Most of us have had to suffer through badly planned and completely irrelevant meetings. When that happens, we’re forced to pretend that we’re interested, when all we think about is getting back to urgent work we were forced to put on hold to attend the meeting. Although this might be an exaggeration, we have definitely been in meetings where we feel we don’t add value and we might as well not have been there, and many of us have experienced difficulties when having to organize meetings, both in work and out-of-work environments. Solving these problems can be done easily by implementing simple software and some simple physical products to support it.
The first step toward streamlining the meeting process would be to use meeting booking software. The perfect solution would be to achieve most, if not all of the meeting processes through a single channel. Meeting booking software typically allows you to see shared schedules, making it easy to determine who is available during the time the meeting is planned for, as well as which meeting venues are available to hold the meeting in. This will effectively remove most of the problems associated with organizing a meeting. This is done by the software integrating with calendars and emails, even if the meeting participants work for different organizations. If meeting rooms are spaces that are shared within a building and these can be accessed by different companies, everyone will be able to use the same booking software even if they use different IT networks and platforms.
It would be great to use the same standalone software that consolidates the meeting process. Even more ideal would be to integrate the software as a feature into other applications that are used daily. As the huge majority of organizations use Microsoft Outlook for managing both their calendars and emails, integrating these features to assist with the meeting process would be killing two birds with one stone. When the meeting room booking feature of Outlook is used, checking the available of rooms for meetings at a specific time becomes a breeze. It eliminates the need to walk around physically and check what is available, and there is also no need to check with a secretary or receptionist who is often responsible for booking meeting rooms. All of this would simply be available by using the same application you use daily to manage your emails.
If you are offered the opportunity to use an application that effectively combines meeting and conference room booking software, don’t hesitate but jump at the chance. This will save a huge amount of valuable time and effort. Trimming some of the “fat” from the organization’s processes will allow you to reap the benefits almost immediately!
