Manage Workspace Efficiently and Reduce Real Estate Expenses

In today’s business environment, there is a greater emphasis on maximizing efficiency and minimizing costs due to precarious market conditions. One area of business where costs are often higher than they need to be is in real estate. Office space is used poorly in many organizations. Workspaces remain empty, not only outside office hours, but also during the workday. According to an internal study performed by Intel, 60% of their workstations were empty at any given time of the day.

A diversity of factors, such as flexible working arrangements, restructuring, and long-term leases, may cause workspaces to remain empty often and lead companies to have more office space than necessary. Furthermore, part-time employees may have dedicated workspaces that go unused for much of the day and some employees may travel frequently or work from home, leaving their workspaces empty.

Reduce Real Estate Costs with Meeting Room Management Software for Outlook®

If your staff is often out of the office on for instance customer visits, you can use meeting room management for Outlook® to introduce hoteling/hot-desking

There is usually lots of room for improvement in resource utilization, and the money saved can be added directly to your company’s bottom line. One of the most sought-after advantages of meeting room management via Outlook® is the potential to reduce real estate costs. Meeting room management in Outlook® can help your business identify and purge unnecessary space. You can continuously measure your utilization of remaining space and optimize its use in order to maximize productivity.

These days, workers are becoming increasingly nomadic and aren’t at their desks all day, every day. This allows companies to adopt desk-sharing arrangements and hence reduce real estate. Meeting room booking system for Outlook® also manages hot desks and hoteling, so you can fit more staff into the same space. The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada (MS Society) expects to save an estimated 1.5 million dollars on real estate costs in the coming years with Resource Central. MS Society uses Resource Central to efficiently manage meeting rooms and shared workspace.

The First Step in Eliminating Unnecessary Office Space

Is your meeting rooms sitting empty? Meeting room management software for Outlook® gives you an overview of your meeting room usage

The first step in eliminating unnecessary office space and reducing real estate costs is to measure and have a clear understanding of the space you are using today. Oftentimes, managers and staff overestimate how much their office space is used. Meeting room management software for Outlook® allows you to extract statistics to determine exactly how office space is used and whether there are any meeting rooms sitting empty.

Organizations can use meeting room management software to establish a baseline of current utilization. By monitoring meeting room and workspace utilization reports over a period of time, an organization may determine that they could reduce unnecessary capacity. Not only would eliminating unnecessary office space allow you to cut real estate costs, it would also reduce energy expenses.

Reducing current office space will be difficult unless you are able to access accurate resource utilization data and produce evidence that supports your claims. Meeting room software that generates reports on resource utilization provides you with comprehensive data that helps you build your business case. You can assess the reports to analyze current usage and determine ways to use space more efficiently. You might find that it’s possible to downsize and then project what kinds of savings are possible.

The ultimate goal is to have the right amount of space to meet your company’s needs at the right time. However, most organizations struggle to determine what the right amount of space is because they don’t have access to space utilization data. This is one big reason why a meeting room management system for Outlook®, like Resource Central, can come in handy.

Combine with Meeting Room Signage for Optimal Effect

A welcome addition to meeting room management for Outlook® is interactive meeting room signs. On top of displaying availability, they also enable you to book, extend, and end meetings directly on the touch screen. You could use tablets running iOS, Android or Windows as digital meeting room signs. This will maximize the usage of your meeting rooms. If a meeting finishes earlier than expected, you can end the meeting directly on the touch screen of the sign to allow others to book the meeting room either on the screen or in Outlook®.

Make the Most of Office Space and Reduce Unnecessary Space with Resource Central

Resource Central is meeting room management software for Microsoft Outlook® that allows you to search for and book meeting rooms and extra services, like catering. Resource Central also lets you book hot desks/hoteling and generate resource utilization reports, so you can track meeting room and workspace usage. These reports provide strategic insight that help companies best manage their office space. The accurate tracking of resource utilization is crucial to effectively managing real estate, so you can optimize the use of your existing space and ensure that meetings are held in appropriate rooms. To learn more about how Resource Central can help you save time, minimize effort, and cut expenses, please sign up for a free online demo or a free trial. You can also use our Return on Investment calculator to get an estimate of how much your company can save by implementing Resource Central.