The Vision Versus the Budget Line
The first two articles in this series made the infrastructure case for Cisco’s Intelligent Workplace Experience: how PoE and Fault Managed Power get power to every sensor and access point that vision depends on, in new construction and in existing buildings alike. Infrastructure gets projects approved on its own merits sometimes, but more often it needs a number attached to it. This article is about that number, and where it actually comes from.
What Cisco’s Own Numbers Say
Cisco has published its own figures on this, and they’re not small. A Forrester Total Economic Impact studycommissioned on Cisco Spaces found a 172 percent return on investment, $6.84 million in net present value, and payback in six months or less. Cisco’s own ROI modeling for Cisco Spaces breaks that down further by industry, and deliberately uses conservative estimates so the real-world numbers tend to run higher. Those figures are built on occupancy and space utilization data collected through Cisco Spaces: knowing which rooms and floors are actually used, and cutting operating costs on the space that isn’t.
That’s a strong case on its own. It’s also an incomplete case for the full Intelligent Workplace Experience, because occupancy data only tells half of the energy and cost story in a building.
The Half of the Story Cisco Spaces Doesn’t Capture
Cisco Spaces answers the question of where people are. It doesn’t answer the question of where power is going. A floor can show low occupancy and still be burning through energy on lighting, HVAC, and powered devices that never got tied to actual usage. That’s the gap MHT’s infrastructure closes. Inspextor PoE nodes and Fault Managed Power circuits report real, device-level power draw, not an estimate derived from occupancy sensors. Paired with the aida™ Controller, a facility team can see exactly which devices, floors, or fixtures are consuming power relative to how the space is actually being used.
Combining the Two Data Sets
Put Cisco Spaces’ occupancy data next to aida’s power data and the ROI conversation for the Intelligent Workplace Experience changes shape. Instead of a general estimate of savings from smart building technology, a facility or sustainability team can point to a specific floor, a specific lighting circuit, or a specific bank of access points and show the dollar figure tied to it. That’s the difference between an ROI model built on industry averages and one built on a building’s actual numbers, which is a much easier case to bring to a CFO or an ESG reporting requirement.
It also solves a documentation problem. LEED and WELL certifications, along with most corporate ESG disclosures, want verifiable energy data tied to specific systems, not modeled estimates. Device-level power data from PoE and FMP infrastructure is exactly the kind of granular record those frameworks are asking for, and it’s a byproduct of infrastructure a building needs to install anyway to support Cisco’s platform.
Making the Case to Finance
Facility and IT teams tend to talk about the Intelligent Workplace Experience in terms of capability: better sensors, better data, a smarter building. Finance teams want to talk about it in terms of payback period and net present value, the same terms Cisco uses in its own Forrester-backed ROI research. The building infrastructure conversation and the finance conversation don’t have to be separate pitches. Combined power and occupancy data gives a project team one model that speaks to both audiences, because the underlying numbers are the same regardless of who’s reading them.
Where to Start
Buildings that get the most out of this pairing usually start small: one floor, one lighting retrofit, one bank of sensors, with power and occupancy data tracked together from day one. That gives a project team a real, defensible number before asking for the capital to scale the Intelligent Workplace Experience building-wide, which tends to be a far shorter conversation than a proposal built on someone else’s case study.
This is the third article in a three-part series on building Cisco’s Intelligent Workplace Experience with MHT infrastructure.
- Cisco’s Intelligent Workplace Experience Starts With the Network
- Powering the Intelligent Workplace Experience
- What the Intelligent Workplace Experience Runs On