Newark and Sherwood Homes
Challenge
Newark and Sherwood Homes is a council owned housing management company set up in 2004 to manage, maintain and improve council accommodation in the east midlands. The organisation manages 5,500 homes belonging to Newark and Sherwood District Council and decided that the inclusion of a new office in their estate would be the perfect time to implement a superior room booking solution.
The existing system was Outlook-based, was not the most efficient 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.
Meeting room specifics
Due to internal requirements, a selection of meeting rooms needed to be visible to one particular team for three days a week and accessible to another team for the remaining two days of the same week. The team at Matrix provided some options but eventually created a second room – a virtual duplicate room. Effectively, the same meeting room appears on the system twice but with access given to each team accordingly to meet their daily booking needs. One team can access meeting rooms on certain days, and the other can only see these rooms on the days the company wants them to see. This approach demonstrates the flexibility of Matrix – accommodating as much variation as needed by the business.
Delivering hot-desking support
The housing organisation is a very structured company with access levels provided for varying positions and the introduction of hot-desking and room booking across three buildings, including the new office, was an essential ingredient of the solution.
Outcome
The new solution now allows an individual team at Newark and Sherwood Homes to access meeting rooms on certain days while other teams can only access these rooms on days specified by the administrator. 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. The nature of the SaaS solution enables users to hot-desk and achieve their flexible working needs as necessary.
