Customer Story: Butlr | RICOH Service Advantage & AI

About our Customer

Butlr, an MIT Media Lab spinout, has developed and patented the world’s first and only anonymous people-aware platform that combines AI and body heat sensing technology. The Butlr platform anonymously detects real-time utilization, foot traffic, occupancy, and body posture to better understand how commercial buildings are used for working and living. In the workplace, Butlr provides insights with varying degrees of granularity, from the building and floor plan down to office and desk utilization. This results in optimizing office design and layout for productivity and collaboration while making buildings more efficient.

“Businesses all over the world have been upended by significant shifts in corporate real estate and digital transformation. In response, they are demanding accurate insight into occupancy, utilization, and sustainability without compromising privacy. To provide this much needed insight, Butlr and Ricoh formed a strategic alliance that is making history as offices are now more responsive to the needs of the people in them instead of requiring humans to conform to the built environment.”
— Honghao Deng
CEO and co-founder
Butlr

Challenge

Strong demand drives need to augment service and maintenance support
Identify global partner with expertise in hardware, software, and services
Align with recognized and trusted brand in office technology to accelerate growth

Workplaces throughout the world increasingly rely on Butlr technology to make offices more conducive to the needs of occupants while capturing anonymous data to make more strategic decisions about corporate real estate investments.

To meet this demand and support the startup’s strong growth, Butlr needed to quickly expand its service, support, and maintenance teams on a global level. Butlr sought a partner with deep expertise in hardware, software, data management, services, and maintenance as well as complementary office technology.

The Ricoh Service Advantage team proved to be the perfect fit. The team is composed of a global network of service professionals that are critical to the deployment and maintenance of Butlr technology. This allows Butlr to focus on its core business of physical AI innovation while the Ricoh Service Advantage team handles essential customer service infrastructure, including installation, training, and maintenance of Butlr technology.

Solution

Quickly expand to global markets with Ricoh’s trusted, knowledgeable team
Combine scalability with expertise to deliver positive customer experiences
Transform the office experience into a place of collaboration, productivity, and efficiency

Butlr and Ricoh trained and mobilized the Ricoh Service Advantage team to accelerate the sales, deployment, and maintenance of Butlr technology throughout customers’ corporate offices.

The Ricoh Service Advantage team has mastered the installation, support, and maintenance required for workplaces to be successful with Butlr technology. This includes the award winning Butlr Heatic™ sensors that magnetically mount to the wall or ceiling and immediately capture spatial insights while ensuring anonymity.

Data from the Butlr platform provides much needed intelligence into how the workplace is used from multiple points of view. The data informs decisions about layout, design, scheduling, leasing, maintenance, and energy efficiency. Additionally, since the Butlr platform is built on an open API, it is easy for customers to integrate sensor data into third-party solutions for even greater insight into buildings.

The Ricoh Advantage Service team enables Butlr to quickly scale on a global level while ensuring faster time to value for customers.

Results

Proactive, global service and maintenance team facilitates scalability
Cost savings and faster response time delights customers
Expanded reach through combined go-to-market efforts

The alliance with Ricoh enables Butlr to expand its global reach with the flexibility, adaptability, and innovation needed to provide the best experience for customers.

Specifically, it has allowed Butlr to realize 80% cost savings and 66% faster response to customer needs while continuing to report triple digit year-over-year growth.

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