5 ways Indoor Wayfinding can help your Startup be greener

by Startacus Admin

 

Joe Fernandes, founder and CEO of award-winning navigation platform, BuzzStreets, shares insights on how indoor wayfinding can help businesses be greener.

Everyone starting a new commercial project knows that it is a good idea to incorporate sustainability and environmental considerations into their business. Depending on the nature of the business, there a variety of things entrepreneurs can do to make their products and/or services as green as possible. The type of packaging used and where components are sourced will be first on most lists of ways to reduce a business’s environmental impact, but there are other less obvious ways, such as employing indoor wayfinding.

Google Maps is great when you need the fastest, easiest route to a destination (whether driving, walking or using public transport) but what about when you actually reach a shopping centre, airport, hospital or office building? GPS technology isn’t going to take you to the right shop, department or office door. But indoor digital wayfinding, developed by companies like BuzzStreets (using a system of BLE Beacons, Wi-Fi signals, and the Earth’s magnetic field to pinpoint a person’s location) can provide real-time directions, both spoken and visual, to allow you to navigate through a building, both horizontally and vertically.

Here are a few ways in which indoor wayfinding can help businesses be greener:

1. Reducing pollution in car parks

Looking for an available car parking space can take several minutes. It’s a fairly minor inconvenience that most of us are used to, though nonetheless frustrating. But when hundreds of people every day spend several minutes each looking for a space, that totals up to many hours spent unnecessarily driving around. Multiply that by the number of car parks in the world and this small inconvenience becomes a major source of car pollution.

Indoor wayfinding could be incredibly useful in this situation ? identifying empty spaces and directing drivers directly to available spaces. Less frustration for drivers and thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions saved every year!

2. Minimising missed appointments

Indoor wayfinding can also help reduce missed appointments. If someone heading for an appointment can easily find a parking space and locate the exact area of the office they need to go to, there would be far fewer missed or late appointments.

Not only would this help make things more efficient, but it would also minimise traffic (and therefore emissions) caused by unnecessary repeat visits. Missing a meeting or being late due to getting lost within a large office building is frustrating at best and, at worst, can lose businesses money. Ensuring that clients can find their way effectively to your office means more effective and efficient use of meeting time and far less stress.

3. Improving efficiency of utilities

Data on where users have been and identifying high and low traffic areas can also make things like lighting and heating more efficient. If nobody visits a part of an office building after 5pm, for example, then the lighting can be switched off and the heating reduced.

Currently, that information is difficult to reliably collect or analyse, leading to guess work, at best. With information gathered by an indoor wayfinding app, you have reliable information on which to base these decisions that could help save money and the environment.

4. Keeping track of equipment

As well as keeping track of where and when people move around, some indoor wayfinding systems (for example, BuzzStreets) can also track the location of equipment. With a clear idea of where the equipment is and how to get there, you can navigate straight to the item you need rather than hunting for it, thereby saving time, energy and unnecessary travel.

Keeping track of equipment also eliminates the need to buy duplicates of things you can’t find, reducing waste and saving money. You always know exactly what you have and where it is kept, making storage and transport far more efficient.

5. Using assets more efficiently

In addition to keeping track of inventory, wayfinding can also ensure that assets are where you need them when you need them the most. You may always need an asset in a specific office on a specific day. Having staff drive around trying to locate the item and moving it back and forth wastes time and energy as well as petrol.

Small efficiencies can quickly add up and are even more apparent when the assets need to move between cities. If a specialist device is regularly used in Manchester but never in Brighton over the Christmas period, for example, then it can be moved once to Manchester and left until the New Year. This can avoid both unnecessary transport and unnecessary duplication of assets through better planning.

The application of this approach is almost endless. Food from a quiet cafe could be move to a busier cafe at different times, for example, minimising food waste and maximising profits. Or office space that is rarely used during the summer could be sublet to other businesses, helping reduce overheads while maximising space usage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe Fernandes, founder and CEO of BuzzStreets, an award-winning navigation platform, that enables organisations (hospitals, shopping malls, airports, offices, stadiums, etc.) to offer their customers an indoor way-finder that allows them to navigate inside the building. The client arrives at the entrance or reception and then uses the bespoke app to navigate to the specific location (room, shop, check-in, office, or even seat) they need. BuzzStreets also supplies movement analytics that can help improve building efficiency and keep track of vital equipment.

 

Subscribe to our newsletter

If you would like to receive our startup themed newsletter, full of the latest startup opportunities, events, news, stories, tips and advice, then sign up here.

• #business
• #startup
• #green
• #environment
• #wayfinding

Published on: 3rd March 2022