Space is a valuable resource on a university or college campus. Space represents an average of 20% of universities’ operational budgets, and ensuring an adequate amount of space is available for educating and learning is essential for higher education institutions. As colleges and universities continue to struggle for funding, making the most of the space available is more important than ever.
Any equipment, vendors or kiosks needed for your facilities must fit within your budget constraints and allotted space. Carefully plan any steps to reorganize or expand beforehand. Fortunately, university people counters placed above hallways and doors allow you to audit the usage of each building.
This chapter covers how you can use data from people counters to justify expanding spaces that see high traffic, create advertisements for spaces and services that have low traffic and make budgeting decisions.
You can use data from people counters to justify expanding spaces that see high traffic. As enrollment increases, your university may need to build new buildings to accommodate incoming students. Follow similar procedures to renovate current buildings.
A people counting system can pave the way for your university’s growth and success, enabling university officials to justify expanding your facilities. This is possible due to the foot traffic reports that can help you pinpoint trends and patterns in your building usage, which is especially useful information to have during redesign processes and renovations.
You can use people counters to determine which areas usually bring in a consistent flow of students and visitors. Your university can then strategically place resources and vendors accordingly to maximize the return on your investment.
If certain areas are not attracting student traffic, people counters can flag these areas for you so you can figure out why these areas may not be attracting more people. For example, if areas on the first floor of a building are attracting more foot traffic than areas on an upper floor, you may want to do some rearranging.
You can also use data from people counters to create advertisements for spaces and services seeing low traffic. Low traffic data may indicate that students are unaware of certain services or a lack of effective advertising. For example, without adequate advertising, students may not be aware of additional resources available on the third floor.
Knowing which entrances and hallways see the most foot traffic in a building can be helpful when choosing where to place kiosks, informational fliers and help desks for prospective and incoming students. Faculty and student organizations can use the data from people counters to identify the best areas to place advertisements to attract the most students.
You can also use people counter data to make budgeting decisions, which was covered more thoroughly in a previous chapter. In this case, an area receiving high traffic could be a sign that it deserves to have more funds devoted to it. Whether your cafeteria or fitness center has recently become more heavily traveled, you may want to allocate more funds in your budget toward this facility and use this data to fight against funding getting cut.
Additionally, you can use foot traffic data from a people counting system to identify the areas or buildings that you may want to remodel or revamp on your college campus.
Technology plays an essential role on a university or college campus. Today’s advanced tech can help improve the experience your campus offers students, so you want to ensure you have the university technology your students and faculty need. When budgets are already tight, investing in or improving tech on your campus can seem impossible. However, improving college technology may actually help to build more room in your budget.
An example of technology you may want to invest in is a people counting system. The data you gather from this technology can help you support your funding requests and increase your budget. You can use people counters to prove that your university deserves technology and facility upgrades. Additionally, you can eliminate the resources that people may not use often enough to justify the cost.
To build more room in your university budget, invest in a people counting system from Traf-Sys today.
