VergeSense helps companies unlock the potential of their spaces to foster connection, inspiration, and sustainability. Pulse 2.0 interviewed VergeSense VP of Product Kanav Dhir to learn more about the company.
VergeSense helps companies unlock the potential of their spaces to foster connection, inspiration, and sustainability. Pulse 2.0 interviewed VergeSense VP of Product Kanav Dhir to learn more about the company.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Tell the readers a brief background on VergeSense and what solutions you offer.
VergeSense (Kanav): VergeSense’s Occupancy Intelligence Platform for enterprises is designed to guide workplace decisions that optimize spaces, reduce costs, ensure sustainability, and improve the employee experience.
Our platform provides customers with accurate occupancy insights, including data and analytics on first and third-party occupancy data, and AI-powered recommendations, to make decisions around the flexible workspaces of the future. Over 200 enterprise customers like Cisco, Autodesk, and BP, across 50 countries, use VergeSense to evaluate their portfolios, increase space availability, improve space design, conduct neighborhood planning, and automate office operations.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): You recently launched Workplace Assistant, what need does it solve in the marketplace? Are there other similar technologies available?
VergeSense (Kanav): Yes, we introduced Workplace Assistant in May of 2024. It is designed to transform how real estate and workplace leaders manage and optimize their spaces. Workplace Assistant is powered by generative AI and has enterprise-grade security and privacy. Users can receive analysis and recommendations tailored to their specific needs within minutes—a process that traditionally took weeks or months. Workplace Assistant is the occupancy intelligence industry’s first AI-powered assistant and combines the capabilities of a real estate strategist, workplace experience, and occupancy analyst, allowing organizations to capitalize on optimization opportunities quickly.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Why is occupancy data so important?
VergeSense (Kanav): In a world where workspace occupancy is increasingly dynamic, occupancy intelligence is how real estate, workplace and facilities teams gain a true understanding of how and when spaces are actually used to optimize their spaces and support modern ways of working.
As companies evolve their hybrid and flexible workplace policies, occupancy has become inconsistent and unpredictable. As a result, optimizing for real estate costs and the employee experience has never been more challenging. With hybrid work here to stay, CFOs requiring ROI on every dollar spent, and employees expecting a commute-worthy office experience, today’s work environments require a new approach—one that helps organizations gain an understanding of what’s actually happening in spaces so they can optimize with confidence.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Since Workplace Assistant utilizes generative AI, how does it address security and privacy concerns?
VergeSense (Kanav): Workplace Assistant prioritizes security and privacy through multiple layers of protection. Data is anonymized at the source to prevent the identification of individuals.
In addition, Workplace Assistant is architected in a way where it has no access to any data in the VergeSense platform. Each session only has access to the data the user opts in for analysis, and provides answers based on the vast amounts of knowledge and context upon which it was trained. By utilizing the OpenAI API and the OpenAI Enterprise Privacy policy, we ensure users maintain ownership and control over their data.
Both VergeSense and OpenAI meet SOC2 compliance standards and employ robust data encryption methods both at rest and in transit. VergeSense also has ISO27001 certification, performs annual penetration testing and is trusted by numerous global enterprises.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What type of benefits and insights can customers expect from Workplace Assistant?
VergeSense (Kanav): Our customers can expect personalized recommendations based on their unique space utilization trends, helping them make decisions that enhance workplace efficiency, optimize costs, and improve their employee experience. Workplace Assistant provides actionable insights into how spaces are used and could be utilized, helping businesses make informed decisions about space allocation, design and resource management.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Do customers need training or is there a learning curve to utilize Workplace Assistant effectively?
VergeSense (Kanav): No, Workplace Assistant is designed with user-friendliness in mind. It features an intuitive, natural-language interface that minimizes the need for extensive training. Most users can start using the platform effectively with minimal guidance, although training materials and support are available to ensure a smooth onboarding process.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): How does a Workplace Assistant integrate with a facilities management team?
VergeSense (Kanav): Workplace Assistant integrates seamlessly with facilities management teams by providing them with real-time, actionable insights into space utilization and occupancy trends. This data helps facilities managers optimize space usage, plan maintenance schedules and allocate resources more effectively.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Is there a customer using Workplace Assistant that you can tell us about?
VergeSense (Kanav): As this is a newly released solution, we have not yet released any case studies for Workplace Assistant, but those interested in hearing more about the user experience might want to take a look at this webinar that we held on June 12, which featured insights from a large pharmaceutical customer.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Is VergeSense working with any AI partners?
VergeSense (Kanav): Yes, Workplace Assistant leverages a custom-trained model from OpenAI, and we recently announced an integration with Microsoft Places.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): How does VergeSense see the future AI technologies playing into the occupancy intelligence market?
VergeSense (Kanav): We envision AI technologies playing a transformative role in the occupancy intelligence market. From our founding seven years ago, AI has been integrated across our product suite, with computer vision-powered sensors to now the AI-powered Workplace Assistant.
Accurate occupancy data is crucial to being able to make impactful workplace decisions. AI will be a central component in making real estate and workplace teams more efficient and productive in how they analyze this data to make better optimization decisions.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Are there any future plans for the company that we should watch for?
VergeSense (Kanav): In addition to integrating AI-generated insights throughout our platform, VergeSense has an exciting roadmap ahead focused on becoming the single pane of glass solution to support all of our customers’ workplace data analysis needs.
