Ericsson HQ gets indoor positioning upgrade

StepInside and partner Flowscape to help Sweden HQ team easily find available workspace and colleagues

The Senion StepInside indoor positioning system has been deployed in the 500,000-square-foot Kista (Stockholm) headquarters of telecom company Ericsson.

Using personal or work-issued smartphones, more than 4,000 employees working throughout 20 floors distributed over four buildings can now use a corporate app to easily find available rooms and spaces to work, the company said.

The indoor positioning system is designed by Senion’s longtime partner Flowscape. With StepInside integrated into the Flowscape platform, the two companies will help Ericsson employees reduce wasted time searching for people, places or things, increasing productivity.

The StepInside software development kit (SDK) offers location readings in latitude, longitude and floor level in real time. The SDK can easily be integrated into any smartphone application. StepInside relies on an advanced sensor fusion algorithm that works with the smartphone’s movement and radio sensors to provide accurate and robust positioning.

“Indoor positioning technology is perfect for large offices with multiple floors, offices, and meeting spaces — the bigger and more intricate the better,” said Christian Lundquist, CEO and co-founder of Senion. “We’re seeing that large companies are taking serious measures to combat friction in order to increase both productivity and employee satisfaction. We now aid Ericsson in giving back time to their employees so they can be more efficient in their day-to-day work.”

The implementation of StepInside at Ericsson is part of the company’s larger global platform designed to enable rapid IoT application development.

“We looked carefully at the benefits of using IPS [indoor positioning system] in our offices, and determined the system would pay for itself in productivity savings alone,” said Magnus Arlidsson, global head application platform for IoT at Ericsson. “Our initial roll-out focuses on productivity improvements by saving employees time they might waste searching for things, such as conference rooms or places to work.”

The system as implemented today is the starting point for a bigger roll-out with additional workplace enhancements at Ericsson.

Senion’s comprehensive IPS services include analytics, wayfinding, geofencing, friend finder and tracking. With more than 300  indoor positioning system installations globally, Senion has worked closely with shopping malls, hospitals, corporate campuses and more to improve workflows. Senion is headquartered in Linkoping, Sweden, and San Francisco.