Today’s business world is one of dynamism and collaboration. Offices and people are spread out geographically across various time zones. Collaboration takes place in meeting rooms with technologies such as video conferencing and shared screens. However, we still find businesses that do not use a room booking system.
Consider this scenario: You have a client presentation. But when the time comes, you find that another team is hogging your favourite meeting room. What do you do now?
According to a report, 4 in 10 office workers spend around 60 minutes every week searching for available meeting rooms.
Consider another scenario: You don’t know which team in your office will book which meeting room. So, all the meeting rooms have electricity and Air Cons running, waiting for people to occupy them.
A single empty meeting room can cost your business £5,355 per year. This is a massive waste.
The above-mentioned reasons should motivate you to go for some sort of meeting room booking system. But you may still face problems:
Your employees use a shared Google calendar that shows all the meetings but does not offer conflict resolution.
You have a receptionist who manages meeting room allocations. This becomes a logistical nightmare for the receptionist who must juggle conflicting reservation requests.
Territory protection is a problem where employees on a certain floor permanently book meeting rooms on that floor.
There is no clear-cut policy. Certain employees get access to specific roles. Others are rejected for no reason.
Poor usage where one room is booked back-to-back while another remains empty.
With a robust meeting room booking system like ecobook, there are several benefits that you can have for your business. Below, we discuss some of them:
Eliminate Conflicts and Double-Booking Automatically
Ecobook will automatically detect and prevent users from booking already booked meeting rooms. This method of detection and prevention eliminates the time taken to find a vacant meeting room.
Multiple Methods of booking
Choosing ecobook can simplify the process of finding and reserving meeting rooms. You can access ecobook through a browser or through a mobile app.
Employees can even use room display panels mounted on the wall outside of meeting rooms to find and reserve rooms. Employees who use Microsoft Outlook can reserve rooms right from within Outlook through a plug-in.
Access Control & Rights
With proper implementation of access control policies and usage rights, you can prevent your employees from booking bigger rooms like board rooms or conference rooms for smaller meetings. Workflow approvals provide oversight into special rooms such as auditoriums, labs, and classrooms that are required for important meetings and specific events.
Delegation of responsibility
With a web-based/app-based room booking system, self-service provides users with the power to control their meeting bookings. The receptionist no longer needs to schedule meetings or reserve rooms. Employees can do that on their own. This encourages coordination between the employees to take over empty meeting rooms.
Coordination of Services
Ecobook allows employees to request services such as manpower for the setup of space and catering or ask for resources such as AV equipment, conferencing units and laptops along with the room reservation.
You can track all meeting-related activities from a single interface. Changes to meeting timings and room location are seamlessly transmitted to the various parties involved such as the kitchen and resources team eliminating the need to update the parties through email for every change.
This can be a serious time-saver and a confidence booster for the meeting requestors while simplifying the life of the resources and catering team.
Better Usage of rooms
You can improve room usage by implementing proper controls and a convenient usage policy. Ecobook provides insights into room usage patterns and can help management better understand their office space and plan accordingly.
Conclusion
In a modern office, it is imperative to have a meeting room booking system like ecobook that replaces manual techniques of room reservation. With ecobook, offices can see significant improvement in productivity while experiencing better office space usage.
Business rules and policies can help make rooms available to people who need them the most. Various methods of interacting with the system can address the specific needs of employees who are desk-bound or on the move.
Do you want to know how adopting a desk booking system benefits your organization?
Read our article on 8 Benefits of a Desk Booking System For The New Office
