Today, meeting rooms booking software has become a significant part of an agile working environment. Meeting rooms serve as reserved spaces for brainstorming, collaborating, decision making and finally reaching a consensus.
For this very reason, the employees of a workplace need to have access to those resources that help book their meeting rooms ahead of time to avoid inefficient and unproductive discussions, and avoid wasting time due to conflicts.
You can watch your employee productivity and engagement rise with a robust booking software while adding structure to your flexible workplace and encouraging creativity. This is because reserving designated spots prior creates fewer disruptions, helps in conducting a smooth discussion, and ultimately helps in achieving the objective of the meeting. Employees can start working immediately without any unnecessary delays.
A survey conducted by G2 showed that nearly 95% of employees strongly agreed that a good software would increase overall productivity and combat active disengagement.
So, when the amount of time spent on meetings is anywhere between 35% to 50%, depending upon the management, we need a software that will help employees reach their professional potential.
On this page, you will learn-
- What is a booking software
- Difference between SaaS (Software as a service) and on-premise software
- What are the problems you might face when organizing meetings without a booking software?
- What are the advantages of implementing a meeting room booking system?
- How a good booking system can help right-size a company’s real estate portfolio
- Takeaway
WHAT IS A BOOKING SOFTWARE?
Let’s define a booking software.
Booking Software in simple words is a compelling, easy-to-integrate, and powerful software that helps in scheduling and booking of a variety of shared resources (including meeting rooms), for almost any business in the world.
Through a booking software, employees can arrange for a room in advance and don’t have to worry about its non-availability at the time of their meeting. They can use their electronic devices to reserve rooms for themselves.
A booking software provides the much-needed visibility to the employees that optimizes their working environment, all while helping with the proper utilization of the space available.
A booking software works best when it promotes work-life balance. Companies promoting work-life balance and facilitating flexibility have shown double the amount of productivity than those who have not. By setting up a reserved meeting room, employees can truly give their 100% due to an increased employee retention. Shared coworking spaces are known to encourage a more collaborative atmosphere.
Therefore, a booking software is considered to be of paramount importance if you want your organization to have a higher engagement of employees with enhanced productivity.
In the real estate sector, booking software is incredibly helpful as it helps the business keep its records up-to-date and also minimizes the headache of maintaining a manual list of bookings and cancellations, which is always susceptible to human errors.
SaaS VS ON-PREMISE SOFTWARE
Traditionally, people booked meeting rooms or other shared assets using on-premise software. Companies had to develop their own software, which required the involvement of human resources and buying all the necessary IT infrastructure. They had to install servers and customize them according to their needs. When compared to SaaS software, it’s much more expensive due to the upfront costs and recurring high maintenance costs. In case of system failure, recovery takes a long time. Its functionality is also limited, as its speed tends to reduce with the addition of users.
On the other hand, SaaS or Software as a Service is easy to implement and is much cheaper (in terms of staffing as well as infrastructure). It provides security and automatically backs up data. It equips the company with a variety of features and different packages, so they can subscribe to them according to their company’s needs and preferences. A third party or a software vendor helps maintain, update and handle services.
Its implementation process is also not as complicated and SaaS supports higher scalability, with overall better functionality and analytics. You don’t need to hire any extra staff or development teams to create functionalities.
Ezbook is an example of a space and asset SaaS booking software company that can be used for booking rooms, workstations, parking spots, pieces of equipment, etc ahead of time!
PROBLEMS THAT A BOOKING SOFTWARE CAN SOLVE
In today’s information-driven world, where 25 million meetings take place per day, and more than 37 billion dollars are wasted on unproductive and poorly conducted meetings, we need a booking system that can prevent all these mishaps from happening.
Here are a few problems that may arise when organizing meetings and can be solved with the implementation of a booking software-
- Lack of available space due to poor management
- People not showing up due to poor communication
- Double booking of rooms
- Overfilled meeting rooms
- Technological errors
7 ADVANTAGES OF IMPLEMENTING A MEETING ROOM BOOKING SYSTEM
The benefits of a SaaS booking software over an in-house one are many. A few of them are lower costs, better scalability, easier integration, and overall better implementation for businesses of all sizes.
According to a survey, around 85% of respondents confirmed that they use a booking system for meeting rooms, while 27% also used it for workspaces.
So, here is a list of 7 significant advantages of implementing a meeting room booking system in your organization that are known to increase business efficiency-
1. BETTER SPACE MANAGEMENT
A substantial advantage of meeting room booking systems is that it helps in absolute management of spaces at the workplace. Employees become aware of how the space is being utilized, which rooms are popular among the employees, and which ones are not.
With the clear benefit of space management, employees can book meeting with ease. You will always know which rooms are available and at what time, so double booking of rooms is avoided with ease.
2. STREAMLINE COMMUNICATION
With the help of a booking software, you can easily communicate all the details of meetings with all those who are a part of your team. You don’t have to worry about individually informing other employees and take the risk of missing out on a few. Once you schedule a meeting, a notification is sent to all the relevant individuals.
Further adjustments can be made if people are not available, and the meeting can be set accordingly in the available meeting room, so there are no unnecessary delays.
3. EMPOWERING WORKFORCE
A booking software also reduces administrative workload by actively urging employees to be more productive and empowers them to take their own decisions and work on their tasks for the benefit of your company, and reduces administrative inefficiency altogether.
The employees will have a clearer view of the working of their departments and will take up their own resolutions as a team rather than having to run to the department head for every small task.
4. EASY TO SET UP & USE
You can implement a SaaS booking software with great speed as they are user-friendly. Once your company subscribes to the preferred software, it’s available for use instantly.
You do not need to rely on IT professionals to set it up for you.
5. REDUCES THE CHANCES OF HUMAN ERRORS
With the help of a meeting room booking system, employees can schedule meetings with their phones or laptops easily, without the need to individually check employee schedules on multiple systems to get the meeting arranged.
This makes the scheduling of meetings simpler and reduces the chances of human errors.
6. PLAN FOR FUTURE NEEDS AHEAD OF TIME
A booking software will also help you keep track of your employees and how they are using the office space. You can see what rooms are being used and which are not, which can help you plan further for real estate needs.
7. MAKING THE MOST OUT OF THE SPACE AVAILABLE
With the ever-changing work environment, plans tend to change. Maybe the employees change the date of the meeting or decide to conduct it at another place. A booking software will help you update any last-changes or cancellations that might occur and lead to unused rooms being utilized.
HOW A GOOD BOOKING SYSTEM CAN HELP RIGHT-SIZE YOUR COMPANY’S REAL ESTATE PORTFOLIO
Right-sizing does not necessarily mean downsizing. It simply means optimizing the current space by measuring how it is being currently dealt with and implementing effective facilities management trends, which ultimately leads to a well-functioning workplace.
With the changing times, the market too has changed greatly as well as our expectations of office space. You need to determine the company’s space utilization for increasing its saving potential.
Here are a few signs that show that you may need to right-size your real estate portfolio-
- Inefficient productivity at the workplace
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- Underperforming assets
- Overcrowded workspace
- Too many empty spaces
- Workspace unavailability
- Erratic decline or growth of occupancy
All businesses can benefit significantly by assessing their space utilization to resize their company portfolio, be it expansion or contraction.
The most fundamental benefit of right-sizing your real estate portfolio is optimizing your business’s workplace spatial needs. Measuring and attaining proper space utilization for your company will also help increase employee efficiency and contribute to a more constructive work culture. With the right data planning, you will have a more efficient workplace, with higher employee morale and lower turnover rates. Lastly, a properly executed plan of right-sizing the company’s portfolio will lead to a considerable ROI (Rate of Investment) on the space, be it leased or owned.
Proper utilization of space helps track how many employees use a specific space for work throughout a particular time period. Actionable utilization data comes from accurate workplace analytics, which helps level down meeting rooms. When the workspace is designed in accordance with the needs of the employees, that means the company is using its entire area to its full potential.
CONCLUSION
A meeting room booking software will help you track the usage and availability of office spaces and make the most out of it. As we have gathered, businesses thrive in cost-effective and space-efficient workplaces.
The average density rates have changed significantly since the pre-pandemic era, and 73% of employees reportedly stated that they need a better reason to show up to work than just the company’s expectations, which has led to a rise in a hybrid working model. This is where the right sizing of the real estate portfolio comes into play. With the help of peak metrics (maximum demand of a particular space), your company can redesign the office layout according to the space demand, which adapts to the needs of the employees.
how are these 3 items related to right-sizing the real estate portfolio?
The first 3 points were concluded to be the signs for right-sizing real estate portfolio because inadequate workspace negatively affects the productivity level. They were written in accordance with the expansion of the workspace and investing in spatial intelligence by including breakout rooms, collaboration spaces, better storage space, etc to avoid cramming and disorganized office layout. Low morale, problems in focusing and stress are also caused by inadequate workspace design. Well-utilized spaces are better than over-utilized ones as they lead to a better experience for employees. The points were meant to talk about recognizing over-utilized areas and further increasing them to continue high employee engagement. However, I can see that without a detailed explanation, these points may come off as a little confusing so I can remove them. Providing a detailed explanation for them would have increased the word limit by a huge margin so I didn’t do that.