IoT is overwhelming the commercial building space!

Many commercial property owners and operators today still use dozens of disconnected solutions and outdated technology to manage and monitor their building’s energy, controls, performance, safety, and communications systems. This inefficient set of operations is a costly challenge for building owners and managers who are under increased pressure to reduce expenses and power usage while meeting the rising expectations of occupants for a modernized, safe and healthy space to live and work.

Commercial buildings are more complex than the home and serve different purposes – they function as a place for business and provide services to people, such as offices, schools, hotels, restaurants and retail, stadiums, places of worship, and multi-family units.

The commercial building industry has lagged behind in developing centralized platforms to connect its growing number of systems; and now more than ever the market is being inundated with new technology solutions commonly referred to as Building-IoT (BIoT) devices that optimize a physical space for essential functions and emerging services such as hands-free controls, adjustments to temperature, lighting, and air quality, emergency response, security and much more.

More specifically, this problem exists because:

Challenges:

80% of buildings today either have multiple systems for management, automation and security that cannot communicate with each other, or they have a single system that cannot communicate with other systems. These buildings are also ill-equipped to handle post-Covid-19 pandemic safety requirements.

Building occupants and tenants are demanding healthier, safer buildings and direct control of their environment. They want touch-free movement throughout commercial buildings, better air quality, and enhanced cleaning processes in order to feel safe to return to work and enter public spaces.

Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and devices are being added to doors, windows, blinds, elevators, temperature controls, lighting, and everything else in the building overwhelming building operators.

Government is strongly urging green or environmentally responsible buildings along with social distancing and occupancy limitations to become the new norm. In response, standards organizations are raising quality requirements for air quality, sanitation and energy management.

Building leases are very competitive; therefore, owners and operators need to differentiate their portfolios and tenant service offerings to win the market share.

The consequences of building owners and operators failing to address these issues are steep. In the short term, they will have a difficult time convincing tenants it’s safe to come back to the physical space, amounting to increased job loss and diminishing revenue. In the long term, it will stifle their ability to keep pace with the market, resulting in even greater business contraction and potential permanent closure or sell-off.

This is why we’ve created Tapa.

Tapa: smart building management redefined

Tapa provides central control for building systems similar to how Amazon Alexa or Google Home works for the home. Tapa solves the building operators' need for a centralized, control platform to lower costs, unlock new revenue and give occupants direct control of their building experience. Our product is easy to use and connects with third-party hardware necessary to manage your building effectively and maximize value for owners and occupants alike.

Tapa is developing solutions that allow owners, operators and service providers seamlessly integrate, access and manage a buildings’ control systems and BIoT devices in real-time—virtually or locally on-site—all through our simple to use unified application interface.

With Tapa, you’re in control. Manage every aspect of your building with a single platform.

• Sensory Infrastructure Monitoring
• Control Systems Management
• Real-Time Intelligence & Analytics
• Touch-Free Systems for Safe & Healthy Environments
• Energy and Performance Efficiencies
• Security Management
• Emergency Response Integration
• Improved Tenant Experiences

Tapa also gathers actionable intelligence through building operations and occupant interactions, allowing for machine learning and AI-driven IoT technologies to enable a smarter building that has the potential for both greater monetization and enhanced occupant experience.

A seamless, easy-to-use application

Tapa’s centralized platform allows building owners and operators to configure custom dashboards to monitor and view real-time and historic performance data and set tenant permissions allowing them to conveniently and safely control their physical space.

Ensuring a safe and healthy environment has never been more necessary as it is today. Tapa’s Healthy Buildings technology enables individuals to manage doors, elevators, temperature, lighting and shared spaces with their smartphones, keeping themselves and others safe.

3 Easy Steps to Install, Configure and Use

Install the Tapa Edge Server and connect to the building's existing systems communication protocol; typically, BACnet.

Tapa searches the building's systems for controls, sensors, endpoints, and other IoT devices such as a thermostat, that is then registered to the occupant's smartphone.

Once registered, the owner, operator, or occupant gains access and control to the dashboards and devices that have been assigned to them.

Tapa's High-level Architecture 

Impressive growth

Tapa markets to commercial real estate owners, infrastructure service providers, and technology integrators and has secured agreements or LOI's with four major industry-leading building automation providers—SmartBT, BrainBox AI, Alps Controls and Lynxspring—since the product's inception last fall.

Partnering with building operators and more

Tapa partners with building owners, service integrators, service providers, and tenants who all benefit from increased revenues, lower costs, and improved occupant satisfaction. 

	Description	Wants	Tapa Solutions	Outcomes
Building Owners	Individuals, Corporations, Banks, REITs, Investment Firms	New revenue streams & differentiation. Reduce costs and increased building value	Tapa Monitoring Virtual Network Operating Center (NOC) Healthy Building	New revenue streams Market differentiators Cost reduction Increased asset valuation
System Integrators	System Integration firms, SW partners, solution providers	New additional services to offer clients. A unified platform that is easy to install, configure and use.	Tapa Monitoring Virtual NOC Healthy Building Usage Intelligence Tenant	New revenue streams Market differentiator Cost reduction
Service Providers	Building management firms Facilities operations companies	Reduced operating costs, improved service response times and improved billing accuracy.	Tapa Monitoring Virtual NOC Healthy buildings Usage Intelligence Tenant	New revenues Operations cost reduction Improved occupant satisfaction Less tenant turn-over
Tenants	Single companies, Multiple-location companies, Any Tenant	Control their environments such as temperature, lighting, room scheduling, and others.	Tapa Tenant Healthy Building	Improved Quality of Experience (QoE)

 Use Case: Tenant Controls at District Center 555

Smart Buildings Technologies (SmartBT) implemented Tapa’s Tenant solution application along with Distech Controls at District Center 555, a commercial office "Smart Building." Tapa’s application gives occupants direct control of lighting, temperature, and shared conference room scheduling.

“The purpose was to achieve a smart building end-user experience where all systems connected to the backbone are capable of talking to and reacting to each other, in order to achieve a more energy-efficient building,” said Jim Landau, vice president real estate at MetLife Investment Management.  “We also wanted to be able to provide the smart building infrastructure that new and existing tenants can take advantage of for their premises.” “The base building work helps tenants cost-effectively install apps that control HVAC, lighting access control and other systems,” he added.

Monthly recurring revenues

Multiple revenue streams include set-up and configuration, managed services, licensing, service consumption, and data analytics with 90% of revenues being Monthly Recurring Revenues (MRR). Simple, widely available, and inexpensive hardware keeps costs low with expected margins of 70%.

2021 EBIT is targeted at $2.4M and 2022 is $11.4M.

A market on the verge of explosion

Tapa is disrupting a $60.7B global smart buildings market. Already a rapidly growing market pre-pandemic, the Proptech industry will see additional demand drivers for Healthy Buildings, Hands-Free requirements, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and Occupant Cleaning & Safety. Tapa's central platform solution delivers each and more.

Existing solutions only address portions of the current market demand

Current competitors service customers in just one or a few of each of the market segments and functional areas listed below. They traditionally focus specifically on either building control systems, building work-flow processes, or tenant services leaving the owners, operators, and occupants dealing with multiple applications similar to the smart home market a few years ago.

1. Established building control system players such as Honeywell, Siemens, Trane, Johnson Controls and Schneider Electric, deliver computer-based systems installed in large buildings to control and monitor the building's mechanical and electrical equipment such as ventilation, lighting, power systems, fire systems, and security systems. These are the most complete solutions but they are closed proprietary systems that are designed to work with the technology in their own brand and not with other competitors. 
2. Building work-flow process players such as Office App, The Hive, SpaceFlow, Building Engines and Lucid are maintenance ticket and dispatch systems. Building facility managers, engineers and tenants open a ticket (eg.- change the temperature in room 222). The open ticket is assigned to a technician to resolve and then the ticket is closed. While there is some exciting new technology to automate this process, they tend to be standalone solutions with a single purpose interface. If they have open systems, Tapa is designed to integrate these types of products into a more holistic solution with a single user interface.
3. Tenant solution players such as Modo Labs, Particle Space are Cohesion, Comfy and HqO all focus on the softer side of the tenant experience with HR services, messaging, and virtual concierge. These also offer great partnering opportunities with Tapa.

Tapa’s centralized platform works across these three market segments to deliver one seamless user experience. While Tapa has directly incorporated components for many of the solutions, it also makes good business sense to partner with other companies to integrate their solutions and deliver a smarter, centralized easy to use building management solution. Through collaboration and integration, we are turning competitors into partners.

Comparing the Competition

A year of growth

In our first year, we have built the initial infrastructure to position Tapa squarely in an accelerating market that’s ripe for partnership and we are constantly opening new doors. Tapa completed several customer implementations to demonstrate the core platform which connects to the building systems and sensors, and Tenant experience UI which allows tenants to control temperature, lighting and schedule shared conference rooms. 

Now, we plan to raise capital to go to market, build out our solutions sets and grow in the next 18 months.

Additionally, Tapa released its multi-customer SaaS Monitoring platform earlier this year, designed to allow building owners and operators to configure alarms and receive alerts when building systems operate outside of normal parameters (e.g. temperature, energy, air quality, moisture, pressure, etc.) or fail. Tapa Monitoring reduces the need for on-site staff and allows for planning and dispatch only when necessary.

And most recently, Tapa released a new version of the Tapa Healthy Buildings tenant application which expands tenant control with hands-free access to doors and elevators.

Tapa will use the funds raised to accelerate development of new tenant features that provide for air quality readings, occupancy data, cleaning requests and schedules, food ordering and delivery service, and much more. We will also be collecting building performance data to develop Machine Learning and AI systems to enhance the building performance and overall tenant experience.

Our goals:

• Coordinate with Channel partners like Lynxspring and Alps Controls to define the roadmap for our Mobile Tenant application to access thousands of building system integrators.
• Enhance our Tapa Edge Server technology to deploy on our channel partner’s hardware. This will greatly enhance Tapa’s footprint in the market and allow customers to easily turn on Tapa when they are ready.
• Hit our sales target of more than $100k in Monthly Reoccurring Revenue by the end of the 2020.

Bootstrapped to date

Tapa has been owner-funded since inception. We're seeking additional investment to scale our team, build out partnership integrations, and strengthen our brand through marketing efforts.

Building automation & technology  innovation leaders

Paul Meng and Mike Schmitz founded Smart Building Technologies (SmartBT) more than 12 years ago and grew SmartBT into one of the largest building automation implementation companies on the east coast. Recognizing the changes coming to the building automation industry Paul and Mike established the Tapa team as a division of SmartBT in 2019.  

The Tapa division completed several customer projects that allowed them to develop and implement the technology that has become the foundation of Tapa’s platform. The success of these projects led to a spin-off of Tapa and the formal company formation on March 1, 2020.

Paul Meng, Co-Founder

Industry-leading Smart Buildings visionary with over 3 decades innovating the Building Automation industry. Numerous senior leadership and start-up roles, Delivery of state-of-the-art Smart Building solutions using leading edge IoT technology with development of cloud-based software for value-add service to owners and occupants. Paul’s entrepreneurial vision has not only fueled company growth both nationally and internationally but has continually driven advances, leading the industry. At Smart Building Technologies Meng continues his guidance in pursuit of leading-edge technologies developing SmartBT as a leader in integration of IoT and Cloud Based Systems. Meng attended Meramec College in St. Louis and University of Maryland University College. 

Mike Schmitz, Co-Founder

Mike has over 30 years of leadership and ownership experience with multiple generations and types of building controls.  He has specialized  in operations and advanced technical problem solving for eclectic range of systems and personnel and is a highly sought-after industry thought leader in the building Automation industry.  Mike provides oversight of day to day operations and administrative management at the company he co-founded, Smart Buildings Technologies (SmartBT). Mike graduated from Towson State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science, and earned his Commission as a 2LT, Infantry from the Loyola College ROTC program. Mike was also proud to serve in US Army

Ben Steinberg, President

Ben is the President of Tapa Inc. He is a seasoned IT executive with over 25 years experience managing IT strategy for fortune 500, start-ups and non-profit organizations. Ben is an expert at building and scaling large multi-tenant SaaS and PaaS based systems. Ben earned his Masters Business Administration (MBA) from George Mason University.  He completed his undergraduate degree at Radford University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering.