One of the great­est con­cerns fac­ing employ­ees is return­ing to the office as COVID-19 remains active. Employ­ee safe­ty is at the fore­front of many orga­ni­za­tions’ minds as they eval­u­ate their oper­a­tions and fig­ure out the best way to return every­one to the workplace. 

SAP recent­ly released a Work­place Book­ing app for SAP Cloud for Real Estate, which helps cus­tomers safe­ly sched­ule their employ­ees’ return to the office. ASUG spoke with Peter Maier, pres­i­dent of indus­tries and cus­tomer advi­so­ry at SAP, about the new app and how it works. 

Jim: Can you give us a high-lev­el overview of the Work­space Book­ing app?

Peter: Since the onset of COVID-19, most of us have been forced to work from home. Now, many offices are reopen­ing in lim­it­ed capac­i­ty or will start doing so in the near future. This sit­u­a­tion is a chal­leng­ing one, because we must ensure the safe­ty of employ­ees return­ing to the office. To help com­pa­nies and insti­tu­tions nav­i­gate this unprece­dent­ed time, we’ve cre­at­ed the Work­space Book­ing app, which helps to bring employ­ees back to the office in a safe and con­trolled way. It works in two ways to sup­port every part of the business.

First, from a space man­age­ment and dis­tanc­ing per­spec­tive, facil­i­ties and office man­agers can define thresh­olds for space occu­pan­cy and com­mu­ni­cate guide­lines regard­ing phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing. Based on the use of office spaces, they can make data-dri­ven deci­sions for opti­miz­ing ser­vices like clean­ing, can­teen oper­a­tion or food prepa­ra­tion, and oth­ers. Sec­ond, employ­ees can book a work­space up front in one of their pre­ferred loca­tions. This helps employ­ees adhere to pos­si­ble capac­i­ty restric­tions and com­ply with statu­to­ry regulations.

Jim: How does the app help orga­ni­za­tions put a plan together? 

Peter: We found out that many of our cus­tomers have either already start­ed or are about to begin reopen­ing their facil­i­ties in a con­trolled man­ner. Of course, this depends on region­al sit­u­a­tions. Phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing and capac­i­ty lim­its can be a nec­es­sary part of this con­trolled reopen­ing phase. The Work­space Book­ing app allows facil­i­ties and office man­agers to define thresh­olds for space occu­pan­cy, which means only a max­i­mum pre­de­fined num­ber or per­cent­age of employ­ees will be able to work at the office at any giv­en time. This pre­cau­tion helps com­pa­nies keep employ­ees safe while com­ply­ing with phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing guidelines.

Jim: Was this devel­oped as a result of COVID-19? 

Peter: When COVID-19 hit the world at the begin­ning of the year, SAP medi­at­ed a dia­logue with cus­tomers and part­ners on how to help. Among many ideas, the Work­space Book­ing app was one ini­tia­tive we pur­sued because of a sub­stan­tial need: HR col­leagues asked whether we could sup­port a safe office reopen­ing with the help of tech­nol­o­gy. One of our teams is respon­si­ble for the devel­op­ment of SAP Cloud for Real Estate, a finan­cial appli­ca­tion for the man­age­ment of cor­po­rate real estate port­fo­lios. From a tech­nol­o­gy per­spec­tive, we already had exten­sive expe­ri­ence in man­ag­ing spaces through soft­ware. As we had both the tech­nol­o­gy and the real estate exper­tise in place, we were able to cre­ate a tem­po­rary fea­ture based on the bespoke SAP Cloud for Real Estate solu­tion — and that’s how the Work­space Book­ing app was born.

Jim: In the U.S., I think it’s like­ly that a lot of the man­dat­ed poli­cies for return­ing to the work­place are going to vary from state to state (just like the lock­down and phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing poli­cies). How will this solu­tion account for all those dif­fer­ent poli­cies not only here, but also globally?

Peter: The Work­space Book­ing app is ful­ly flex­i­ble so that cru­cial set­tings like defin­ing a capac­i­ty thresh­old can be adjust­ed for indi­vid­ual sites, build­ings, and even dif­fer­ent floors with­in a build­ing. Once employ­ees book a space through the app, they receive an email con­fir­ma­tion. The con­tent in these con­fir­ma­tion noti­fi­ca­tions is ful­ly cus­tomiz­able. You can include spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion about each loca­tion and adapt to state-spe­cif­ic poli­cies. Addi­tion­al­ly, the app has an emer­gency can­cel­la­tion fea­ture that allows facil­i­ties and office man­agers to imme­di­ate­ly can­cel all book­ings at a giv­en loca­tion, should new infec­tions be report­ed. There’s a lot of poten­tial and func­tion­al­i­ty with­in the app for these man­agers to cus­tomize details accord­ing to the indi­vid­ual needs of each location.

Jim: What is your favorite aspect of this solu­tion? What excites you the most about it? 

Peter: The Work­space Book­ing app is the result of a close col­lab­o­ra­tion between experts and stake­hold­ers from the Glob­al Pan­dem­ic Task Force, SAP IT, SAP Glob­al Real Estate, and HR. These teams have care­ful­ly com­bined all the nec­es­sary require­ments to keep employ­ees safe and busi­ness­es run­ning — and they did all this while work­ing remote­ly themselves.

From a tech­no­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, what excites me is that Work­space Book­ing is a stand-alone app that works with­out any pre­con­di­tions. This means that users do not need to run an SAP real estate man­age­ment solu­tion to use the app. As Work­space Book­ing is a tem­po­rary fea­ture of SAP Cloud for Real Estate, users addi­tion­al­ly have access to the full capa­bil­i­ties of SAP Cloud for Real Estate when they sub­scribe to the app. 

The Work­space Book­ing sub­scrip­tion allows users to man­age a con­trolled office reopen­ing, plus man­age a build­ing port­fo­lio, con­tracts, and run ana­lyt­ics through SAP Cloud for Real Estate. 

The app can be imple­ment­ed very quick­ly, which delights real estate and facil­i­ties man­agers. Man­agers have report­ed that only a few hours are need­ed to set up the app, as well as con­sid­er­able time and effort sav­ings com­pared to using Excel spreadsheets.

Jim: How does the Work­space Book­ing app fit in with SAP’s larg­er efforts to help cus­tomers through the pandemic? 

Peter: One of SAP’s ear­ly respons­es to the pan­dem­ic was the devel­op­ment of the Coro­na Warn App, togeth­er with Deutsche Telekom, to trace COVID-19 infec­tion chains in Ger­many. This app helps keep indi­vid­u­als safe as they resume their every­day lives. 

This think­ing was trans­lat­ed into a busi­ness con­text for the cre­ation of the Work­space Book­ing app, because it helps cus­tomers man­age the com­plex­i­ty of return­ing to the work­place in a safe and con­trolled manner.

The glob­al pan­dem­ic has trans­formed the way orga­ni­za­tions inter­act and do busi­ness togeth­er. With much of the world now work­ing from home, we are find­ing that cus­tomers not only want to work remote­ly, but they also want to make pur­chas­es online on B2B mar­ket­places like the SAP Store and the SAP App Cen­ter mar­ket­place for ecosys­tem inno­va­tions. The abil­i­ty for cus­tomers to effi­cient­ly pur­chase solu­tions dig­i­tal­ly is more impor­tant than ever, and online B2B mar­ket­places are the key to keep­ing busi­ness­es agile in the cur­rent land­scape. The Work­space Book­ing app is cur­rent­ly avail­able for pur­chase on the SAP Store, where it comes with a dis­count­ed sub­scrip­tion option of 50% off. To get start­ed, cus­tomers only need a license for pro­fes­sion­al users like work­space admin­is­tra­tors, who will main­tain the data. Employ­ees can book spaces and use the app for free.

As part of SAP’s ​“Back to Best” cam­paign, the Work­space Book­ing app is a great addi­tion to oth­er key solu­tions that are avail­able on the SAP Store, such as SAP Lit­mos Train­ing for e‑learning, and SAP Envi­ron­ment, Health, and Safe­ty Management.

Jim: As SAP cit­ed in the press release for this solu­tion, two-thirds of the Amer­i­can work­force is uncom­fort­able with return­ing to work right now. How do you think this app will help alle­vi­ate some of the workforce’s anxieties? 

Peter: Facil­i­ties and office man­agers can define thresh­olds for space occu­pan­cy at a very gran­u­lar lev­el in order to imple­ment phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing reg­u­la­tions with the help of the Work­space Book­ing app. Set­ting occu­pan­cy lim­i­ta­tions helps us adhere to dis­tanc­ing guide­lines and reduce the risk of an infec­tion. Fur­ther­more, employ­ees can see the num­ber of col­leagues who have booked a space for a par­tic­u­lar date and loca­tion. Based on the num­ber of seats booked, they can decide whether they are com­fort­able return­ing to the office or not. On top of that, employ­ees can see if a space is already ful­ly booked, sav­ing them an unnec­es­sary com­mute. Using the app con­tributes to a safer return to the office.

Jim: In one of the ASUG Pulse Checks we’ve been con­duct­ing since the pan­dem­ic began, we found that more than one-third of com­pa­nies indi­cat­ed that they are oper­at­ing below nor­mal lev­els. How will this solu­tion help com­pa­nies return to opti­mal lev­els and meet their KPIs? 

Peter: One of the great­est chal­lenges of the pan­dem­ic for many employ­ees was the sud­den shift to a work­ing-from-home mod­el. Com­pa­nies had to adjust their infra­struc­ture oper­at­ing mod­els to facil­i­tate flex­i­ble work­ing mod­els and enable employ­ees to work in any loca­tion — from the kitchen table in a bustling city to the patio of a coun­try farm­house. From that per­spec­tive, the dig­i­tal­iza­tion of the work­place has been accel­er­at­ed. But work­ing from home is not a per­ma­nent solu­tion for many roles and indus­tries. That is why we need a solu­tion like the Work­space Book­ing app to help bring employ­ees in mis­sion-crit­i­cal roles and those who need the infra­struc­ture of their office work­space to ease back into a pro­duc­tive and safe office environment.

Jim: Broad­ly speak­ing, why do you think that it is impor­tant for the work­force to return to the office? 

Peter: For many orga­ni­za­tions, there is no fea­si­ble way to return to the pre-pan­dem­ic sta­tus quo with open-office lay­outs, high space uti­liza­tion, and high-traf­fic gath­er­ing spaces in the fore­see­able future. But the office is not just a place for indi­vid­u­als to focus on work. Office work­spaces also bring peo­ple togeth­er and con­nect them in unique ways that can spark inno­va­tion and new ideas and, in turn, pos­i­tive­ly impact pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The pan­dem­ic may have changed the way we view office spaces, but rather than elim­i­nat­ing them alto­geth­er, we need to evolve the dis­cus­sion on how to invest and cre­ate spaces that allow for flex­i­bil­i­ty and fos­ter inno­v­a­tive think­ing and collaboration.

Jim: Have any com­pa­nies already start­ed using the Work­space Book­ing app? 

Peter: So far, the app has been rolled out in eight coun­tries and sees hun­dreds of book­ings every day — except on weekends. 

Read how the Taron­ga Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety designed a staff expe­ri­ence app con­nect­ed to SAP S/4HANA Cloud.