The innovation: a platform, ELIA, is intended for hybrid work and allows employees to reserve their space in the office and find out about the reservations of their colleagues. Managers have a dashboard and sensors to compile attendance statistics.
Who ?
In 2015, four undergraduate students in engineering physics at Laval University become friends and are looking for a business project to start. This will be done in 2018 with the founding of GPHY (contraction of “physical genius”), which brings together Myrik Hervieux-Gaudreau, Pier-Etienne Lehoux, Hubert Audet and Anthony Blais. The latter is now the CEO. “We wanted to democratize technologies, to facilitate their integration into the organization of work,” he explains in an interview. The pandemic has upset plans, but has given rise to another more relevant formula, focused on managing work in hybrid mode, between the office and home. GPHY now has 16 employees in its Quebec City premises, as well as 6 others working for a subcontractor.
The product
The core of GPHY’s offering is a software platform called ELIA, offered on mobile and web. It is aimed at companies allowing hybrid work, in office spaces that are not always assigned to the same employee.
The client company draws up a plan of the premises, offices and meeting rooms, and the teleworking employee can make reservations. He chooses his space according to his criteria – open or closed space, window nearby – and the availability displayed. If he accepts it, his colleagues will then be able to see his choices. The manager has access to a dashboard giving details of the use of spaces according to hours and days. For greater accuracy, sensors called ELIA Spot can be added to this platform, placed under the desk and confirming space occupancy in real time.
There are people who do this with Excel or Outlook, but they are not the most efficient solutions. The traditional model, with an assigned office five days a week, will no longer be that; 70% of companies want to accommodate their employees for hybrid working and that’s what the vast majority of people want.
Anthony Blais, co-founder and CEO of GPHY
Launched in July 2022, ELIA has “between 10 and 15 customers in Quebec”, specifies the CEO. Billing is done according to the number of employees and usage. “An SME with 50 employees is about $3,000 a year. »
ELIA is more than software for counting attendance, he insists. “We always leave the decision to the employees […] The objective is not really to monitor them, but to offer a tool to improve their experience, facilitate collaboration, adapt it to real needs. »
He assures that companies that use ELIA see attendance at the office increase by 20%.
Challenges
Since its founding, GPHY has raised $5 million in funding rounds. “It will help us: financing in a start-up is always the sinews of war,” says Mr. Blais.
Developing a new technology has its pitfalls, notes the CEO: “It’s never easy, you make mistakes at the start. And we spend too much time on technology, not enough on sales and marketing. »
The future
The objective in the next year is to publicize GPHY and its ELIA platform. “We believe we have a solution that can help businesses in Quebec, but also in Canada and the United States. It’s misunderstood, people don’t know that there are technological solutions. »
We also want to improve the technology by adding new recommendation functions based on artificial intelligence, and by integrating tools like Microsoft Teams or Slack. “We want to improve the employee experience, so that they can know when their colleagues are in the office, to facilitate team synchronization. »