EDF Training Campus

The EDF Training Campus wanted an integrated booking system that would efficiently manage every part of what the centre offers and link reservations for guest at the venue to the conference they were attending – this included booking of conference rooms, accommodation and transport.

Very different to a typical office-based solution, Keytree was tasked with creating a simple system that would allow booking everything together at once as well as extending the system to include airport shuttle-bus seat reservations. As the project develops, visitors will be able to book their place on a course, a car parking space, or bus seat with visibility of their scheduled appointments and travel arrangements all on one app.

Matrix Booking enabled the EDF Training Campus to re-invent how the centre operates and provided a unique user experience through a personalised app, with developments to include live travel tracking and Fitbit devices.

Ministry of Justice

The vast majority of MoJ staff work at their central London HQ and to improve staff productivity and work/life balance; the MoJ created a range of Commuter Hubs offering bookable desks and meeting rooms, located principally outside London – used by staff instead of going into a central London office.

The Commuter Hubs programme has cut commuting time, increased staff satisfaction, and reduced the demand for desks within costly central London offices. By focusing on the needs of MoJ staff, the Commuter Hub programme has delivered a sustainable and functional working ecosystem.

The MoJ deployed Matrix Booking and Matrix Welcome to manage both its corporate estate and the rapidly growing portfolio of Commuter Hubs and partner organisations. The initial hub locations targeted London commuters to ease the burden on the central London MoJ estate – as the network grew, a similar service was provided in areas where there was demand.

Department of Health

The Department of Health was confronted with consolidating over 40 different in-house room booking solutions to reduce costs while also incorporating video-conferencing capabilities. Matrix Booking provided an easy to use solution that required no training and presented a single view of bookings across all of their main buildings, helping optimise resource usage.

The Matrix Booking team delivered a fully prepared system featuring all required resources including security groupings to restrict initial visibility. This approach gave the Department of Health full control of the rollout and expansion of the system with powerful and flexible self-administration tools.

Using a mobile-first approach, the Matrix Booking team created a simple and effective interface, which could be re-arranged depending on requirements during migration from numerous other systems. Prioritising design and accessibility, Matrix Booking is always evolving and one of the few resource management tools that has achieved WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility compliance.

Shelby Group

Shelby Group is a boutique consulting firm based in North America, providing procurement services to Fortune 500 companies, who sought out Matrix Booking for a room booking and hot-desking solution that could grow with the company.

Having an existing solution that was difficult to use, Shelby Group needed a simple system that would allow staff to search for a desk or meeting room by a given time, date or location and provide management level control capabilities. Following initial discussions, a demo and a bespoke training session for the company administrator – the installation of Matrix Booking was completed in less than one month across an initial two sites, meeting all of Shelby Group’s user needs.

As requested by Shelby Group, the Matrix Booking team set up real-time facilities management including auto-cancel reservation options, admin controlled advanced booking options plus security levels to control access to particular meeting rooms and desks.

Action for Children

Action for Children chose Matrix Booking to manage its hot-desking strategy at its busy London office to help deal with the growing number of employees that want to use the popular destination. Previously desks were available on a first come, first served basis but with limited desk space, some employees would arrive at the office and have nowhere to sit – not the ideal start to a day if you have a long commute.

The charity wanted to give better visibility to its employees as to the available space in the office and a quick and easy way to book and release space – helping to avoid wasted journeys to the office on days when it was at full capacity.

Matrix Booking allows staff to search and select their desk, which is based not only on the time and duration but also on the features and facilities available. Staff can check desk availability before they start their journey to the office. If nothing is available, they can make alternative arrangements or work from home.

Brisbane City Council

In less than six weeks, after a telephone conversation and demo using WebEx and screen sharing technology, Brisbane City Council had signed on and were using the Matrix Booking system to streamline their workstation booking processes for all staff.

The solution was set up, and a kiosk mapped to the council’s floor plan allowing users to view the exact location of the desks they wanted to book – with instant access to all information via a mobile app. Despite time zone restrictions and working from opposite sides of the globe, the Matrix Booking team provided high levels of deployment flexibility and demonstrated how simple it is to install a bespoke system that provides a seamless way for staff to manage desk bookings.

As well, Keytree’s Australia office was available and on hand to help Brisbane City Council, Australia’s largest local government, with any urgent questions during deployment.

High Prairie School Division #48

High Prairie School Division No. 48 is an education provider based in Alberta, Canada who sought out Matrix Booking for a reliable facilities management system. The organisation needed to provide and monitor vehicle access to staff traveling to distant partner schools throughout the region.

Matrix Booking is flexible, scalable and can adapt to manage any ‘bookable’ item including vehicles. Following a WebEx demo, the School Division decided that Matrix Booking was the perfect solution for the job with the added value of providing real-time data on their fleet of vehicles including locations, movements, purpose, who has them booked and when they are due back.

Following a rapid implementation, the School Division was able to gain full visibility and insight into booking volumes and utilisation levels during peak usage periods. As Matrix Booking is a SaaS and ‘pay-as- you-go’ solution, the business has easily enabled room booking management as well.

Merton Council

Merton Council supports a population of more than 200,000 residents but managing room usage at the head office plus the coordination of visitors was becoming a challenge. The local authority wanted a system that would meet all visitor management needs and also help introduce and support flexible working – Matrix Booking was asked to create a new and simple way to manage all meeting room bookings and a seamless way to co-ordinate visitor management.

The council is housed in the Merton Civic Centre and hosts members of the general public and corporate visitors; the latter attend for prearranged appointments but as all visitors use the same reception area checking in visitors was a challenging process to manage.

To ease the pressure on the reception team, Matrix Booking implemented a self-service kiosk to fast track visitors for meetings, who use a unique passcode, issued with their meeting invite, to self check-in using the kiosk. The passcode automatically triggers an email (sent to the host), confirming their visitor is in reception and ready to be collected.

The National Probation Service

The National Probation Service (NPS) is one of the many departments within the Ministry of Justice using Matrix Booking – a key component behind the success of the UK government’s Commuter Hubs Programme. Matrix Booking initially implemented in the NPS North East region, with a six-week window for users to use and experience the system. Following the successful trial, the entire regional implementation was then executed remotely by the Matrix Booking team – by utilising a templated approach via a suite of collaboration tools to ensure maximum efficiency, the Matrix Booking team were able to deliver the system on time and on budget.

The team at Matrix Booking also created a set of business rules to simplify and standardise the process of room and desk booking across the different regions. No longer does this workforce need to make long or difficult commutes to one fixed office space but instead uses Matrix Booking to find and book the Commuter Hub most convenient to them and their lifestyle. The whole process empowers a modern and demanding workforce by offering them choice and flexibility.

Devon Partnership NHS Trust

To deal with growing patient numbers, the Devon Partnership NHS Trust was moving towards new larger ‘clinical hubs’ – the perfect opportunity to integrate a safe and secure room and resource booking system that would be cost effective to manage and could scale with them as they grew.

The Trust wanted a system that could be quickly implemented and maintain a range of requirements including internal room booking, car parking and desk booking right through to reserving ‘clinical rooms’ for patients and consultants. All these facilities are now bookable through one centralised solution via an easy to use app.

Due to the variety of security settings available to NHS administrators, the system is tailored, so the right people see the right resources and users only see what’s appropriate. The Trust can now see all meeting rooms, desks, consulting rooms and car parking spaces on a single cloud-based system and by using a multi-tiered security setup, the facilities teams can instantly control who can access and book which resources.

Newark & Sherwood Homes

Newark and Sherwood Homes manage 5,500 homes that belong to Newark and Sherwood District Council and decided that the inclusion of a new office into their estate would be the perfect time to implement a superior room booking solution.

The previous system was Outlook-based and was not the most efficient way to book desks and had limited flexibility but to manage the new office, which would have a higher density of staff, Newark and Sherwood Homes wanted a solution that was easy to use, promoted flexible working and allowed the management of hot-desking.

The housing management company had a broad range of booking requirements, all of which were incorporated into the organisation’s infrastructure ensuring certain rooms were available to the relevant users at particular times. The approach and bespoke development that was undertaken by Matrix Booking is a clear demonstration of the flexibility on offer from the facilities management solution – accommodating as much variation as needed by the business to ensure the smooth running of operations.

Co-innovation projects

Matrix Booking provided the Premier League with a solution that combined multiple workplace management procedures into one central system to manage visitors and resource bookings including meeting rooms and desks.

Building on the existing set-up, the Premier League also wanted to keep track of external visitors entering their building who arrive without an invite – they wanted a solution that would allow reception teams to add visitors to the system, check them into the building and that also integrated into a detailed report. To tackle this challenge, Matrix Booking developed the Guestbook App, to manage all external visitors entering and leaving their London HQ.

Guests with an invite appear on the visitor report, prompting reception to contact the meeting host and for guests without an invite – the app records relevant details and feeds the data into the visitor report. This process was requested by the Premier League to help to securely manage and store information to support GDPR compliance.