Webex deepens its partnership with UMA for Smart and Effective Workspace Management

With hybrid working here to stay, the need to provide safe, smart workplaces is critical to an effective workforce. Cisco have had a long-standing reseller partnership with UK-based UMA who has built a solution which is tightly integrated into Webex and which solves real workplace problems; and it’s now available on SolutionsPlus, providing smart solutions for the modern workplace.

What is the Webex and UMA solution?

By integrating Webex by Cisco and IoT sensors with UMA’s software, users can manage workspaces and people, whether they’re at home, in the office or across both. This provides real-time insights and active workplace management; from room- and desk-booking, visitor management and environmental factors, Webex with UMA is saving time and money and allows the best use of resources; users are seeing which spaces are really being used, and how, employees are booking desks, meeting rooms and parking spaces, and business are making data-informed smart decisions on their real estate and workforce.

Webex users quickly and easily book Webex-enabled meeting spaces from 2D and 3D maps of their building. They are connecting their Webex account to UMA and saving time, resource and giving complete visibility of workspace availability. The live people count and environmental data from meeting rooms on the Webex Navigator is displayed on a simple to use UI, using UMA’s booking application, so people can decide which rooms to use, when, and see which rooms are busy, and all of this can be branded with corporate branding as standard.

Businesses deliver ambient user experiences, such as room release and auto-book functionality, when combining Cisco equipment with UMA, which is resulting in more room availability and reduced frustration on no-shows or ‘forgot to cancel’ events. Having this data is providing detailed analytics showing how spaces are actually being used and presented in a digital, easy to read, centralized dashboard. Companies are making informed decisions on their real estate usage, both in terms of the number of meeting rooms and how they are equipped, as well as how much overall estate they need to be leasing.

Customer success story with UMA

A large UK NHS Trust is now easily monitoring workplace utilization and creating a more efficient working environment with smart sensors combined with UMA’s leading-edge software. The subsequent clear and continuous picture of where, how, and when a space is being used has allowed NHS Mid Yorkshire Trust to move away from responsive and reactive management into a future of informed decision making, all guided by the actual data and removing guess work.

The NHS Trust is looking to improve wellness, productivity, and infection transmission and to pilot indoor environment monitoring, by integrating CO2 sensors into UMA’s NetZero solution. For the NHS, enabling hospitals to track and monitor occupancy, air quality, and explore how connecting workplace technology can reduce their environmental impact is in line with their goal to become the first carbon net-zero healthcare provider. This can be best provided by using smart technology which in turn presents big benefits for workspaces. Based on the positive results from initial deployments, the NHS Trust is now rolling UMA’s occupancy monitoring system to new sites and use cases.

UMA CEO Rachel Swann says,

“We’re seeing wellbeing and effective workplace management being ever higher in the requirements for both employees and businesses and we’ve seen Cisco really understand this and take a lead in the market. Cisco’s bigger picture thinking, coupled with phenomenal quality and agility, resonates hugely with UMA, and reflects how we’ve been developing the UMA solution, and so taking the relationship to the next level was a natural next step. Over 85% of UMA’s software has been developed from user requests, market requirements and customer feedback and the collaboration with Cisco’s Webex solution is hugely exciting for us in bringing real, working solutions with great UI to the workplace.”

As Cisco continues to expand its ecosystem partner community, adding support for these types of solutions that not only drive adoption of Webex but solve real workplace use cases is what we want to focus on. “The workplace is becoming more intelligent and so augmenting Webex with integrations developed by our ecosystem helps showcase the power of the Solution” says Alyson Hoagland Pace, Director of Strategy and Partnerships at Cisco.

Learn More

• Download this and other Customer Success Stories
• Webex and Uma on the Webex App Hub
• Join our ASK UMA Webex space