Meeting room booking systems

Desk Booking Systems

Introduction

Intelligent Workspace Booking Systems improve productivity and office communication, they also promote agile hybrid working. In today’s competitive recruitment market employees see flexible working as a right not a privilege. A structured, flexible working policy and the infrastructure to manage it efficiently will inevitably be viewed favorably by prospective employees.

Effective management of hot desks and office hoteling areas is vital to ensure corporations operate at peak efficiency and can take advantage of opportunities to reduce real estate costs. Reducing the number of fixed desks can have a major impact on profitability for companies but for service users the flexibility of hybrid working can lead to an improved work/life balance.

Maintaining a Healthy Workplace

The Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced the need for clear workspace status indication and better space management. ResourceXpress workspace licensing is designed to meet these demands in the most cost-effective way to bring large numbers of varied resources under centralized management. Thankfully the Covid-19 pandemic is largely behind us but some of the measures used to combat cross infection in the workplace are very good practice as part of a modern Health & Safety working strategy.

Low-cost Workspace Management

A low-cost introduction to workspace management can be achieved with a software only solution. Use maps to search and find available spaces, navigate the office campus and check in/out of bookings ensuring that reservations that are pre-booked, are honoured. Fixed kiosks strategically positioned throughout the office are a good way to allow users to interact with a resource booking system and find previously booked resources. A mobile app showing similar information gives users the power to search/book and way-find with ease using their own smart phones or tablets. Adding point of use status indicating desk devices with RFID readers further enhances ease of use and productivity for managing desks and spaces.

Providing broad access to booking facilities at the point of use from the desktop, strategically placed kiosks or by using mobile apps, makes the workspace booking system more effective. ResourceXpress workspace booking software is available as a one off perpetual or annual subscription license. The server can be installed on premise or virtual cloud. ResourceXpress is also available as a SaaS annual subscription with multi tenant or dedicated server arrays. The service can easily be scaled up from a single office up to multiple offices in different countries across the globe with geo resilience and load balanced, managed services.

Whether your organization has 10 or 10,000 colleagues, it’s vital that the workforce can access essential resources with ease and at a time that meets their business needs. Having a flexible working policy and the infrastructure to support it is vital if organizations are to remain competitive.

Important Features

Meeting room booking systems
Workspace Booking Hardware

Top 10 Tips for a Successful Desk Booking System

  • Use local resources not necessarily integrated with calendaring and scheduling systems

  • Have several strategies to reduce no show or ghost meetings

  • Facilitate spontaneous workspace bookings (Flexibility when booking desks and resources is vital)

  • Ensure regular reporting and analytics of system usage is acted on

  • Choose a system that is flexible enough to fit your business needs, don’t modify your business needs to fit the system on offer

  • Get workforce buy in to the cultural change required

  • Future proof your investment – make sure you have multiple upgrade paths

  • SSO and RFID card authentication will help to make your system as easy as possible to use

  • Point of use status indicating devices facilitates casual bookings

Do I Need Status Indicating Devices on Desks?

In short, you don’t need desk panels to deploy an entry level workspace booking system. You could deploy a software only solution, that will provide a basic level of improved resource usage and better productivity.

What you won’t get is point of use status indication, point of use authentication, booking, check in/out, extend, kiosk facilities from the desk or workspace and improved corporate image. If you do choose to interactive panels on desks then there are a range of options to suit all budgets (see our RX-TD-0360 Desk booking solution)

Another strategy is to deploy a mix of devices and software solutions to manage your workspace booking system. You could deploy desk panels to all the higher profile desks and a kiosk based solution for the other workspaces. Above all make sure the system you select is capable of being flexible enough to deliver a multi-tiered solution.

RX-TD-0360 Smart Desk Booking Panel

Getting the Best Return on your Investment

ResourceXpress Meeting Room Booking Systems

Authentication Types

Making sure service users who book desks actually fully use the resource is essential to the productivity of the workspace booking system. One of the best ways to achieve this is by enforcing of policy of auto cancellation when a booking is not checked into at the point of use.

Integration

Your workspace booking system should be able to connect with a range of leading calendar and scheduling applications (Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office 365, Google). This ensures you have the flexibility to change in the future if your corporate strategy changes. If you also have the ability to connect to multiple booking systems at the same time, then this provides the ultimate flexibility. The ability to have a mix of “local only” bookable resources and those that can be booked from your preferred calendar and scheduling system lowers deployment and maintenance costs.

ResourceXpress has the additional capability to connect to a range of “Advanced Booking Systems”. This means you can deploy the core device management functionality of ResourceXpress and enjoy additional functionality of visitor management, catering etc, right up to a fully Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS).

The key point (as always) is to ensure you have as much flexibility as you can so that you’re not restricted in the future to any one system or hardware provider.

Foyes with access to meeting rooms
benefits of using ResourceXpress

Summary

Your workspace booking system should make it easier to find and book resources and locate colleagues.

Don’t over specify your system requirements to suit what a solution’s functionality can offer! Fully integrated workspace booking systems with advanced functionality can be great but maybe your biggest return on investment is to simply optimize your desk booking and lower real estate overheads.

A specialist application that delivers this core functionality may be a wiser business decision. It must be flexible enough to reflect your corporate identity and specific business needs.

Don’t change your business practices to suit a system’s shortcomings. Don’t get locked into single source hardware systems.

When hardware ages and requires replacement you need to have choices. If not, you may be stuck into paying the price the supplier wants to charge for their proprietary hardware.

CONTACT US TODAY

Please get in touch if you would like a free trial, demo or just more information.