You want that perfect meeting. You need it. But “just use Outlook” = trouble, no matter how big your company is.

Here’s why:

You struggle to juggle multiple booking elements while using plain old Outlook.

You can book rooms, but not the AV you need. Then you find a way to put AV in the notes, but now the guests have special meal requirements.

Then disaster — all the team members and the client are on the meeting notice, but the whole meeting gets bumped two days.

Will you remember all of the fields, files, sticky notes and emails that need to change for all the things not included in that Outlook meeting?

Many other organizations are exploring ways to digitize and streamline their workflow and business processes, but they find many booking scenarios remain disjointed when using Outlook.

The truth is, for complex organizations, plain Outlook just won’t cut it. And in these days of sophisticated meeting room booking software, that’s becoming more and more plain.

Using “just Outlook”, eventually something is missed, and your meeting starts off on the wrong foot, or worse yet, doesn’t happen at all. There is nothing more embarrassing than a client showing up when your team is booked or out of office.

Here’s where Outlook lets you down

When using Outlook, you cannot book the room and required vended services such as catering in a single process. Instead, you have to have to:

• Find your meeting space by opening each individual room calendar to check availability via the scheduling assistant. You have to repeat this laborious task until a vacant slot appears
• Call or email the catering team to request refreshments for your meeting, letting them know where they need to deliver to.

This means you have to know the business rules, notification and cut off times for each item, and also time for setup and breakdown — a big ask.

For some items, you may have to provide a cost code or client chargeback details, depending on whether your meeting is internal or client-facing.

In reality, there’s a time-consuming dialogue between you and the service provider, because details have to be added to progress or decline the request.

And what if the meeting changes? Ouch.

If any details change, including amendments to refreshments or location, your manual slog of telling the service provider just goes on and on.

You’re a busy person, so it’s easy to forget, too — and that means the wrong items are delivered to the wrong room at the wrong time.

It doesn’t make you or your organization look slick, that’s for sure.

If your meeting is cancelled, it’s a common mistake to cancel the room reservation, but forget the service providers, which leads to waste and unnecessary catering costs.

Did you know: Many large enterprises report catering waste of up to $500,000 annually.

Booking just with Outlook takes more than 10 minutes on average.

No big deal, if you have only a few meetings to organize. But when you add it up across a larger enterprise with a complex meeting schedule, and factor in the lost business from making mistakes, “Just use Outlook” can cost you the growth your company seeks.

Q. So if Outlook is broken for you, how do you fix it and create that perfect meeting experience?

With fully integrated meeting room booking software.

With meeting room booking software at your fingertips, you follow just 4 quick and simple steps to book your full-service meeting:

• Choose your meeting space type, date, time and the number of attendees
• Choose the room you want from the search results
• Select from the vended services available for that specific room
• Confirm your booking.

Your smart meeting room booking software takes away the grind — automatically.

1. 1. It applies all business rules, notifications, and cut-offs, set up and break down times
2. 2. It notifies the relevant service teams via email and through a service tracker which collates and displays all tasks in time order
3. 3. It updates the service provider if you make any changes to the booking — a simple process
4. 4. If you cancel the meeting, all associated deliverables will automatically be cancelled too
5. 5. It enters all relevant cost codes are entered at the booking stage so they can be reported on and processed without time-consuming cross-checking.

Booking with meeting room booking software takes less than 30 seconds on average.

If you’re a busy PA making 100 bookings a month, you just saved over 15 hours.

By eliminating mistakes, errors, double bookings and client problems, that saving is a great deal more.

Not to mention the benefits it brings to your organization’s productivity and wellbeing by removing frustration and lifting the drudgery of tedious manual tasks.

So, you can keep using Outlook. It’s just money and time wasted, no big deal, right?

Wrong.

Download our brochure and set up a demo for Rendezvous meeting room booking software instead, which integrates fully with Outlook and 365.

Why waste another minute when you could be helping your organization to hold the perfect meetings that spark growth?

Many enterprises are currently beginning to create Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs within their organizations. These programs allow employees to use their personal devices for work activities, further allowing them to be more productive from anywhere with an internet connection. These devices include mobile tablets, smart phones and laptops. Although expanding programs have really been lead by an increased demand from employees, the businesses see huge benefits as well. These benefits include increases in worker productivity, increased revenue and happier employees.

Forrester conducted a survey recently to find out just how effective BYOD programs are within organizations. The statistics may surprise you. The study found that 70% of employees that use a tablet for work selected the tablet themselves. 67% of employees that use smart phones for work selected these smart phones themselves. Lastly, 46% of employees that use laptops for work selected the laptops themselves. Moreover, these devices were not purchased by the company; they were an employee expense. One may think that employees would be opposed to purchasing their own equipment, but another study conducted by Good Technology found that employees are happy to buy their own equipment. The reasoning is that employees can use devices they actually like, which isn’t commonly the case if a business purchases older equipment to save on expenses. Most companies, as you can image, are happy to allow the employees to cover the expense. Thus, over 50% of North American and European companies have already begun incorporating BYOD programs. There are more benefits still, which are causing this practice to explode across the business world.

One of the most significant benefits of BYOD programs was found to be an increase in worker productivity. According to a recent Trend Micro survey, 80% of companies saw an increase in worker productivity with the implementation of BYOD programs. This is attributed to employees having constant information at their fingertips. They can update information from anywhere, anytime. This has increased communication and collaboration among employees, which has in-turn, increased productivity. With this, since employees own the devices they use for work, they are able to take them home and manage projects during previously unproductive time. Surprisingly, employees are happy to have the option to put in the extra work, if it means projects are being done faster, on their schedule.

The next benefit is an increase in revenue. One way companies have increased revenue through BYOD programs is by eliminating the section of the budget previously allocated towards purchasing computers and electronic devices for employees. An article published in Mind over Machines found that 70% of companies that have implemented BYOD programs have seen an increase in their bottom lines. Since employees are gladly using their own devices, the companies save dollars. With this, employees are able to use more technologically advanced mobile devices, if they so choose to purchase them. Another way revenue increases is with an increase in the ability for employees to work remotely. Since salesmen are able to access their programs mobile, they can manage more accounts on-the-go. For example, if they’re waiting for a client to show up for an appointment, they can still manage their other accounts before he arrives. This produces a potential to increase sales, since salesmen can manage more accounts within the same amount of time.

So, we know that companies can see tremendous benefits from implementing a BYOD program. However, how do employees feel about this shift? They are enthused, states a recent article published by CIO. It seems that employees were rarely happy with the ‘ancient’ electronics most businesses provided for them. Thus, although they may need to purchase a device themselves, they are able to get something they enjoy using. Also, again since they own the device, they can take it home and be productive in the evenings or weekends, if they choose to get more work done, or get a head-start on a project. This, along with telecommuting, produces happier employees, as they are better able to balance their home-life. Happier employees lead to less turnover and again, increases the organization’s bottom line. BYOD programs may be a win-win for both companies and employees.

If you’re wondering how to make the shift to support BYOD programs with your business, the best place to begin is with a booking software company that’s at the forefront of these new technologies. You’ll want to look for a forward-thinking company like NFS that creates innovative software that can provide meeting rooms and schedule resources for your company. You’ll need to know your business’s needs, because each business is different. If your employees are going to be purchasing their own devices, you’ll need to make sure the information they’re viewing is secure. With this, you may need to look into a booking software like Rendezvous to allow employees to collaborate by booking rooms, booking resources and using hot desks via any device. With so many devices on the market (iPhone, iPad, Windows Tablets, Blackberry and Android), it’s also important to make sure the program you choose is compatible for every device. This will ensure your employees remain well connected in a digitally savvy world.

Considering these benefits of BYOD programs, how have they been working for you?Contact us today!

The 20th century model of a workplace just doesn’t get the job done efficiently in the 21st century. Today, work is not a place we go to, it’s an activity we engage in wherever and whenever our customers demand.

Work is now an agile, integrated activity that’s so far from the clock-punching drudgery of last century that the two seem barely related.

Want the truth?

If your office personnel is required to work within a 20th-century mind-set, you most likely have a morale problem — that’s if you can hire the best new talent to begin with.

Did you know: Gartner estimates that the average employee spends 27 hours a year looking for the right space to work.

An adaptive integration of processes and software can bring your workplace up to date and improve user knowledge.

Workplace management software helps employees control and improve their working environment to create collaboration, wellbeing and productivity.

And as a workplace owner or facility manager how you control surrounding conditions can make the environment right or wrong for your business and your employees.

Surrounding conditions can mean two different things:

• Physical conditions – e.g. what type of space is available for meetings daily, how hot or cold your workplace is, how noisy it is.
• Equipment – e.g. are collaboration tools such as video conferencing or AV available? What other equipment do your workers need or have available for successful meetings?

So when does all of this go wrong?

• When your workspace is not set up to support modern ways of working.
• When workers end up wandering around the building looking for somewhere to sit down and work, or hold a meeting.
• When your workers are uncomfortable because it’s too hot, too cold or noisy.
• When meetings fail because no-one shows.
• When no-one wants to arrange a video conference because it’s too much admin and the equipment isn’t always available when they need it.

So how do you make it right?

Good workspace management software lays all these issues to rest, making your operations more efficient and delivering an effortless agile working environment where people can do their jobs efficiently.

Here’s how using workspace management software to find room works on a daily basis:

Workspace management software such as Rendezvous by NFS provides an app so workers can easily locate and book a desk or room DAILY via their smartphone or other mobile devices.

That’s true even when they are organizing a meeting to involve participants across multiple locations or time zones.

If they need a quiet desk in a cool place, they can specify that when booking the desk – DAILY.

Up-to-date inventory control means they can identify the equipment they need at each location and book that, too – and they can even add catering in the same transaction DAILY.

It can all be dragged and dropped into the familiar Outlook calendar thanks to good integration, and any changes are notified automatically to everyone who is taking part – even the caterers — DAILY.

Is Outlook holding you back? See how to fix it for a perfect meeting experience.

Great room scheduling software works for agile workers travelling from one office location to another and also for office-based staff members who need to find available meeting rooms. Workpace management software allows them to:

• Easily find and book workspaces/meeting rooms with day-to-day capabilities — it will Inform workers of room availability based on their specifications every day.
• Create perfect meetings every time since the room scheduling software finds a room, books video conferencing within different time zones, books catering, and notifies participants if meeting times change. It will even release the room when the meeting is finished.
• Allow collaboration for better innovation and team spirit.
• Eliminates tiresome manual admin tasks.

What about long term space planning with workspace management software?

DLA Piper is a good example of long-term space planning aided by software.

The global law firm recently moved its Chicago office to River Point, a 52-story office tower on Lake Street. The law firm is leasing 175,000 sq. feet on the ninth through 16th floors in the tower.

With hundreds of employees attending several meetings in 33 rooms in one business day, DLA Piper needed to find meeting management technology to help increase office productivity.

They invested in Rendezvous, integrated with real-time occupancy sensors.

When people enter a room, sensors turn equipment on and instructions appear on the main screen alerting attendees how to project a laptop onto the screen wirelessly or physically plugged in.

Equipment will automatically shut down when the meeting ends. The room is automatically released and its availability displayed on digital panels outside the meeting space for all to view.

The integration of meeting room booking technology with a leading enterprise management system for digital signage and building control created a fully connected workplace for DLA Piper’s new space.

Thanks to the integration of the software and digital signage, workers can find a suitable meeting space, book the room and services and bring remote offices into the meeting by video conferencing, seamlessly.

They can even set up lighting, control temperature and lower window blinds.

Sensors – how do they work?

The system aggregates all the data from the sensor technology – whether that is monitoring desks, meeting rooms or social spaces. Using this data, it is possible to model and predict the future space requirements.

The system sends management an alert when space usage goes above or below user-defined levels. The system provides enough granular data to even suggest how the office should be configured.

For example, using this data to deliver 10% in space savings you can delay future office moves and expansions, or reconfigure the existing space for more flexible working patterns.

One of the great features of the solution is that it can release a space automatically at end of use to the next employee who requires it.

This can increase space utilization by around 30%.

Based on your business rules, space and desks can be automatically re-allocated when you have a “no-show”. For example, a desk can be reallocated if it has been unoccupied for two hours.

Given that the average employee spends 27 hours a year looking for the right space to work, this time saving translates to a major cost saving – creating a win-win scenario for the facility manager.

Want to reduce wasted space and streamline operations?

Do you remember what “water cooler chat” means? That’s what we used to call the moments of unexpected collaboration at the water fountain. Office employees gained insight from one another when taking a moment to go get a drink of water. Some great ideas developed during those small, yet thoughtful moments of socializing.

But that was when offices were divided into fixed spaces. Most likely, you had a desk that stood empty half the time and only used meeting rooms on formal occasions. Since the era of the fixed space, office layouts have changed.

Today, you might still chat around the water cooler, but the way you work has been transformed. Now, workspaces are created strategically to encourage interactions that spark inspiration. Being kept in a cramped space with a limited possibility of collaboration wasn’t doing anything for anyone. In a modern, connected workplace, you move about freely, making the most of agile desks. Meeting rooms have become multi-purpose. They act as informal meeting spaces, which are now common in offices everywhere.

Many generations are working together — Generation Z is even starting to join the party — and they each have their own needs and working preferences. As times change, “one size fits all” is no longer going to suffice. To grow a successful business, employee satisfaction is a key component. Providing employees with their own preferable workspace improves employee happiness and well-being, ultimately boosting productivity. And, a boost in productivity is going to make everyone more money. However, it’s tricky to track each employee’s personal work-life preferences.

The solution? The latest workspace management technology with room reservation software.

Many organizations, including large law firms like DLA Piper and other major companies, are using room reservation software to streamline their operations and make agile operations genuinely flexible.

Even people who work at home benefit from the software. More than 8 million people in America were already working from home by 2017, according to the US Census. But, many say they lack tools and technology to work agilely. Two-thirds say they would spend more time in their office if it had better facilities. Room reservation software can make that happen for you.

What benefits does your organization gain from using room reservation software?

1. Empowered employees

• It allows employees to feel a sense of control with their workload.
• It creates a positive working environment that encourages talent to stay.
• A recent survey found that 1/3 of US office workers wanted to be more trusted to manage where they work.

2. Perfect meetings

• The smartest organizations are turning to state-of-the-art workspace management technology to manage their working environments and automate boring, time-consuming tasks.
• Room reservation software means your employees can spot suitable workspace and book it easily online via an app. They can book resources like AV, video conferencing and even catering at the same time.
• Meetings are easy to organize across multiple locations. The technology takes time zones into consideration and automatically informs everyone if any of the meeting details have changed.
• It’s a great way to remove tiresome admin tasks from your employees’ work day. That gives them more time to focus on their real work.
• Additionally, the software lowers the risk of no-shows, a common problem that makes meetings fail and costs dearly in time and frustration. The result? Perfect meetings, every time.

3. Improved Collaboration

• We know the benefits of collaboration tools like video conferencing and AV. They get teams together, no matter how far apart the co-workers are physically. This eliminates the strain and cost of travel.
• Companies love these tools and spend a lot on them, but employees can be reluctant to engage if they are hard to organize. Room reservation software removes the obstacles faced by employee uptake by making it simple to book rooms with the right equipment for an unlimited number of locations.
• So, you never turn up to your video conference only to find that the equipment is not in place — your organizer has booked it with a single click at the same time as reserving the room.

4. Better space utilization

• Keeping tabs on a changing work environment causes real headaches for office or facilities managers.
• Tracking how office space is utilized can be tough, particularly if your organization is based in many locations or if you need to recharge other departments within your company.
• Room reservation software such as Rendezvous by NFS integrates with occupancy sensors that monitor space and desk utilization in real-time and provides comprehensive reports.
• It gives you accurate data at your fingertips so you can make informed decisions about space going forward and make sure your real estate spend is justified.

What about ROI?

When the right technology is in place so that all of these factors can act together, the connected workplace gives your employees an elevated sense of control over their work environment. Satisfied employees will work harder for your business, which benefits everyone in the long run. Why miss out on the chance to eliminate stress and increase profitability? You don’t have to re-invent the wheel… There’s software for that!

If you are in management, the captured data gives a complete, real-time view of whether your space is being maximized, and how it can be improved. You are able to configure your space to meet the changing requirements of your workforce, no matter how they evolve. By making it easy for your people to find the room they need, you can also reduce the cost incurred when they decide it’s simpler to book external space. All of this amounts to the fact that room reservation software offers a quick ROI.

When competitiveness and productivity are at a premium, and talented staff is hard to find and even harder to retain, all of this should sound like good news for your business.

Allow this technology to benefit you. Get into the connected workplace.

Recent studies show that a growing number of Australian employees are feeling lonely and isolated by the work they do.

In some ways, this seems strange: we’re in the midst of a “gig economy” that’s geared to promote the latest connected technologies and workspacew design. Technically, it’s never been easier to communicate and collaborate with our co-workers.

In reality, though, employees are not finding the link — socially.

Being part of a gig economy means many of us to have flexible working arrangements beyond the traditional employment models of the past.

We may choose to freelance and string together jobs on a short-term, contract basis or even to work full-time for a set employer, but without all the benefits of permanent employment.

Technology is a big enabler of agile and freelance working — with a smartphone and an unlimited data plan (or a nice cafe with wifi) — you can work from almost anywhere.

However, working remotely or apart from other people can make us feel lonely and depressed, which is not only unhealthy but also impacts on employee productivity.

The rise of the coworkers

This created the rise of “coworking” where independent employees “work alone together” in a shared office space. While the average cost to use one of these facilities varies, according to the Harvard Business Review, employees are still quite satisfied and think the cost is worth it.

Engaging with people in a coworking environment is one way to lower loneliness. Gig workers have stated that coworking spaces have helped them expand their social network and they are happier and less lonely.

But what about lonely employees working for companies

Unsurprisingly, even though loneliness is a profoundly subjective and personal experience, emotions can lead to negative objective outcomes in the workplace.

Employees who feel disengaged and isolated are considerably less productive and make a lot more mistakes.

A new study has found that 37% of all workers feel lonely at work, and the main reason for this is technology advances that were supposed to make jobs easier or more flexible.

The survey of just over 1,000 employees — conducted by HR think tank Reventure — also found 38% of lonely workers reported making more mistakes and 40% felt less productive.

Do we need to change the way we focus?

“There’s no doubt that the current way that we work is essentially driven by our demands around being transactional,” Reventure managing director Lindsay McMillan said.

“Transactional means looking at screens a great deal of our time, more time now than ever before and continuing to rise. So our focus on the screen means we’re not focusing on people beside us, on the floor above us or below us.”

Focus, when used correctly, is very effective. But when our workplace forces us to multi-task…

It’s hard to do one thing well when we’re constantly being bombarded with a multitude of external demands on our attention — from the constant ping of message alerts and urgent emails to distracting chats and intrusions due to the open design of our workplace environment.

The past 20 years have seen dramatic changes in the way we work. The old walls have been torn down and replaced with open plan areas; but it seems that the new walls have become our computer screens, mobile devices and smartphones.

The constant barrage of emails, text messages and other electronic intrusions have taken time away from water-cooler chats or daily face to face interaction. Who even has time any more to recognize a lonely worker?

Because the modern workplace can sometimes seem to be a push and pull with challenges and realities that appear to be contradictory and almost impossible to resolve.

So we find conflicting demands all around us:

• We want more open and collaborative spaces in workspace design — but we also need closed /quiet-focus spaces for concentrated work
• We need to maintain a conscious awareness of the social value of companionship at work but also maintain a non-intrusive association of employer and colleagues
• We’re seeing an unprecedented spectrum of generations and diversity in the workplace, creating apparent cultural barriers.

Perhaps it’s time to stop and say “hello” to the colleague working beside you. Why not break the ice and talk to the person sitting alone in the office or a local coffee hangout?

As employers, we should be aware that simply catering to what we think will satisfy the needs of the majority of employees won’t necessarily deliver the best outcomes for the company or for individuals.

One size doesn’t fit

Adopting a “one size fits all” approach to workspace management technology and workplace design certainly doesn’t work anymore.

By developing a deeper understanding of the emotional and transactional behaviour of our employees, and being more sensitive to socially disconnected employees, we can discover innovative ways of engaging and involving all members of our workforce.

Adapting the workplace to satisfy a wider range of employee needs may seem expensive, but it pays back in improved productivity and employee retention.

Effective and thoughtful workplace design can provide the right types and variety of workspaces that are required to support the diverse range of tasks that staff need to perform on a daily basis: from activity-based workstations to team rooms, from informal brainstorming areas to quiet spaces and pods.

Selecting the correct workspace management technology to support this flexible space is every bit as important as effective workplace design.

The solutions that you deploy need to be as fit-for-purpose and as flexible as the workspaces themselves — and just as easy to use.

When it comes to booking workspaces and scheduling supporting services such as catering and AV, we should be providing our employees with workspace management technology that is intuitive.

It also needs to integrate seamlessly with the existing technologies (such as Outlook) that they’re already using on a daily basis.

This familiarity makes it easy for them to find and book the workspace that best suits their specific needs even when they are on the move, using an app.

When used effectively, workspace management technology can help alleviate stress and bring employees together for perfect meetings and pleasant, easy and effective collaborations — and there’s no better answer to loneliness at work than that.

It’s Monday and you’re stuck in traffic worrying that you might miss your mandatory Monday morning meeting at the office. This is a common story told around the world. For the past century, meetings have essentially defined our work culture. Interviewing for a new job? There’s a meeting for that. Need to review your work with the marketing team? There’s a meeting for that. 90-day employee review? You guessed it, there’s a meeting for that. Quite frankly, the list goes on and on.

The fact is, no matter how you feel about them, meetings are a necessary part of a successful business. When done properly, meetings provide a productive place for collaboration, problem-solving and new ideas that ultimately propel your company forward. But how do we perfect our meetings so we overcome the stereotypical “I survived another meeting that could have been an email” slogan? That’s where things get tricky. Keep reading to learn how to create, implement and execute the perfect meeting(s) for your organization.

Why do we attend meetings in the first place?

First and foremost, it’s important to note why we attend meetings, to begin with. There are many reasons why people attend meetings including:

• Gaining new information on something occurring in the company
• Expressing concern about issues and situations
• Making complex client decisions
• Fulfilling regular job requirements
• Reviewing your work with a supervisor

And so on, and so forth.

When should you schedule a meeting?

To change the stereotype around meetings, we first need to define what constitutes even holding a meeting. As a business owner, team leader, or supervisor always ask yourself a few simple questions before booking a meeting.

• Why are you holding the meeting?
• Do you have a clear and identifiable reason for the meeting?
• What’s your plan of action for the meeting?
• Are you prepared to execute the plan of action during the meeting?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no” then you’re probably better off sticking to slack and email for whatever you wanted to discuss. Every meeting should have a clear goal and objective outlined ahead of time — otherwise people begin to feel like their time was wasted and half the meeting is spent talking about what everyone ate for dinner last night. Clear, defined objectives is key for creating structure around your meetings.

How to improve your meetings

Improving meetings isn’t as difficult as it seems. According to PsychologicalScience.org, employees average 6 hours per week in meetings and managers average 23+ hours in them. When you analyze those numbers, that’s an extensive amount of time spent in meetings. Improving the efficiency of your meetings will positively benefit everyone in your organization.

Start with a few basic steps to improve your meetings:

• Send out an agenda about the meeting ahead of time. This ensures everyone is on the same page and time won’t be wasted.
• Encourage collaboration and contribution. Make everyone feel welcomed to share their ideas and thoughts.
• Keep all discussions as focused as possible. Avoid gossip and talk that is better suited for happy hour.
• Ask for feedback. After the meeting, send out surveys about the structure of the meeting. Or simply ask people for feedback so that your organization can continue to improve its meetings.
• Provide refreshments or coffee for the invitees. Offering something like this has a positive effect on everyone in the room.

How to analyze behavior in your meetings

If you’re unsure if your meetings are being well received by the attendees, there’s a few things you can analyze to get a clearer picture.

As a leader or someone holding the meeting, be on the lookout for a few of the things listed below.

• Eye contact. A lack of eye contact usually indicates a level of unease. During your meetings, everyone should have eye contact with each other.
• Posture. Poor posture often indicates boredom.
• Excessive fidgeting or nervous habits. This could mean people are nervous, bored or frustrated with what’s being discussed. Keep an eye on these behaviors, but never address them during the meeting.
• Yawning. Yawning can be more than just being tired from a lack of sleep. If a person is facing a super tedious task, they can often feel overwhelmed which psychologically results in tiredness.

If a number of these things are going on during your meetings, it could be a telling sign that people aren’t engaged and/or attentive. However, you should address these concerns in private and never bring them up individually during the meeting(s).

When in doubt, use technology to perfect your meetings

It’s 2019, and technology is at the forefront of most businesses. At NFS, we’re committed to breaking down the stereotypical meeting culture and improving the way we create and execute meetings across the board. However, it’s getting tough to manually manage the entire process start-to-finish. That’s where technology comes into play.

Our software, Rendezvous, is a world-leading software solution that helps your organization transform the way it manages meetings rooms, desks, and workspaces — as well as services like catering and AV. To truly perfect your meetings, we believe you need technology that integrates with your organization in more ways than one. To learn more about how we can help perfect your meetings, visit https://myrendezvous.net/.

The NFS Technology team at ILTACON in Orlando, Fl, until August 22 is having a busy time demonstrating its leading Rendezvous meeting room booking software in space 210.

Law firms are finding efficiency and ease utilizing our leading Rendezvous
Workspace meeting room scheduling software. It improves workplace collaboration, uptake of video conferencing — and reduces no-shows at meetings dramatically.

Rendezvous meeting room booking software gives law firms one simple tool to handle every element of your meeting. From room booking to A/V, catering to invites and updates for digital signage, Rendezvous makes your meetings perfect.

Law firms internationally and domestically are utilizing Rendezvous to ensure efficient use of their increasingly flexible space. It’s not uncommon for a firm to have more than 30 meeting rooms on one campus or building.

Locating an available room, booking it, plus required resources and adding it to a calendar is now a necessity every day. Once the room is booked via an app, sensors will release it when the meeting ends. Sensor technology can track usage, occupancy and presence in real-time making it easy to analyze space requirements.

Rendezvous Workspace as cloud-based or on-premise software is the affordable answer to perfect your meetings. It’s is used by organizations across the world to streamline operations, reduce costs and improve worker wellbeing with better collaboration and stress-free booking solutions for agile workers.

Waves of change have washed over our offices — IT, video conferencing, AI and mobility — and work’s now a thing we do, a place we go.

So it’s time to ask tough questions about what our workplaces are REALLY FOR. In other words:

The new workplace: is it an office — or is it a venue?

Think about it.

1. You go there to do a specific thing
2. You visit it to meet with people
3. It’s got all you need to meet your goals
4. It’s a fun place to be (or should be)
5. You book your space before you get there.

I mean, you’d never just turn up at a gig hoping to get in. Hanging around looking for a seat? That ain’t rock ‘n roll.

And it doesn’t rock the new workplace, either. Recently, we’ve swapped out our formal boardrooms and fixed desks for more flexible spaces that suit agile working.

We can sit down and do our jobs in many places — malls, coffee shops, our own kitchen counter — but we still need the office to be the beating heart of our working life.

It’s where we meet up, face-to-face or virtually via travel-saving collaborative tools such as video conferencing and AV.

It’s where we sit down at a hot desk or drop in to a breakout space to catch up with colleagues.

We get better when we get together

A recent survey said:

“People working in teams innovate faster, achieve better results and report higher job satisfaction.”

No surprise there.

So we still need the office when it comes to promoting spontaneous collaboration and positive mental health.

It’s a generation thing?

Gen Z, in particular, is keen on a friendly office get-together.

A crazy high percentage — 92% — of these 18–24-year-olds think they don’t work best at home — and a huge 81% say social and communal areas are important workspace facilities.

But it’s not just the Z-ers — all generations are impacted to some degree.

So it’s time rethink your workspace as a venue.

You may never have looked at it that way before.

• Is it easy to book a space there?
• Can they do that before they arrive?
• Is it a cool place to get together with colleagues?
• Does it have everything they need to achieve their goals?
• Does it make them feel good?

It fits, right? You want your workplace environment to cover off all these elements.

If you already use room scheduling software, you’re be feeling smug — you’ve put a check against all those questions.

If you don’t, you’ll be amazed how much difference room scheduling software makes to your operations.

Give them the hot ticket

It works right from the get-go. Your technology-supported workspace-as-a-venue means workers book their ideal hot desk or meeting space easily using an app.

So they’ve got the hot ticket to your gig before they even arrive — remember point 5 above?

And because they’ve booked resources from VC to AV and even catering in the same single booking transaction, there are no delays.

The workspace venue that rocks

They arrive, settle down, get working or meeting. The room scheduling software even reduces no-shows by automatically informing everyone if a room or time changes.

No hanging around; that’s a cool workspace that makes everyone feel good, not just friendly Gen Z-ers. Hey, who’d ever want to leave? Talent retention never looked so easy, while productivity and wellbeing are a natural result.

I like the idea of the workspace as a venue; it’s an enjoyable and attractive perspective on our working lives that’s a great fit with a healthy work-life balance.

So it’s time for office owners like you to have a radical rethink.

Get the tech.

Get the right stuff, the room scheduling software that makes it all happen for you and your workforce.

Then get your workspace venue open for some real business. That’s my kind of gig.

Benefits of Rendezvous audio visual booking software

Multi-location capability

As well as allowing staff to book meeting space across different venues and time zones, its audio visual booking software enables organisers to book technology at the same time as they can secure audio visual or video conferencing equipment for any or all of the meeting venues.

Easy to use

Rendezvous AV booking software integrates completely with Outlook, so any changes are automatically communicated to attendees — and if there’s a cancellation, the audio visual equipment is released back into availability.

Saves time

There is nothing more frustrating than a lack of preparation. With Rendezvous, no more time is wasted hunting for technology after the meeting is supposed to have started.

Saves money

With Rendezvous, you always know where your AV equipment is — saving unnecessary expenditure on external equipment rental. You can also determine, based on historical trends, what equipment you may need to purchase to enhance your inventory.

Click here to know to more about our rendezvous audio visual booking software: https://myrendezvous.net/audio-visual-booking-software/

Enhanced security

With Rendezvous it is easy to keep track of all your suppliers, visitors and staff as they are logged automatically in the system.

An improved visitor experience

Visitor badges can be effortlessly produced from the system, the host notified automatically when a VIP arrives in reception and any service requests sent seamlessly to staff.

Seamless communication

Any changes in a meeting can be notified quickly to both visitors, hosts and service providers to ensure that everything runs like clockwork and no time is wasted.