Teem: Making The Workplace an Equal Partner in Work

Zach Holmquist, Chief of Workplace Experience

Teem is a SaaS platform that empowers organizations to blend physical and digital realms to create the modern workplace. Established in 2013, the platform provides activity-driven insights, meeting tools, and other touchpoints—like conference room displays, an Outlook plugin, and a mobile app to manage workplaces—to streamline an organization’s collaboration behavior. In an interview with CIO Applications, Zach Holmquist, Chief of Workplace Experience, shares insights on how Teem helps organizations and employees to work better together.

Our vision for the future of the workplace is one where the physical and digital systems work together seamlessly to create a singular workplace experience regardless of how, when, and where an employee chooses to work.

Having aimed at providing a productive digital and physical workplace for its customers, what makes Teem unique in its workplace management system?

We work with a company’s physical spaces (conference rooms, huddle spaces, open areas, etc.) to understand the ways they collaborate and with whom they collaborate. We analyze people, places, and technology with data coming into the different systems and touchpoints and work to surface meaningful insights to the appropriate people about how they collaborate. We work to bridge both the digital and physical workplace to provide meaningful information from the data through our employee-focused tools, workplace insights, and data analytics.

In pursuit of creating a frictionless working environment, what are the core challenges Teem faces?

One of the most significant challenges is running into old systems and cultures unwilling to adapt to change.

It is tricky to convey to organizations the importance of needing to adapt to new technologies and working environments.

Shed some light on your product offerings.

The Teem Workplace Experience Platform integrates suites of dynamic employee tools with augmentative office technologies to foster a happier, more effective environment. By surfacing data on space and technology utilization, organizations validate and optimize workplace strategies with confidence and craft a productive experience for employees and guests alike.

On the critical areas Teem focuses through its solutions and how does it benefit clients?

When it comes to creating a frictionless experience and engaging different resources, Teem becomes an obvious solution. Particularly in the three areas of resource scheduling, room utilization, and resourcing. These key areas have made our clients happier as they can find what they need and have an innovative workplace experience.

Could you walk us through the process of your product integration with a client’s pre-existing software?

We work hard to make our integrations system both powerful and simple. By focusing on nailing some core integrations to start, we’ve created a reliable foundation for our constantly growing ecosystem of integrations. In most instances it takes us just few minutes to set up a client with Teem. Our platform works with calendar systems like Microsoft Exchange and GSuite (among others), and we provide a variety of apps and interfaces to fit your specific workplace needs. We work hard to integrate into the existing building systems. For example, if a customer has existing environmental sensors (Ex. Motion or IR), we can integrate our platform with those and surface more detailed data on how their workplace is actually being used.

Your platform is user-friendly and is an excellent place for workplace experience management. Tell us about the platform's security?

Our security team focuses relentlessly on platform and data security. We have some pretty high-profile clients who are fans of our product, and we work with their security teams too. We do this to ensure that data is housed the right way and the product is reliable.

How does the future look in terms of its employee focused meeting tools?

Teem was born out of necessity. The facilities and IT software offering, for lack of a better word, sucked. In the beginning, that was our purpose: to resolve for office suckage. Not too long ago, the physical office was a draw for employees—it had a fax machine, printers, an internet connection, etc. Now, our homes are often far more sophisticated than most workplaces as a result of the consumerization of technology. Going forward, companies are going to have to figure out how to integrate more seamlessly into an employees everyday life—regardless of when, where and how they choose to work. Today, we’re dedicated to creating more utility and real ROI, rather than a few pretty conference room screens.