How workplace management systems streamlines resource booking

How a workplace management system that integrates with Outlook and Office 365 streamlines resource booking

The more time a production process takes, the more costs it incurs. That’s why ‘time is money’ and that’s why reducing the time it takes to deliver a business outcome is a way of both increasing your output and reducing the cost per unit of work. It is also why an excellent way of reducing costs and increasing revenue is to streamline your workflows, enabling you to do more in less time.

One of the most famous examples of workflow streamlining are the improvements made in the Formula One racing pit stop to complete tire changes and other maintenance functions in the fastest possible time. A reduction of two seconds in average pit stop times over twenty years might seem slow and insignificant as efficiency improvements go, but when pit stops can now last less than two seconds, that’s over a 100% improvement in performance. And in the impossibly fast world of Formula One, every second counts.

Similarly, streamlining pays dividends when applied to the tasks people working in your company are obliged to do, like pit stops, regularly. Add up the time gained if every member of your staff makes efficiency savings whenever they carry out a particular unavoidable task and the time saved could have a serious positive impact on the bottom line. A perfect example is what every business stands to gain by improving the efficiency of its workplace booking systems.

Integrated workplace management

Workplace booking systems are an inevitable part of corporate life. On a regular basis, everyone in your organisation needs to be able to find a room in which to host a meeting, or at least be able to check which room their next meeting is being held in. Workplace booking systems have traditionally been operated by humans using tools such as spreadsheets, notebooks and whiteboards. Unfortunately, workplace booking systems operated by humans are prone to inconvenient delays and errors. Forgotten and misplaced reservations lead to double bookings and wasted time. Lost reservation information leads to inadequate provision of facilities and ineffective meetings.

Waiting for an opportunity to communicate with the person responsible for coordinating meeting room use causes more wasted time and frustration. Streamlining this process – reducing errors as well as making it faster and less labour intensive for everyone involved, makes a huge difference to your business.

Traditional resource booking processes are also vulnerable to security breaches. GDPR enforces the legal responsibility of a company to protect customer and employee data including all identifiable information, such as names. Losing a notebook or having a computer system failure could lead to key client information being not only lost but leaked into the hands of competitors and the public. The penalties of such are costly with fines into the millions, which reinforces the importance of integrated workplace management software.

There are many ways a workplace booking system and room booking workflow can be improved and one of the best things a business can do is to introduce meeting room booking software to automate tasks that staff would otherwise have to spend time on. Even better is choosing online room booking software that is accessible from anywhere at any time by those that need it. Being able to book a room via an app as soon as you think of it, instead of when you next have access to the right computer, avoids wasted opportunities as well as wasted time.Visitor management and resource booking often go hand in hand. When visitors are coming to your facilities, a meeting room and parking are often provided to the guest. These resources need booking and communicating to the visitor effectively which can be achieved through using advanced online booking software. Resource booking software also allows staff to send invites and information to visitors regarding an upcoming meeting or conference call. This advanced system reflects professionalism while also providing visitors, stakeholders and partner companies with an accessible, straightforward system to receive and share key information regarding upcoming meetings.

It can be challenging to transition a workforce to new operating systems, and there is a range of workplace management software packages that integrate with popular systems to enable an easier streamlining of practices. Best of all is choosing online meeting room booking software that integrates with Microsoft Office 365 and Outlook, which means that your staff can benefit from its features and added functionality within systems they already use daily.

When you add up the time spent looking for a separate application for booking a room, opening it, navigating and operating it, closing it and remembering where you were before you went on that diversion, you could easily find you’ve taken five minutes to do something that would have taken you 30 seconds if you had simply had to fill in a few extra fields or tick boxes in Outlook. Add up the number of times this happens in an organisation of 100 employees, each of them performing this task once a day and in a week – the difference between the two situations could add up to the average cost of an employee in that company. In a business of 1,000 employees that would pay for 10 members of staff.

This is when a business can truly see the benefits of an integrated resource booking system – the time, therefore costs, saved through employing a multi-purpose workplace management system offer a better return on investment and increased productivity among the workforce.

How Matrix Booking streamlines resource booking

Matrix Booking is an online booking system that was designed to improve meeting room and resource booking workflow in a variety of ways. The software can be used on a variety of devices including mobile for staff to have the ability to rearrange and manage bookings when out of the office. The feature is particularly effective for agency and consultation businesses who have staff out of the office for client meetings regularly.

The software has beautiful, user-friendly interfaces of its own and requires little or no training to use. They have been developed to be accessible to staff and even use voice command technology to operate if the user prefers. Another key factor to why Matrix Booking improves room booking workflows is by integrating with MS Outlook and Office, so it is possible to make use of the software without ever having to use the new Matrix Booking interface. If preferred, the resource booking and workplace management features that Matix Booking offers can be used directly from the current systems your workforce already uses, such as MS Outlook and Office applications. This can be less demanding for your staff as the booking software essentially upgrades the systems your workforce are accustomed to.

In the case studies section of the Matrix Booking website are numerous stories of organisations that have benefited from implementing the software in a multitude of different ways. The Ministry of Justice, The Department of Health, utility services, charities and local governments each had unique situations and problems that Matrix Booking was able to provide solutions to, but all of them have benefitted from Matrix Booking’s integration with MS Outlook and Office 365. For all these organisations the resulting time and cost savings have added to the value of choosing to implement resource booking software in the first place. Matrix Booking software has allowed these businesses to create faster resource booking processes at a cheaper cost than previous systems.