Why IT and Facilities Now Share Workplace Technology Decisions
Picture someone standing outside a meeting room with a laptop under their arm, deciding whether to walk in. The calendar knows whether the room is booked. The booking platform knows whether anyone checked in. Teams may know the organizer is still on another call. From the hallway, they often can't tell any of it.
That moment belongs to two teams. A room display, a desk sign or a change to check in rules connects physical spaces and workplace policies, which facilities runs, with calendars, identity, networks and security, which IT runs. So both teams need to evaluate the project together from the first meeting, starting from the decision the person in the hallway is trying to make. Many buying processes are still set up as if one team owned it.
Why are workplace technology decisions shared now?
Four things have pulled the two teams into the same decisions.
The booking record usually lives in an IT platform. In CBRE's 2026 benchmarking of select client portfolios, 77% of organizations had a space reservation system, and Microsoft Outlook, at 46%, was the most common. The record of who booked which room often sits in a calendar system IT administers, even when workplace teams write the booking rules.
Space policy lives in admin settings. How long should a booked room wait for a check in before it's released? Microsoft's guidance on room autorelease shows the setting can be turned on in four places, from Exchange PowerShell to a Teams panel, with a default of 10 minutes, and recommends using it only in rooms where people have a way to check in. Choosing the wait time and the rooms is a workplace decision. Where the setting lives, and which devices make check in possible, is an IT one.
Planning data comes from several systems. JLL's 2026 occupancy benchmark of 84 organizations found that 90% now use utilization data in planning, up from 70% in 2025, with badge swipes the most common source at 92%. JLL also notes that space data is often spread across CAFM, reservation, badge and HR systems, each maintained by a different team. Bookings, check ins and badge activity are different signals, so someone has to own how they're combined.
The org chart hasn't caught up. IFMA's white paper on digital building risk describes IT, operational technology and physical security as organized separately, with limited collaboration. It dates from 2023 and covers building systems rather than workplace apps, but the gap is the same.
Where do joint projects stall?
They stall when each team is right about its half and nobody owns the join.
Research on how businesses buy shows the pattern. In Gartner's survey of 632 B2B buyers, 74% of buying teams showed unhealthy conflict, and groups that reached consensus were 2.5 times more likely to report a high quality deal. The research covers B2B purchases in general, not workplace technology, but a project that needs IT and facilities is exactly that kind of cross functional decision.
Real estate teams are also carrying technology that hasn't delivered. In JLL's 2025 technology survey of more than 1,000 corporate real estate leaders, 81% reported at least three systems not producing the expected results, and more than half said technology procurement now takes longer than before COVID.
Newer projects hit the same overlap. In JLL's 2026 benchmark, the leading barriers to using AI in occupancy planning were privacy concerns (70%), cost (46%) and system compatibility (45%). IT usually leads on privacy and compatibility. Real estate or facilities usually leads occupancy planning. The barriers sit between the two teams, not inside either one.
In practice, the stalls look familiar:
- Late review. One team writes the requirements and the other sees them at the end. Facilities picks a product for the experience, then IT raises network, identity or security questions in week ten. Or IT picks a platform and facilities finds it doesn't fit how people use the floor.
- Different scoreboards. Facilities asks whether people can find space. IT asks about uptime, support tickets and security. Nobody agreed which numbers decide whether the project worked.
- No owner after installation. A display showing the wrong status looks like a facilities problem with a data source another team runs, so it can sit unresolved between them.
- No agreed budget. When hardware, licenses and support come from different budgets, the question of who pays in year two can surface after the pilot instead of before it.
What does each team bring to a joint evaluation?
Both teams arrive with good questions. They usually arrive at different times, from different directions. Side by side, they turn out to be about the same things.
| Topic | IT usually asks | Facilities usually asks |
|---|---|---|
| Where the information comes from | Which system is the source of truth, and does the new tool read from it or keep its own copy? | Will what appears in the room match what people see in their calendar and booking tools? |
| Identity and access | How do people identify themselves at a device, and how does that connect to our identity systems? | Will it work for visitors, contractors and anyone without a company phone? |
| Installation | What network, power and security review does each device need? | Where does it mount, can people see it from where they stand, and who handles cabling? |
| Support and failure | How are devices updated, monitored and retired? | Who do we call when a display shows the wrong status in front of a waiting team? |
| Success | Uptime, support tickets, security posture. | Are people finding space and using rooms the way our policy intends? |
Where should an evaluation start?
Start where the person is standing. The moment of decision belongs to neither team alone, so it's a fair place for both to begin. Then work backward:
- What is this person trying to decide, and what do they need to see to decide it?
- Which system already holds that information?
- Who administers that system, and what has to be configured for the information to reach the space?
- What has to be true physically for it to appear there: network, power, mounting, sightlines?
- What policy decides what happens next, such as check in, release or rebooking, and who owns it?
Each answer pulls in one team or the other, and some pull in both. Calendar and identity questions usually sit with IT. Space, mounting and policy questions usually sit with facilities or workplace teams, and in some organizations those teams also administer the booking platform. Starting here puts every question on the table in week one, instead of leaving one side to inherit a feature list written by the other.
What belongs on a joint evaluation checklist?
Bring this to the first meeting, with both teams in the room and before any vendor demo.
- Name the decision. Write down what people are trying to decide in this space and how they decide it today.
- Agree the measure. Choose one or two measures both teams accept, and define each one. Bookings, check ins, badge activity, the status people see and measured occupancy are different signals. Our guide to what a ghost booking is explains why the difference matters.
- Name the source system and who administers it.
- Decide on one record. Will the tool display that system's information, or create a second record that someone has to keep in step?
- Assign the policy. Say who owns check in and release rules, and who can change them.
- Document the data. What does the tool create, where is it stored and who can see it?
- Assign sign off. Network, power, mounting and security review each get a named approver. IT teams looking at how workplace devices are managed can start with our guide to Microsoft MDEP.
- Name the responder. Decide who gets the call when a device shows the wrong information, and how updates reach devices after installation.
- Settle the budget and paperwork. Agree whose budget covers devices, licenses and support after the first year, and gather what procurement, security and finance need before the final stage instead of during it.
Who should own the decision?
Shared decisions still need clear lanes. One workable split:
- Facilities and workplace teams lead on the outcome in the space: the experience, the policy and the physical installation.
- IT leads on the systems the information comes from, network and identity requirements, and security review.
- Both share the success measures and the support model after installation.
Where workplace or real estate teams administer the booking platform themselves, the lanes shift, but the rule holds: each team signs off on what it runs. Name one accountable lead per project, and have both teams sign off on the requirements at the start rather than on the purchase at the end.
What to take to your next meeting
- The information usually exists already. The work is getting it to the person who needs it.
- Put both teams' questions on one page before anyone sees a demo.
- Agree what each measure means, and who pays for what, before the pilot starts.
- Pilot in one area with both teams' measures, then decide whether to expand.
Where Embrava fits
The hallway decision this article started with is the one Embrava's signs are built for. Room Sign shows a meeting room's current status and upcoming reservations outside the door, from the scheduling platform it's connected to, and where it's configured, people can check in at the door. Desk Sign does the same job at a shared desk, showing whether it's available, reserved or in use.
Neither sign replaces the booking platform. The reservation, the check in rules and any release policy still live there, which is why both teams belong in the evaluation. Behind the signs, Embrava Connect Cloud is the platform for managing Embrava devices and their connections to booking and workplace systems, so it sits on the IT side of the checklist: configuration, device status and support after installation. Blynclight applies the same idea to people rather than rooms, showing colleagues nearby when someone is on a Teams or Zoom call.
If your IT and facilities teams are weighing a room or desk project, we can work through the checklist with both of them and map which systems each sign would connect to.
Frequently asked questions
Sources
- CBRE, Data at the Heart of Hybrid: Leveraging AI and Tech to Optimize the Workplace, 2026
- Microsoft Learn, Enable check in and autorelease (Rooms), 2026
- JLL, Global Occupancy Planning Benchmark Report 2026, 2026
- IFMA, The Convergence: Managing Digital Risk and FM's Role in Protecting Digitized Buildings, 2023
- Gartner, Gartner Sales Survey Finds 74% of B2B Buyer Teams Demonstrate "Unhealthy Conflict" During the Decision Process, 2025
- JLL, Reality Check: The True Pace and Payoffs of AI Adoption in Corporate Real Estate, 2025