Photos: 10 smart office products to help you better understand your workplace

2. ZeroCater dashboard

ZeroCater's proprietary customer dashboard tracks employee feedback and determines what meals and snacks are the most popular. The insights can help improve food offerings, which can lead to happier and more productive employees.

Image: ZeroCater

3. Brother Refresh

Running out of printer ink can halt an office. Brother Refresh aims to prevent those halts. The service tracks ink usage and sends an email to a designated person, then automatically orders more ink. If needed, the order can be canceled. Offices will free up some time that would typically be spent manually tracking printer use and guessing when ink would be needed.

Image: Brother

4. Genome

Klick employees connected their entry swipes to a feature in Genome, their version of SenseiOS, to locate people throughout the office. On their office desktop or via mobile, employees can quickly search for someone's name and make sure they're in the office and where their desk is located. By tracking location data, new employees may be able to find their way around faster and spend less time tracking down their coworkers for important projects.

Image: Sensei Labs

5. Xerox Print Awareness Tool

Going green? The Xerox Print Awareness Tool is one way to use employee data to do it. The tool tracks employee printing habits, and then recommends ways to reduce their carbon footprint. Employees can also look at how their habits stack up in the company, including company-wide goals for better printing habits.

Image: Xerox

6. PoE connected lighting

Using PoE connected lighting, an office's lighting system can be connected to other office systems, like HVAC. By collecting and understanding data from the systems, the lighting can be adjusted and the office can be more green and comfortable. For example, light sensors can adjust the temperature in a room based off of how many people are there.

Image: Philips Lighting

7. OfficeIQ

While from the same company as OfficeIQ Insights, OfficeIQ tracks different data. This version uses sensors on height-changing desks, then tracks how much users are sitting or standing and calculates how many calories they burned based on that information.

Image: Humanscale

8. PaperCut Software

Similar to the Xerox tool, PaperCut software connects to office devices and printers to track printer usage. Users can see trends from individual usage data to environmental impact to total pages printed across the office.

Image: PaperCut

9. Calabrio Desktop Analytics

The Calabrio Desktop Analytics software lets your boss see both screen activity and individual keystrokes on company devices. While it seems a bit Big Brother, the data collected can be used for call center employees by matching it with voice recordings to see exactly what top employees were doing while working through a customer concern.

Image: Calabrio

10. ZEI

Employees can assign each side of the ZEI die to a task, and then flip the die to that side when they're performing that task. The hours are then tracked for a clearer picture of how exactly people spend their time. The data provided can identify ways to increase productivity, or simply to help freelancers better report their hours.

Also see

• Special report: Harnessing IoT in the enterprise (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
• How your connected home or office is a gift for hackers, criminals, and cyber spies (ZDNet)
• Cheat sheet: How to become a data scientist (TechRepublic)
• Survey: Has smart office tech made your work life easier, or caused more hassles? (TechRepublic/Tech Pro Research)
• Smart devices for the home and the office (ZDNet)
• The automated office: 8 ways companies are using AI to increase productivity (TechRepublic)

Image: ZEI