“Varala Insight”, a facility management solution developed by the Co-Innovation Lab team, helps Varala Sports Institute optimize occupancy, reduce energy costs, and improve operational efficiency.
The Challenge: Managing a Busy Campus Without Clear Data Visibility
Varala Sports Institute in Tampere is one of Finland’s leading sports education and training centers, welcoming athletes, students, companies, and visitors year-round. While the institute had access to extensive occupancy and booking data through its CRM/ERP systems, this information was mainly available in reports, tables, and non-visual formats, leaving staff without a clear, intuitive, and visual overview of building occupancy, seasonal demand, or underused facilities.
The lack of visual clarity made analysis time-consuming and pattern recognition difficult. This increased energy and cleaning costs and limited opportunities for targeted sales campaigns or renovations. What was missing was not data itself, but a clear and visual way to turn existing CRM/ERP data into actionable insights.
The Solution: Varala Insight — A Data-Driven Dashboard
To address these challenges, a student team from the Co-Innovation Lab developed Varala Insight, a web-based dashboard that brings together Varala’s booking and occupancy data into a single view. Valara operational staff can see real-time occupancy across buildings and corridors and switch between daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly views. Sauna usage insights help identify recurring low-usage time slots, supporting targeted campaign planning. Management can export reports with just one click, eliminating the need for time-consuming manual data compilation. Together, these features give Varala a clear, data-driven understanding of how its facilities are used and where efficiency improvements can be made.
Impact: Smarter Operations, Lower Costs, and Greater Sustainability
Varala Insight helps the institute reduce unnecessary heating, optimize cleaning and maintenance, and plan marketing campaigns based on real usage patterns. The result is improved sustainability and lower operational costs. “What impressed us most was how quickly the students translated a real operational challenge into a concrete and visual draft solution. The demo application provided a clear starting point for developing a solution that suits our operations and builds on our existing CRM/ERP data.” – Petteri Luukkainen (Director of HR, Administration & Development at Varala Sports Institute)
Collaboration: An International Team Effort
The project was delivered by an international student team from Finland and Germany as part of the Co-Innovation Lab, with six master’s students from Munich University of Applied Science, and five bachelor’s students from Tampere University. The team collaborated closely with Varala’s facility manager throughout the process, ensuring the solution directly supports Varala’s real operational needs.
“Working with an international student team brought new perspectives that we would not necessarily have reached on our own. This collaboration demonstrated how student projects can create genuine value for organizations, not just academic outcomes.” – Petteri Luukkainen
About the Co-Innovation Lab
This solution was designed in a project of the Co-Innovation Lab of Hochschule München guided by the lecturers Prof. Jessica Slamka, Prof. Dr. Holger Günzel, Prof. Dr. Lars Brehm, and Mr. Hans-Jürgen Haak together with Anne-Mari Stenbacka and Jere Käpyaho (TAMK). The Co-Innovation Lab offers students a virtual platform for learning how to work as a consulting team by creating temporary partnerships between companies, students, and lecturers.
For more information about the Co-Innovation Lab, contact holger.guenzel@hm.edu or lars.brehm@hm.edu.
Author: Van Huong Dang
- Project results: follows soon