What is a Meeting Room Booking System

Thanks to the advent of technology, today we have varied software to address our everyday needs.  So much so that you can even choose how to book and conduct meetings via a meeting room booking software. Workspace management is easy as these applications help directly in scheduling meetings and booking venue for such meets. After all, perfect meetings and adequate space utilization go hand-in-hand.

Normally, one must practice booking a meeting room first and simultaneously send meeting invites to people you want to call. You can make a room reservation and send an invitation to the meeting in several ways.

Key Features of the Best Meeting Room Booking Systems 

• Meeting rooms signage

Meeting rooms signages are displayed outside meeting rooms and venues. With meeting room management systems, you can add meeting details/content. Basically, these are the screens that are placed outside meeting venues and rooms.

• Payments module

The best meeting room scheduling software is available with multiple payments modules for processing both online and offline payments. The feature also helps in setting up custom currencies and making deposit payments. You can even set up multiple payment gateways as well as disable using these meeting room booking apps.

• Interactive maps

Interactive maps within conference room booking systems are critical for finding out the availability of rooms using parameters like meeting type, date, time, or capacity. Accessing such maps is easy and all you have to do is login into the application and start accessing these maps. 

• Online bookings

Meeting room booking apps give you complete control over bookings made at their venue. Starting from creating, editing, and removing bookings to blocking out times, all is easy with meeting room booking systems. You get complete control over online booking processes and get options like inviting users, new guests, members, etc.

• Room scheduling

Group the available rooms in your venue into sections like buildings, floors, and views for easy room scheduling. Setting up booking conditions like full/half-day and max/min booking is also easy with the software. You can also set up schedules of the meetings and only let authorized stakeholders get access to these.   

• Calendar integration

Calendar integration helps to update every participant regarding a meeting's timing, location, and date. The feature comes in handy for sending instant notifications to everyone if there is a change in plan.

• Data analytics

Data analytics help meeting room scheduling systems lend flexibility to space utilization and planning. These analytics help companies reach data-driven decisions so that all available office space is diligently utilized.

Major Benefits of Using a Meeting Room Booking System for Your Office

• Customizing booking allowances

Meeting room booking software lets you customize booking allowances as per the existing quota rules. You can use this module for customizing both variable and fixed pricing. The software uses parameters like user, space, day, and time for the purpose. You can also set up duration constraints using this feature.

• Custom tags 

Custom tags help in managing the processes through which users can interact with a booking system. Some of the important processes handled by booking tags include quota allowances, booking permissions, coloring, custom fields, and exemptions granted for online payment.

• Automated special policies & terms

Automate all terms and policies associated with your venue as these will help businesses save time. Managing self-service-based bookings is super quick with this module. Set up rules associated with booking windows and update all cancellation policies using this option.

• Room management

Management of meeting rooms is easy with conference room management systems. The software lets you make list and grid views so that your customers can check the availability of rooms based on these lists.

•  Contact database

Its contact database helps organisations in storing customer information using mechanisms like enquiries made and bookings confirmed. All such data is completely secured and you can even segment it for marketing activities in the future.

• Automated communication for easy booking

Meeting room scheduling applications support automated communication for making the entire room booking experience hassle-free for clients and customers. The better this experience would be the better customer retentions there will be. Also, available are the modules for sending automated reminders regarding outstanding payments, missed appointments and such.

• Handling room’s unavailability

There would come many occasions where a room would be temporarily unavailable. The reason for this unavailability could be anything, there might be some refurbishing work going on or maybe the venue is full. Whatever the case may be, the software will let you control the appearance of such unavailable rooms so that booking a room with you doesn’t make your customers fuzzy.

• Protecting abandoned meetings

Suppose you book a room for a particular meeting but now it is lying empty because the meeting couldn’t happen. Leaving the room as it is would impact negatively your returns on investment or ROI as meetings, summits and conferences form part of a larger business plan. But not so when you use meeting room management systems because what the software does is it automatically places such vacant rooms back into the ‘available for booking' section. 

How Does Meeting Room Booking Software System Help with Better Meeting Management

Here is how meeting and conference room booking apps have been helping businesses manage well their working spaces.

• Meeting room booking apps automatically sync with the existing booking systems that you may be already using.
• Option for inviting users from other companies to use your meeting room scheduling software.
• Capabilities to book rooms/venues electronically.
• Easy to book rooms for impromptu meetings.
• Visitor management features like visitors' information, reminders, and sign-ins.
• Detailed information regarding amenities available at a venue or room.
• Guests can access easily maps and floor plans by taking support from the online meeting management software.
• Availability detection feature for vacant rooms in real-time.
• Usage analytics with information regarding busiest times and utilization.
• End users can easily report any issues they may find in a room like equipment failure, etc.
• Integration with other available apps on your device.

What are the Challenges with Manual Meeting Room Scheduling

Enlisted here are some of the challenges companies face while booking meeting rooms and venues for their conferences. It is important for end-users to be aware of such challenges, which may come their way so that they can make an informed choice.

No shows

No-shows is a significant challenge because it disrupts the whole meeting slot. The interruption caused because a meeting got canceled, or the parameters of the meeting changed, or the parties skipped a recurring event, messes up with the whole meeting room scheduling.

Theft

Theft starts when the venue for a meeting or conference gets hijacked by visitors or event organisers.

Squatting

This is an interesting phenomenon seen currently in business circles. A room or venue may show as unavailable because a single person has reserved it for working in some peace. People who mostly do this are either visitors or someone who is involved in a time-bound contract assignment.

Overcrowding

Overcrowded meeting space is inconvenient and upsetting. Plus the current pandemic situation, overcrowding needs to be avoided at every cost. Best meeting room booking software helps meet this challenge as the built-in booking system has this capacity limit module attached to it. 

Cleaning and sanitizing

This goes without saying how regular cleaning, as well as sanitization processes, need to be followed and maintained. Meeting room booking systems instantly alert you if a meeting room undergoes a cleaning.