Touchless technology – Siemens and Saleforce team up to get back in the office

• Salesforce and Siemens announced a partnership to develop solutions for a safe workplace environment
• Workplace data bears possibilities to help organizations in ensuring safety measures are in place

Salesforce has joined hands with Siemens in a strategic partnership to develop a touch-free office environment that will support organizations worldwide for a safe return to work. Earlier this month, Salesforce laid out plans to mobilize its employees back to office in phases.

The partnership will see Salesforce’s customer relations management (CRM) tool and Siemens’ workplace app and IoT (internet of things) solution work together and “orchestrate the processes, people and things that are essential to creating safe, connected workplaces for the future.”

“Together with Salesforce, we can swiftly support businesses around the world to implement technology that supports employees as they return to the office while laying the foundations of long-term digital transformation in workplaces.

“Organizations worldwide are beginning to reimagine the future workplace experience, putting their employees’ health and safety at the center of their digital transformations,” Alex Dayon, President and Chief Strategy Officer, Salesforce said in an official statement.

Some of the return to office solutions include a mobile employee boarding pass for elevator and building access. The employee-facing app aims to ensure compliance with social distancing and safety regulations. Employees can use the app to reserve conference rooms and desks, checking availability with real-time updates. In addition, employees can seek for health and safety amenities and even request for sanitization services through the app.

Even though the app provides employees with a suite of services and functions, the app will also be a great asset for companies to prepare and sustain the new normality in workplaces. By leveraging location data such as employee check-ins, desk and meeting room reservations history, businesses can enhance contact tracing in offices. Essentially, the powerful insights will help companies respond swiftly and more accurately for any emergencies.

In the short term, businesses are able to ensure the use of workplace environment adheres to new safety regulations in office spaces, but longer term, these insights offer businesses a wider spectrum to understand the flow and dynamics of office spaces, pacing the way for a data-led strategy to be formulated in future workplaces. While contact tracing offers organizations an added visibility, employees are given a choice to opt-out.

Siemens’ IoT solutions will be used to create “sensory systems” throughout the office building that enables the employee-facing mobile app to operate and provide real-time data updates on how space is being used.

Siemens and Salesforce plan to deploy these new solutions in their own offices.

The partnership of Siemens and Salesforce in creating a safe office environment is one of the many examples we will see as businesses are reopening and ensuring employee safety is a top priority.

Amazon is bullish in its goals to repopulate warehouses and facility centers with employee safety in mind. The e-commerce giant plans to equip its warehouses with machine learning-backed software that will automatically alert employees when they are in close proximity to each other. Wearable tech is also in trial phases, and employees are welcomed to provide feedback on the tech or choose not to wear the device.