Meeting Room Booking System - Why You Need One

por Raul Araya V.2019.11.14

What characterizes the work environment in todays organizations are the fast pace and large amounts of information. According to Atlassian, the average employee in the US attends 62 meetings per month. This is approximately 31 hours spent in meetings every month(!). No wonder that meeting rooms are often completely booked up... In addition to this, employees consider that 50% of the meetings are a waste of time.

Not very elevating statistics, right? Fortunately there are many ways to improve meeting quality. Besides measures as setting an explicit agenda and preparing the participants in good time, a meeting room booking system could add significant value to the meeting culture of your organization.

The key benefits with a meeting room booking system

Our customers provide us with valuable insight about which problems they experience at their workplaces. In this article I will list 4 common headaches when it comes to meeting room utilization and furthermore, how a room booking software can solve these issues:

So, how can a meeting room booking system let you work undisturbed?

1. Interruptions in work and during meetings

Open-plan and hot-desking offices are immensely popular and the trend doesn't seem to decline. But, having these kinds of work spaces also demands access to alternative room resources, like smaller group or meeting rooms. Employees in open-plan offices are easily disturbed with a lot of interruptions. Therefore it's really important that there are separate rooms accessible where employees could actually close the door and really concentrate for a while. This also passes for meetings - is there anything more annoying than the knock knock on the door followed by the question "When is this room available?"? Well yeah there probably is... But hey you get the point!

Customers often tell us that one of their crucial buying criteria is that the room booking displays have to be simple to understand, for everyone. I would dare to say that GP Agenda is probably the simplest room signage on the market. It is based upon the classic traffic light system which, I hope, everyone is familiar with. The tablets are mounted outside the rooms and clearly show for how long a room is available or occupied.

2. The hassle of booking rooms for spontaneous meetings

Most organizations do have some kind of meeting room booking system integrated with their email client. The problem with this is that many people find it rather inconvenient when it comes to spontaneous meetings - you plan far from all of your meetings days or weeks in advance. Usually people just take an empty room, sit down and start their conversation. Suddenly a colleague knocks on the door, telling you that the room is booked. And the search for another room begins.

GP Agenda connects to your existing booking system and visualizes the digital room calendar. So, you don't have to check the rooms' availability in the email client - the tablet outside each room indicates this. With GP Agenda it's incredibly simple to book a room for a spontaneous meeting. Just go to an available room and tap two times on the green screen and the room is yours!

3. Double bookings

Double bookings are an annoying and common issue at especially shared office spaces because people are using different systems. Therefore two persons can end up booking the same room without knowing it.

With Meetio Book users from different systems can book the same room resources. It's a web app that's available from your desktop as well as your phone. You can also invite users from outside of your organization.

4. Room availability

I bet that you at one time or another have heard a colleague complaining about the lack of meeting rooms. But the thing is that booked rooms often end up empty due to no-shows. Typically our customers see a rate of 30% no-shows(!). In other words plenty of booked rooms aren't being used. Last but not least, there's the issue with people using rooms without actually booking them and in turn, others will believe the room is occupied.

To sum things up, room availability could be quite a hassle that lowers the productivity in your workplace. But it doesn't have to be like that.

To avoid unused rooms due to no-shows, GP Agenda has a "check in" function. Just set a time when the meeting should be cancelled if not checked in, and the room becomes available to others. Also worth mentioning is the "end early" function, which frees up time and makes the room available to colleagues.

One appreciated feature that really makes GP Agenda stand out from the crowd of room booking software, is the room usage statistics. GP Agenda provides you with data about room usage and booking behavior. This means you can actually see the room utilization rate, the no-show rate, meeting length, number of participants etc.