What Better Meeting Room Management Means for FM & IT
Conference rooms are an environment designed for collaboration. Within them, you’ll find employees exchanging ideas, discussing projects and working together to make important company decisions.
Two things are important to make these meetings effective — the space itself and the available tools. This fuels the need for a collaboration between facilities management (who owns the space) and IT (who owns the tools). Together, these two departments can effectively manage conference rooms, syncing their technologies to create the best experience possible for employees.
Let’s look at some of the ways FM and IT can collaborate to improve meeting room management.
Streamline the Room Reservation Process
Scrambling to find conference rooms at the last minute can be a frustrating situation for employees. When they are under a time crunch, the only option may be to use a room that lacks the collaboration tools they need. This can lead to a series of last-minute service requests that IT then must address quickly.
Syncing FM and IT technologies through a room reservation software streamlines this process. Such integration allows employees to reserve spaces while on the go, invite other guests to meetings and reserve additional resources like audio/visual equipment when required. The result is fewer headaches for the FM and IT departments as well as a more productive atmosphere for employees.
Maintain Smooth Operation of Assets
Having the right technologies available in every meeting room is only one part of the equation. Ensuring that these systems operate efficiently is a crucial factor as well. This requires a system that makes it easy to monitor assets for preventive maintenance and also generate service notifications in case there is an issue.
Work order software notifies FM and IT of these situations in a prompt fashion. With the flexibility to send and receive notifications online or via a mobile phone, both departments have the resources they need to track such requests and take the appropriate actions. This helps ensure efficient operations within conference rooms and prevent a backlog of service requests from accumulating.
Leverage Data for Dialogue
Data is a powerful resource for fueling company improvements — meeting room management included. But for this data to be effective in fueling such decisions, it needs to be both reliable and accessible.
Collecting real-time data in one source like an IWMS makes it easier for FM and IT to leverage this information and create dialogue around it. For example, by tracking conference room usage, these departments can collaborate on adding popular tools to other conference rooms or reallocating out spaces that they notice are going unused.
Effective meeting room management is a collaborative effort between FM and IT. By working together, they can help make sure that employees have what they need, when they need it. This creates a workplace where productivity reigns and employees feel a strong sense of value.
See how room reservation software can improve collaboration and productivity at your organization. Request a demo today.
