Voice Assistants and Smart Home Controls have become a part of over 87 million U.S. adults lives. Some of the most popular features include temperature & lighting controls, quick information queries, and reminders. As voice and conversational AI technologies continue to expand, we see the convenience these controls provide inevitably migrating to the office environment as well.
Why Offices Aren’t Smart
When looking at voice-enabled Smart Home controls, many households have adopted them to control their thermostats, lighting, listening to music, and other activities where simple voice commands can be used effectively. When it comes to the office setting, we are not able to experience many of the smart home features we have come to love.
The reason for this discrepancy between the home and the office is in large part attributable to the complexity of the Building Operations Management and the back-end support systems that are used to manage Heating, Ventilation and AC (HVAC), and lighting controls. Compound that across multi-tenant buildings and you can see why office developers, engineers, and managers don’t want their tenants tinkering around with the building controls trying to create a “Smart Office” on an individual basis. This results in a lot of time spent managing these systems for Building and Office Operations.
Smart Home Controls Meet The Office
Enter Roby, a software solution that allows companies to implement smart office technologies while saving on operational cost and integrating with the tools employees already use. It works by simplifying & automating tasks, from HVAC & Lighting, to FAQs, room booking, and IT support across platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Alexa. Roby is creating the “Hands-Off” Smart Office environment of the future.
Founder Jay Hsueh’s prior experience developing complex IoT systems at NXP Semiconductors provides Roby a deep understanding of the embedded challenges around Smart Office infrastructure. Jay and the Roby team have deployed their technology at several Fortune 500 customers, and inked key partnerships with building infrastructure managers to allow for the deployment of Roby’s Smart Office experiences to organizations large and small.
Investment
We anticipate that the nature of office work and employee expectations of office settings will change rapidly due to COVID-19. These changes will accelerate the rethinking of the Smart Office landscape, and Roby is well positioned to take advantage of this massive opportunity to redefine the nature of work in an office. VoicePunch is excited to join Roby on this journey as a new investor.
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
