NFS Hospitality technology solutions

NFS are attending the Technology & Trends 2011 Executive Briefings for the first time ever and invite you to come and join us at this London event, which takes place 8^th and 9^th of March.

The mini conference will offer a condensed review of the latest workplace technology and innovations from larger, international shows such as CES, ISE and CeBIT.  It will focus on what new technologies are emerging for the workplace in the next twelve months, and how these innovations could affect the business world.

The briefings are a fantastic opportunity for anyone involved to create effective working environments, and also learn about technology enablers and the drivers of change. What are the key technologies being adopted by organisations to enable workplace innovation? How can you future-proof your workplace strategies?

NFS will be giving a short presentation about the company’s innovations for 2011, including Workspace Mobile, our new iPad interface for the Rendezvous Workspace scheduling solution. We will also have a stand, which you are welcome to visit and see the technology in action.

To register, please click here, but be quick.  Places are limited and many delegates have already signed up.  These include a mix of Managing Directors / CEOs, Heads of IT, Group Directors, Global Head of Facilities, Sales & Marketing Managers and Heads of Strategy. Delegates represent some big-name organisations, including AXA Insurance, Barclays Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, GlaxoSmithKline, Nokia Siemens, The British Council and the University of Salford.

See you there!

With our new, six-part eBook, Scheduling Technology – The Benefits, we hope to offer a comprehensive look at why organisations should consider implementation of an integrated software solution for room and resource booking, and the many business advantages they stand to gain through use of this technology. We also offer a checklist of features to look for when choosing a scheduling solution – because, after all, every business is unique, with its own set of requirements.

The first series of our eBook, Why Space Management is Important to your Business, focuses on the many benefits that are available to organisations that deploy a powerful scheduling solution.

Did you know that workspace scheduling solutions can save time, streamline operations,  increase productivity, reduce overall costs and also increase employee satisfaction? These are what we believe are the core business benefits of scheduling technology, and in the first part of Series One we explain how each benefit can be seen across organisations that use an integrated scheduling solution.

There are also a range of transformational benefits to be gained, including reducing operational costs, increasing mobility, offering better access, improving work / life balance and also lessening your environmental impact. A more detailed look at these benefits forms the second part of Series One.

But it doesn’t stop there. Here are some of the topics we’ll be following in later series:

• Scheduling Technology for the Mobile Workforce
• Managing Space Using Outlook Calendaring
• The Benefits of Video Conference and Telepresence Technology

Series One: Why Space Management is Important to your Business is now available to download on our website.  Click here to enter a few basic details – and start reading!.

Teleworking is a trend that was first mooted as long ago as the late Seventies. With the advent of mobile technology, broadband and cloud computing it has become more and more prevalent for today’s workforce.

TechCast, a virtual think tank based at George Washington University, forecasts that 30% of employees in industrialist nations will telework 2-3 days a week by the year 2019. They also estimate the market for related products and services at $400 billion a year.

Using figures released by the Telework Research Network (TRN), it has been suggested that employees’ productivity could increase by around 27%. Companies that have benefitted from teleworking include Best Buy and British Telecom, which have seen average productivity rise by 35% and 20% respectively.

Productivity increases due to various factors such as fewer interruptions, more effective time management, a sense of empowerment, and flexibility in being able to choose when to work. Teleworkers also tend to put in longer hours as they work through the hours not spent commuting.

Those adopting teleworking practices have moved away from the traditional and expensive notions of office space. They have enjoyed significant savings on lease/purchase costs, car park leases, furniture, supplies, maintenance, security and other related costs. Using a hoteling or hot-desking programme enables the increasingly nomadic workforce access to office facilities when needed.

As a result, is it has become increasingly important for these organisations to have an effective scheduling software solution to manage their finite resources. One such solution is Rendezvous Workspace. It is designed to enable bookings of hot desks, meeting rooms and video conferencing to be quickly made from anywhere in the world. Integration with Outlook ensures all bookings and communications to service staff can be processed instantly.

Our research has found that a number of companies have adapted Outlook beyond its standard email, calendar and task management functionality to encompass room and resource bookings. Whilst Outlook is a great solution as a personal productivity tool it doesn’t offer all the benefits, such as reporting and catering management, that a specific room booking solution does.

As many people spend a considerable amount of their day utilizing Outlook, for email and productivity, including such tasks as organising and confirming meetings, then it would make sense for them to use a room booking system which is seamlessly integrated with Outlook. This allows them to continue working uninterrupted.

Rendezvous Workspace gives you just this. A proven resource management solution tightly integrated with Outlook allows your employees to continue to use the interface they’re comfortable with, whilst providing easy access to all the feature sets of a powerful scheduling software solution.

Rendezvous Workspace is used by a number of companies, including leading law firm Wedlake Bell, who can testify to its benefits:

“The ability for our staff to make a room availability enquiry from within Outlook and to also request or book a meeting room and resources simply and efficiently will help with providing a better service to our team and also reduce the workload on reception,” comments Linda Webster, Head of IT.

Are you using Outlook as a scheduling tool?

“The SME market is a natural for cloud computing, since these companies typically spend less overall on IT and are also usually short-staffed in IT. Anything that reduces their computing burden while still  offering application functionality will be embraced by this market segment,” says leading Cloud Computing expert Bernard Golden, CEO of HyperStratus, Silicon Valley-based consulting firm that helps its clients define and implement their cloud strategy and systems.

In response to the move towards cloud computing, particularly for smaller commercial and corporate businesses, NFS has developed an SaaS solution for conference and meeting room scheduling.

Although this solution is delivered on a SaaS platform, there is no compromise in the benefits that you receive.

For example Rendezvous SaaS offers:

Very Low Total Cost of Ownership

Rendezvous SaaS can be up and running quickly, and offers a very fast ROI.

High Security Hosting

Paramount to our product offering is security of data and reliability of service, which we ensure for our SaaS clients by using high-security data centres.

A Fully Managed Application Helpdesk

A 24/7 helpdesk for application support is available to all Rendezvous SaaS users as a single point of contact. The system is worry-free, with no additional maintenance charges.

Flexibility

We can offer you the flexibility to migrate to the latest release of the software automatically, with us taking care of all updates and upgrades.

Are you a small to medium-sized venue or conference centre looking for a  cost-effective, reliable, powerful solution to the management of your business?

For more detailed information, take a look at our website.

Since Earth Day and environmental efforts are very much in the forefront this week, NFS would like to remind you that Rendezvous and Rendezvous Workspace are inherently “green” solutions, helping our clients go green in the following ways:

- Reducing the use of paper
- Reducing energy consumption by integrating NFS solutions with your HVAC and lighting systems
- Accommodating a mobile workforce and flexible workspace with hotelling and hot-desking options
- Reducing the amount of commutes and traffic through the support of mobile workforces and flexible workspace
- Optimising the utilisation of the rooms and resources your company already owns
- Saving time and increasing productivity, helping your current staff to “do more with less”

Click here for more details on the above items and learn how Rendezvous and Rendezvous Workspace from NFS are fantastic tools in helping our clients go green!

Visit www.earthday.org to find out about environmental activities and events in your area.

NFS Hospitality Corporation believes in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We do our best to support these practices every single day.

We recently published an article that focuses on how commercial meeting and events are increasingly taking place in unique venues, such as museums, galleries and libraries.

We look at the reasons why this trend is happening, including a substantial rise in demand on the part of the meeting planner or event organiser who is becoming more adventurous and looking for something unique; and the fact that the venues themselves want to widen their revenue-generation activities.

The hosting of commercial events is a relatively new concept for many unique venues, and means that their technology requirements have changed. As they now start to compete in the broader market, these venues need dedicated systems that can efficiently manage their expanding operations.

To help unique venues stage corporate meetings and events, NFS offer an integrated solution for venue and events management. Rendezvous enables unique venues, such as libraries, museums and galleries, to manage all the essential elements of events management, in one single solution.

To read the full article, please click here.