Whether you’re looking to replace Envoy or you’re comparing all the top workplace optimization apps you’ve heard about, you may know that the platform has recently grown from just space management to full-fledged workplace management.
While that means it’s become a more powerful solution, that doesn’t mean it’s automatically the best option today.
Look around — we’re in an era of tech rebound.
Less is quickly becoming more in the eyes of overwhelmed office workers.
That’s probably why you’re here — the complexity of Envoy and the fact it’s a standalone app means employee adoption is often low. Put simply, it’s hard to get your team to use it.
If your team doesn’t use Envoy to book into the office, you don’t know who will be in. Meaning your desks, meeting rooms, and parking spaces get double booked and employees take it out on you as they don’t have what they need to get their work done.
Come along to learn about everything that Envoy has to offer, why it still may not be the best solution for cutting-edge teams, and to meet Officely — the only flexible work enablement platform that functions fully inside Slack and MS Teams to encourage deep adoption and engagement.
Understanding Envoy's Key Features
Envoy is an all-in-one suite of space management solutions that combines:
- Visitor management system to help property owners and front desk personnel manage business guests
- Business space management to keep rooms, desks, and deliveries running smoothly
That last offering, which they call Envoy Workplace, is probably the most interesting for business leaders and culture and office managers who are always on the lookout for ways to optimize office occupancy and operations.
Envoy Workplace enables employees to reserve meeting rooms and desks, and ensures office deliveries swiftly make it to the right people so the front lines at the front desk aren’t buried in piles of packages. The platform uses space booking data as well as door scans, badges, Wi-Fi, and more to provide insights into how your office is being used. And, an interactive map and alerts program make for a safe, collaborative environment.
Obviously, Envoy Workplace is a smart product with an amazing team behind it. But we’re here to uncover what our savvy readers want to know — what else is out there that may fit my needs even better?
Let’s explore.
Why Look for an Alternative to Envoy? Adoption Matters
The biggest drawback to Envoy Workplace, and the Envoy offering as a whole, is that it’s a standalone web application.
Gartner recently uncovered that the average desk worker has to use 11 apps over the course of a day to get their job done. That’s an 83% increase from the norm in 2019, which was just six apps!
The truth is, most office workers don’t want yet another app they have to learn how to use, remember a password for, and constantly check every day. Because of this, adoption of standalone workplace apps like Envoy Workplace may be lower than more integrated solutions (more on that soon!).
Why does easy integration, and therefore better adoption, matter when it comes to a workplace management solution?
When an app doesn’t fit into an employee’s natural workflow, they’re going to use it less. When it comes to desk booking software, that means desks are more likely to get overbooked. This makes for uncomfortable and unproductive situations when employees come into the office and find they have nowhere to work. Plus, now how are you going to defend that pricey seat booking software with low adoption when the next budget review comes around?
In addition to negatively impacting productivity — and the budget — low adoption in your workplace booking application means low visibility into who’s in the office everyday. Not only does that mean you can’t get any useful attendance data to do resource planning, it can also cause workers to want to come in less and less. This creates a downward spiral in company culture. And, yet again, leaves you answering questions as to why the company is devoting so much budget to a physical office space that no one seems to want to come into.
When adoption in a workplace management app is so important for business productivity and the bottom line, you want to make sure you’re choosing a solution that’s built for easy integration and use.
Top 5 Envoy Alternatives for Modern Workplace Management Software in 2024
As you can see, Envoy Workplace may be a popular choice, but it might not meet every team's unique needs.
If you're looking for alternatives, we’ve got ‘em.
Here are our favorite Envoy Workplace alternatives for today’s teams that need help enhancing adoption and productivity.
1. Officely: The #1 Envoy Alternative for Flexible Teams
Officely’s office management platform is the best alternative vs. Envoy Workplace for several reasons. It lives in Slack and MS Teams, to ensure higher usage and adoption across your team. And since we’ve carefully honed its feature set, it doesn't have tons and tons of capabilities that you may only use from time to time. That means less training time, less complexity for workers on a tight schedule, and ultimately less cost to businesses — and who isn’t trying to shave down expenses in this day and age?
We’ll walk you through our well-planned suite of features before we dive into expansion opportunities and testimonials from happy Officely customers.
Officely Features
No feature bloat here, just the key capabilities modern teams need when it comes to flexible work enablement.
Slack and Teams Integration
First and foremost is what we consider most crucial in an office management tool you want your team to actually use — integrability with the platforms where your people already interact regularly, such as Slack and MS Teams.
Officely offers efficient desk booking, smart notifications, and attendance visibility all inside Slack or Teams. No separate app learning curve required. If you really want to get the best bang for your office management buck, easily-integrated solutions, not freestanding apps, are truly key.
Desk Booking
Why complicate things with a separate, intricate desk booking tool that makes the process a whole lot more involved than it needs to be?
An integrated desk booking platform like Officely takes just a click or two to save a spot, and it can even remember a booker’s preferences to streamline the process further. On top of that, it uses this information to tell the rest of the team who’s coming in for the week, boosting morale and attendance among hybrid teams and making it easier to schedule efficient meetings.
Room Booking
Again, effective and widely-adopted room booking comes back around to integration.
You want a workspace optimization platform to work alongside the systems you already have in place to make it easy to see and claim available spaces for last-minute calls and meetings.
Officely’s Find a Room feature works with Google Calendar inside Slack so that workers can track down and reserve an empty meeting room in a matter of minutes.
Parking Booking
Parking management seem like an over-the-top addition to an office management tool? When you consider that many folks in your office had to drive to get there — we think it’s a natural extension of the features we already offer.
Weeks in advance, workers who plan to come into the office can also use Officely to book their parking spaces easily from Slack. If your hot desks are hot enough that you need people to book them ahead of time, it’s safe to assume that parking spaces are also something those workers are going to be very interested in reserving.
Analytics
As many companies were brutally confronted with in the midst of the pandemic, office space is one of your biggest business expenditures!
That makes it critical to figure out how this key workplace resource is being utilized, alongside everything else like desks, computers, parking spaces, and even snacks in the break room.
The Officely platform provides insights into office and equipment usage, so you can make sure everyone has what they need to be productive without overspending on space or supplies that it turns out no one is actually using.
Cost
Cost may not be what you think of as a feature traditionally, but it’s certainly an important element of most shopping lists when it comes to office management tooling.
It’s free for small teams to try out all the features Officely has to offer. Bigger than that? Pricing plans are fair, flexible,and easy to understand. And we don’t expect you to jump in with both feet without making sure we’re the best solution for you — which is why it’s easy to sign up for a trial and/or demo any time.
Where Officely Could Improve
We’re big believers that there’s always room for improvement, even within our own tool!
An aspect that we don’t have yet that we think would work well with the rest of our features is visitor management software. Especially in highly-flexible environments where workers are always coming and going, an integrated visitor management solution that helps receptionists welcome and direct drop ins to the right place could perfectly compliment our smart room, desk, and parking spot booking platform.
Officely Customer Reviews
“The tool speaks for itself – not only is [Officely] so easy for me to use, but it’s also easy for employees to book in. And that means the decisions I’m making are based on reliable data, whereas I previously had no idea what attendance looked like for our international offices.” — Maria Fuster, Adaptavist’s Workplace Operations Lead
“For us, the most valuable feature of Officely is that it shows people what they’re missing out on. It shows the exciting events happening each week, it shows who’s going to be there, and it makes you stop and think ‘Wait, I don’t want to miss out on that’.” — Esme Fegan, Cloudtalk’s Office Operations Lead
Yeah, our users are the best!
Still want to do a little more shopping? No problem! Come along as we explore a handful more of Envoy Workplace competitors in 2024.
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