
https://youtu.be/GGmP066ayFE?t=18677
(Don’t worry, the video will start immediately at Lex’s presentation.)