Beyond booking: the frontrunners of workplace experience apps

The inaugural Magic Quadrant for Workplace Experience Applications by Gartner offers a clear view of the role workplace apps can play in the future of work. What began as a set of tools focused on desk booking and coordination now sits within a broader platform layer concerned with how people, space and services connect. 

At its core, the category centres on workplace experience (WEX) applications – platforms that support how employees plan, navigate and engage with the office, while giving organisations the data needed to manage space and operations more effectively. 

What stands out is how far the category’s scope has expanded. Functions that previously sat across multiple tools – reservations, wayfinding, communications, analytics and services – are being drawn together into more unified platforms. Vendors are building towards a layer that sits across the workplace, rather than alongside it. 

The WORKTECH Guide to Workplace Apps positions workplace apps as the ‘digital front door’ to the workplace – the layer through which employees access spaces, services and each other, and through which the workplace itself is increasingly navigated and understood. 

The concentration of vendors in the Leaders and Visionaries quadrants suggests a market moving beyond point solutions towards broader platform plays. 

Platform in practice: Modo Labs 

Identified as a ‘Leader’ in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, Modo Labs reflects the broader shift towards more unified workplace platforms. Its Modo Workplace solution brings together desk and room booking, wayfinding, communications and workplace services into a single, configurable interface, supported by a wide ecosystem of integrations. 

The platform is designed to sit across existing systems rather than replace them, using open APIs and a large connector network to link workplace, HR and IT environments. This ‘unify, not replace’ approach supports more gradual, cross-functional rollout, particularly in complex organisations. 

In practice, this positions Modo Labs as part of a wider move away from fragmented app stacks towards more connected workplace experiences – where booking, communication and service layers are brought together to better support how teams coordinate time in the office. 

Fragmentation, even as platforms advance 

Many organisations are still relying on a patchwork of systems – separate tools for booking, communication, access, analytics and services. While these may work individually, they rarely connect in ways that feel coherent. 

The outcome is a workplace that functions, but not always smoothly. Employees move between systems to complete simple tasks, while information is repeated or lost between platforms. For organisations, data remains distributed, limiting the ability to build a clear picture of how the workplace is actually being used. This creates a growing gap between what the technology enables and what is experienced in practice. 

Integration is often seen as the solution, and the Magic Quadrant reflects this, with strong emphasis on connections to HR systems, identity management, IoT devices and workplace management tools. But connection alone does not resolve fragmentation. 

Bringing systems together without a clear operating model can simply concentrate complexity into a single layer. Platforms become more comprehensive, but not necessarily easier to use or more effective. 

The workplace as a coordination system 

A more coordinated model of workplace experience is starting to take shape. 

Workplace apps are being used to organise when people come in, who they come in with, and what they actually do once they are there. They bring together information on attendance, space and activity, making it easier for teams to plan time in the office with some intention. 

That changes the role of the technology. It’s not just about booking a desk or finding a room. It starts to influence how work is organised across the week – when teams overlap, how spaces get used, and how services respond to what’s happening on the ground. 

Seen this way, the workplace is less about access and more about timing and coordination. The app’s role is to help those things come together in a way that feels deliberate, not left to chance. 

Systems thinking 

The Magic Quadrant shows a market moving towards integrated, platform-based approaches. Organisations, in many cases, are still working through earlier stages of that transition. Decisions are often made at the level of individual tools – comparing features or interfaces – rather than considering how the full experience fits together. This creates a disconnect between what platforms are designed to do and how they are used in practice. 

Selecting a platform is only one part of the process. Equal attention needs to be given to how systems connect, how responsibilities are shared across teams, and how success is defined. Real estate, IT and HR all shape the experience, but often operate independently. Without alignment, even well-integrated platforms can fall short. 

Where this leaves workplace leaders 

Workplace apps are becoming a central layer in how organisations manage and experience the office. The question is less about whether to adopt them, and more about how to use them in a way that creates coherence. For workplace leaders, this means thinking beyond tools and towards systems. 

Those that align technology, data and experience will be better placed to create workplaces that are easier to navigate, more responsive to change, and more consistent in the value they deliver. Others may find themselves with the right components in place, but without the structure needed to make them work together. 

Explore the WORKTECH Guide to Workplace Apps for a detailed overview of leading platforms, capabilities and the key considerations shaping workplace app strategy today.