Website Planet had the chance to sit down and chat with Zerzar Bukhari, Co-Founder & CEO of
Zynq, to learn how their office management platform saves working hours worth 6 figures to top brands like H&M and Albertsons.
Let’s introduce Zynq to our audience. What is it and how does it work?
Zynq is an all-in-one office management platform that organizes people, space, and time. Our platform is designed to help companies create flexible work environments for their employees, manage access to the office, optimize space utilization, and much more.
Zynq acts like the heart of your hybrid workplace by managing desk bookings, rooms, visitors and much more, all in one platform.
With Zynq, companies can immediately expect to save lots of money as compared to their previous manual process of managing the office. Office managers and workplace teams can spend up to 60% of their working hours coordinating desks, rooms and visitors manually. It is tedious work that is prone to errors when utilizing excel sheets, forms and various disparate software. For example, Zynq customers like Albertsons and H&M have saved over 12 full-time equivalent employee hours worth an estimated $1,000,000 dollars by switching to Zynq.
The other measurable benefit businesses can expect is
increased hybrid office employee worker attendance because of Zynq’s innovative Buddy system; increased visibility on how the office is being utilized and whether it is being utilized optimally; and employee satisfaction with a system that brings together a number of key office functions into one place.
How does your mission differ from the other companies in your niche?
Zynq takes a people-first approach to office management. This means that we design all of our products in such a way that employees would love to use them and benefit from them, as opposed to being forced to use them because of corporate policy.
We believe employers and employees want the same thing: high-impact work in a collaborative environment. And our software makes it easier for employees to get the flexibility they need to do their jobs well while making sure the whole organization is aligned in the right direction.
We believe in a future where employees are inherently trusted to make the right decisions to maximize the impact of their jobs while living a fulfilling life. We work hard every day to make that a reality for the companies that we work with.
How did it all start, and what are your achievements to this day?
Zynq originally started as a tool to make meeting bookings more efficient. As my co-founder and I were going through the process of growing our original product, the pandemic hit and we realized we could fulfill a much larger need. That need was helping companies safely bring back their employees into the office. After an initial period of everyone going remote, many companies were eager for various reasons to make it possible for people to return to the office. That’s where we saw an opportunity and built a space management platform with safety tools such as health questionnaires, contact tracing, physical distancing rules and QR scanning.
Our approach to the problem was validated when we signed on huge companies like the LA Dodgers and Deciem to help their employees access their offices.
We kept refining our product and growing our team as we graduated from Y-Combinator and got initial seed funding. Today, we have
large contracts with Fortune 50 companies like H&M, American Express, and Albertsons to manage hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space in 70+ cities across 6 continents.
Who are your typical clients and what problems do they have when they come to you?
Zynq is an ideal tool for Medium and Enterprise size companies that have some sort of hybrid workplace policy in place, where they have a need to streamline office space access for employees and visitors.
Generally, customers come to us requiring a solution for having insights on who is coming to the office, how often and whether office space is being utilized efficiently. Before implementing Zynq, normally, these processes are being managed manually using spreadsheets or Google/Outlook, requiring a huge investment of time from workplace teams and office managers. Some office managers tell us they would often spend a day or two every week managing issues related to employees coming into the office. Common problems they faced were employees showing up without a place to work, and not knowing whether users had been adhering to prescribed in-office days.
What Zynq does really, really well in our space is that our software is incredibly easy to use. At the heart of how we design is simplicity. Although we have a helpdesk and guidebooks on how to use Zynq, we find the majority of users, including admins, don’t need reference materials. Zynq is that intuitive!
We also take a decidedly white-glove approach to assisting our customers bring their office floorplans live by providing an in-house designer who customizes the floorplans for companies. This allows for a level of granular detail not possible with our competitors. Each company gets a dedicated customer success manager who is available as needed to ensure rollout and uptake of the software is in line with their goals.
Can you share any success stories where your product made a significant difference for a business dealing with these challenges?
I can share a great success story with Mollie, a financial technology company based in Amsterdam. As they looked to reopen their office after the pandemic, they needed a way to carefully manage occupancy with a 3:1 employee-to-desk ratio. Our desk booking system allowed them to ensure fair desk access while keeping occupancy aligned with their policies.
Within just two weeks of reopening with Zynq, Mollie reached near 100% occupancy – an extraordinary achievement. We saved them over $260,000 in annual costs by freeing up their administrative staff from the burden of managing desk and room bookings manually. By providing tools for administrators to measure and distribute desk access, we kept their office full and vibrant.
They even implemented customizations using our APIs to adapt desk booking to their local needs. And interestingly, they utilized Zynq Visitors to bring in pets to the office: a use-case we had never imagined, but it worked! For Mollie, Zynq made the difference in creating a seamless hybrid office experience that maintained their fantastic workplace culture. The office remains the thriving heart of their operations today.
Can you share any feedback from current customers that highlight how Zynq has positively impacted them?
Zynq enjoys a strong 4.9 review rating on the popular software review website Capterra. Here is some of the feedback we’ve received from our many very happy customers.
“Customer service is great! very responsive, useful, and explanatory. The software is user-friendly and easy to use.”
“Zynq workspace software is really intuitive and user friendly which is really important if you are tasked with rolling out to a large organization. The functionality is really easy to use both on your mobile or desktop and booking and canceling desks, accessing QR codes, finding where a fellow colleague(s) is sitting couldn’t be easier. Equally as an administrator Zynq is a great for managing and analyzing our workspace and provides useful information not only on a daily and weekly basis but also longer term for developing our workspace strategy. As an organization that has had a hybrid working model since 2013 having Zynq will provider greater clarity around our property requirements in the future mitigating the risk of taking on more expensive office space than we need.”
“Really great. They are so fast at responding to requests and fixing issues. They are a really lovely team to work with. Always improving the app and introducing new features.”
“The Zynq software has transformed the way in which we work as a charity. All of our 10 sites nationally within the UK are now operated through the Zynq software and allows various setups supporting social distancing during the pandemic. The software allows us to set up space plans for each office and staff can pick which desks they would like to sit at. Staff can also register attendance through the barcode reader on their app.”
If you had unlimited funds, what improvements would you make?
The goal for Zynq is to be a one-stop shop for all office management needs and we are well on our way there already. However, there is still much to do before we can fully realize that vision. In the future, we hope to add even more functionality to our platform including the ability to assist real-estate teams with managing leases and evaluating purchases, IT and facilities teams to track and maintain assets, security teams to help keep offices secure and running smoothly and much, much more.
