Every company has things they struggle with, but a universal issue that plagues many companies is inefficiencies surrounding booking meeting rooms.
Think about it: how much time do you and your employees spend booking meetings and communicating details, only to walk over to room you supposedly booked to see another meeting taking place?
Not only do meeting inefficiencies waste time, but they also waste money. An estimated 37 billion dollars is spent on unproductive meetings.
Luckily, there’s a solution—one that seamlessly integrates into your office so that you can cut down on the time and effort spent booking meetings.
What is a meeting room booking system? A meeting room booking system is an online reservation-based system for meeting rooms in a workplace.
What is room booking? Room booking provides the ability for employees to book a room for meetings or to work in. Also referred to as room scheduling software, good room booking allows employees to easily find the right room for their needs and book it on the spot.
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This software streamlines the entire process of booking meetings by taking out the guesswork and effort.
With the right meeting room booking software, you can:
Also, meeting room booking software is an excellent tool for facilities managers to gain insight as to how rooms are being used and how often. This real-time data helps them see office space usage from a holistic point of view, and as a result, can help them make more informed decisions about office planning.
What makes for a great meeting room booking solution? Like any software you use to power your office, the meeting room booking software you choose should be secure, scalable, accessible across devices, and easy to use.
Let’s take a look at three ways room booking software can benefit your company.
Wasted space is a major productivity killer, but with meeting room booking software, facilities managers can get the full picture of room usage and make adjustments thanks to real-time data. Because of this insight, there is greater space management transparency.
Meeting room booking software keeps track of who is using those workspaces, which makes planning things like the number of rooms needed in an office and the size of each meeting room much easier for facilities managers.
Facilities managers can be more precise when planning spaces, and create areas that remedy a particular need or fill a gap in current meeting room options. For example, if a facilities manager sees that employees tend to book entire meeting rooms to work alone, they can create more hot desks to free up larger meeting spaces for teams who need them.
With this software, facilities managers can increase office efficiency, and employees can make the most of optimized spaces because they are tailored to their behavior and preferences, which minimizes waste.
No more conflicts over double-booked rooms or miscommunicated meeting locations. Employees can book rooms with confidence due to real-time room availability viewing and booking. Meeting room booking software increases time efficiencies by eliminating any margin for wasted time or space.
For instance, let’s say someone on the marketing team booked a room for their weekly status meeting. Only, the meeting was moved offsite, and the employee who scheduled the meeting didn’t release the room back into the system; therefore, other employees couldn’t use the room, thinking it was occupied. Meeting room booking software solves that issue by automatically freeing up the room if no one checks into it after a set time.
This software streamlines the process of booking a room and communicating room details, so your team can spend less time planning the meeting and more time meeting. Accurate information means increased productivity, and less time spent trying to figure out where to assemble.
Meetings are an indispensable part of any business, and they take up valuable time. On average, 40% of employees waste up to 30 minutes per day looking for a meeting space according to a report from Steelcase. What’s more, inefficient meetings cost roughly $1,800 in excess email communication and between $2,100 and $4,100 in poor communication per employee annually. This misallocation of time and resources is costing your company.
With that being said, it’s imperative to make meetings as productive as possible by cutting down on unnecessary steps that waste time and energy. How can companies do that?
Making it simple to book meetings within the platforms companies already use regularly (such as Slack and Skype), allows employees to concentrate on their work instead of jumping through the hoops of booking a meeting. The right meeting room booking software saves a great deal of time when added up across an entire company.
Once you’ve implemented your meeting room booking software, how can you be sure you’re using it to its fullest capacity?
Implementing sensors, along with meeting room booking software, can enhance the software’s capabilities. Sensors can collect additional meeting room usage insight due to their ability to detect physical presence—or lack thereof—in each room.
Per the earlier example, if a sensor were installed in the booked room where the marketing team was supposed to meet, the sensor would detect after a certain period that no one was in the room and would release it back into the system. In a way, sensors serve as a safeguard against inefficiencies caused by human error or disregard.
But sensors go beyond making up for human miscalculation. These “smart” devices can supplement the room usage data collected by the meeting room booking software, and help facilities managers better optimize the workplace.
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Meeting room booking software can completely transform the way your company schedules and holds meetings for the better. This innovative software works to solve costly workplace missteps that are causing unproductivity and inefficient time use.
The right meeting room booking software not only benefits employees in multiple ways but it also empowers facilities managers to optimize the workplace using data-backed insights.
Looking for a meeting room booking solution that will increase your workplace efficiencies and save money? Contact our team today, and we’ll help come up with a solution that fits your company’s needs.
Photo Credits: Gerd Altmann, Headway, Rawpixel, Christina Morillo, Rawpixel, Gerd Altmann, cdu445