Conference Room Booking – common problems and how to solve them

Whether it’s for internal meetings, client meet-ups or board presentations, conference rooms tend to play an important role for collaboration, sales, or seminars. But even if conference rooms are deemed to be one of the most important resources in our offices, we still face some frustrating problems when booking them. If you are facing one or more of the problems stated below, it can be a good time to look into some conference room booking solutions.

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Conference Room Ghost bookings

We all know how common it is, and sometimes we are the ones doing it ourselves. We planned a meeting that was later cancelled but forgot to release the conference room. Or we booked a conference room “just in case” but ended up not using it. We call this conference room ghost bookings. This results in conference rooms looking occupied even if they are not, and hinder other employees from booking them if necessary. The result? Your rooms stay unused when they are actually needed! Conference room ghost bookings can also distort your booking statistics, making it almost impossible to draw correct conclusions from your conference room usage.

The Solution: Mandatory Check-in via Conference Room Display.

A conference room display is an excellent tool to make sure that rooms are released if not used. Because the tablet is located outside each meeting room, the employee who booked it needs to be present and “check-in” at the location for the booking to be valid. If no one checks in, the meeting room will be released and available for others if needed.

In addition, the conference room display has many other pros beyond the check-in function. The LED light shows the rooms availability from a distance, and the conference rooms booking schedule for the day is also present so employees can see if there are any gaps in the schedule for quick meetings. Its also possible to book conference rooms directly on the display, which makes the booking process easier and indicates usage on the map for others. Read more about conference room display here.

If the booking process is made as easy as possible for employees, less people will feel the need to book just in case, and no one needs to worry about releasing rooms if a meeting is cancelled.

Conference Room Double Booking

If employees can book conference rooms in multiple ways, but the systems don’t communicate with each other, some of the resources might be overbooked. There are few things that are as frustrating as arriving at your conference room and finding another team occupying it. Valuable time has to be allocated to solving the problem and deciding who should get it and why, which booking is the most valid and so on. And when the discussion reaches a conclusion, one team has to spend even more time finding another meeting room. This is clearly a huge waste of everyone’s time.  

The Solution: An all-inclusive and integrated software system

An all-integrated software solution can make sure that all bookings are registered in all channels directly. If an employee book a conference room on a tablet, another one through a smartphone app and a third directly through an outlook calendar, the system will update directly, always making sure that no conference room is double booked.

Flowscape provides a complete solution that communicate directly through all channels. Read
more about it here.

Booking the wrong conference room depending on your needs.

Conference rooms have different sizes, equipment and locations. Some might not fit you for what you are doing, and some might fit you perfectly. Without some sort of filtering system, a group of two might take the biggest conference room, and the group with 8 people might have to sit in the cafeteria because all large rooms where already booked and occupied. This is not effective resource management.

The Solution: Conference Room filter function

Flowscape provides an in-built filter function that automatically sorts out irrelevant meeting rooms, so you don’t have to see them as an option in the first place. This will guarantee that the group of two will book the small conference rooms, leaving the larger ones for those who needs it. The filter function also allows for selection depending on equipment needed. This makes sure that conference call equipment, screens or cameras are available if some attendees join via link.

Conference room management 2.0

Are you ready to start conference room management 2.0? Read more about or conference room booking solution here or contact our experts for a consultation.

Read more

Room Booking 101 – How to start room booking successfully

Introduction to Room Types – and what it can do for your office layout