How to Choose the Best Meeting Room Booking Software

What is Meeting Room Booking?

Meeting room booking refers to the process of reserving rooms for meetings, conferences, or other gatherings within a workplace. These solutions can range from simple apps that schedule rooms to comprehensive systems that manage room availability, resources, and connected technologies.

Types of Meeting Room Booking Solutions

Simple Room Booking Apps

• Basic scheduling
• Calendar integration

We have our own simple room booking app which you can try for free.

Enterprise Room Booking Apps

• Advanced scheduling and resource management
• Integration with other workplace systems

For a more comprehensive solution, check out Room Booking App Basic or WorkMate.

Who Should Choose Simple Room Booking Apps?

• Small businesses with straightforward scheduling needs
• Teams that require basic calendar integration without additional features

Who Needs Flexible and Robust Systems?

• Large enterprises with multiple rooms and resources to manage
• Organizations requiring advanced features like integration with other workplace systems

Common Issues with Meeting Room Booking Apps

Incompatibility with Existing Systems

• Many booking apps struggle to integrate with existing HVAC, lighting, and in-room devices.
• This leads to inefficiencies and the need for multiple systems to manage different aspects of the meeting environment.

Scalability Challenges

• Basic apps may not scale well as organizations grow.
• Managing multiple locations with different technologies can become complex and unmanageable with simple booking solutions.

Lack of Advanced Features

• Simple booking apps often lack advanced features like setting room conditions, rules, or automation workflows.
• This limits the ability to improve room usage and optimize space efficiently.

Inefficient Real Estate Utilization

• Poor utilization of meeting rooms can lead to significant costs, especially for larger companies.
• Issues like ghost meetings and under capacity bookings can waste valuable space and resources.

User Experience and Adoption

• If a booking app is not user-friendly, employees may avoid using it, leading to underutilization and scheduling conflicts.
• A poor user experience can result in frustration and reduced productivity.

An Example of the Issues Large Scale Enterprises Face

Incompatibility and Integration Challenges

Imagine a company starts with a simple room booking app to manage meeting rooms in its headquarters. As the company grows, it opens new offices in different cities, each with its own unique set of technologies and requirements. The initial room booking app struggles to accommodate this expansion.

• Integration Limitations: The app cannot integrate or utilize advanced systems like occupancy sensors, Wi-Fi triangulation, or workflow automation. Often, it is locked to one type of sensor, requiring additional hardware purchases.
• Different Technologies: Different buildings have different HVAC, lighting, and in-room devices that the simple app cannot connect or communicate with. As you expand across more buildings, these different technologies begin to stack up.

Automation Limitation

• Lack of Context: Simpler room booking apps aren’t able to gather context from additional data sources. It’s this context that you can build conditions and triggers to automate workflows like releasing room bookings when people haven’t shown up. If you don’t have real-time occupancy data, you can’t do that.

This is where PlaceOS excels. With its integration platform, PlaceOS seamlessly connects all technologies across various buildings, regardless of the differences. It scales effortlessly, ensuring that all rooms are efficiently managed, and resources are optimized.

Real Estate Utilization and Cost Efficiency

As companies become larger, real estate expenses become a significant part of their budget. Efficient use of meeting rooms becomes crucial to minimize costs:

• Ghost Meetings: Unused reserved rooms lead to wasted space and money.
• Under Capacity Bookings: Rooms booked for more people than actually attend waste valuable space.
• Critical Utilization Data: Understanding how spaces are used is essential for optimizing real estate use and reducing costs.

PlaceOS provides detailed utilization tracking through occupancy sensors and analytic/s. This data helps organizations understand room usage patterns, eliminate ghost meetings, and ensure that spaces are used efficiently, saving money on real estate costs.

When to Upgrade

If you’re facing these issues, then you’ll need a more extensive solution that can adapt to your needs.

Common Connected Technologies in Meeting Rooms

• In-room Devices: Integration of devices like projectors, screens, and conference call equipment for a unified experience.
• BMS/HVAC Systems: Control heating, ventilation, and air conditioning to ensure a comfortable environment.
• Lighting: Automated lighting control based on room usage and scheduling.
• Shades: Manage window shades to control natural light and privacy.
• Occupancy Sensors: Monitor room occupancy to optimize space utilization and resource management.
• Tablet Displays: Displays on the outside of the room showcasing booking status and upcoming meetings.

Why PlaceOS?

PlaceOS is not just a meeting room booking app. It's an integration platform that connects various in-room technologies, offering a seamless and comprehensive solution for modern workplaces.

• Scalability: Easily expand from managing rooms in one building to multiple buildings with different technologies.
• Flexibility: Customize solutions to meet the specific needs of your organization.
• Comprehensive Management: Centralize control of all connected devices and systems for streamlined operations.
• Automation: Create workflows to improve efficiency and user experience.

Benefits of Automation

Automation in meeting room booking systems offers numerous advantages. By automating routine tasks, organizations can ensure that rooms are used efficiently and that resources are not wasted. For example, automation can release a reserved room if no one shows up within a certain timeframe, reducing the occurrence of ghost meetings. It can also adjust lighting, HVAC, and other room settings based on occupancy, creating an optimal environment without manual intervention. Additionally, automated notifications and reminders can help prevent scheduling conflicts and ensure that meetings start on time. Overall, automation enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and improves the user experience by minimizing the administrative burden on employees.

You can check out WorkMate, our Workplace Solution, or approach us for a Custom Enterprise Solution where we can build you your own tailored solution.