NFS Hospitality technology solutions

We now have a new White Paper available to download for free. The Modern Workplace is the Mobile Workplace zooms in on a new generation of mobile worker; one who can hold any job title and who expects to be able to work from anywhere, at any time.

Our White Paper examines how this new mobile worker needs to work in a mobile workplace, also referred to as flexible workspace, hoteling, hot-desking or alternative workspace. Whatever you call it, this new way of working is steadily taking hold.

In order to manage your mobile workforce effectively, you will need flexible workspace-scheduling technology that can not only manage your traditional spaces – such as walled offices, cubicles and meeting rooms – but also new types of spaces – such as touchdown desks, collaborative space and video-conferencing & telepresence space.

Our Study also highlights the opportunity for mobile employees to schedule any type of space on their mobile devices, especially smart phones and iPads. With the new Workspace Mobile interface for Rendezvous Workspace, workers can use their iPads to search for and reserve any type of space to which they have access, and make changes to existing reservations.

Are you uncertain about how best to manage your new mobile workforce?

Our Workspace Mobile and Rendezvous Workspace solutions can help by allowing you to provide employees with the right mobile technology and the right scheduling tools, to manage the right types of space.

Find out more by downloading The Modern Workplace is the Mobile Workplace, our free white paper.

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.

In order to capitalise on the tremendous growth in our business enjoyed in the venue and conference hotel market, we give a warm welcome to Charles Blowfield, a senior industry figure with over thirty-five years’ experience of the industry; the last six spent running his hospitality business consultancy.

In this new management position, Charles will set out to communicate to hotel and conference venue operators the many benefits of using our integrated meetings and events management technology.

“Rendezvous offers great potential,” says Charles. “The software suite is developed by NFS  for the hotel and venue market, and the hosted solution means that even small venues can benefit from an advanced scheduling solution.”

Luis Desouza, NFS Managing Director, comments: “I’m very happy to now have some great experience on board which we can channel into being more responsive to the needs of the market in our future developments. I value Charles’ input as we continue to develop our technology for meetings, venues and hotels.”

Want to know more?

Charles (charles@cbassociates.biz) will be delighted to hear from you and happy to answer any queries you may have about our Rendezvous suite – and most importantly – how it could benefit your business.

Click here to read the full release.

* * *

Our technology is being used successfully by a growing number of leading venues and hotels around the world. Not only are we signing new clients and new employees, but we have moved our Head Office to larger, more spacious premises.

You can now find us at:

NFS Hospitality

15 Harforde Court

John Tate Road

Foxholes Business Park

Hertford

SG13 7NW

T: 01992 514 555

Please update your records accordingly, thanks.

Given the changing nature of the modern workplace, this month we held an informative webinar entitled: Flexibility Matters:  Advantages Impacting the Bottom Line, hosted and co-presented by Natalie Appleton, NFS Head of US Operations. The speaker was Diane Stegmeier, President of Stegmeier Consulting Group, author of the book Innovations in Office Design: The Critical Influence Approach to Effective Work Environments, and a recognised expert in workplace change management.

Attendees heard how flexible work programmes can substantially decrease workplace costs, while at the same time supporting the organisation’s employee engagement, attraction & retention and work-life balance initiatives.

The webinar looked at the following topics:

• Workplace flexibility… in the news
• Evolution of flexibility in the work environment
• Key workplace research findings
• Advantages impacting the bottom line of the organisation, including Workplace Cost Reduction and Workforce Performance Improvement
• Best Practices in Preparing for Flexible Work Programmes
• A product demonstration/overview of Rendezvous Workspace

Don’t worry if you missed this popular event – we now have the entire webinar available for download here.

Watch this space for news of our next webinar, and in the meantime, we hope you enjoy Flexibility Matters, and welcome your comments and feedback about the event.

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.

We are delighted to announce the latest in our series of informative webinars; the next discussion being: Rendezvous Workspace vs. Outlook – Why Outlook Isn’t That Great a Scheduling Tool.

This webinar will highlight how Rendezvous Workspace significantly extends and enhances what is already being done in Outlook in terms of room and resource scheduling. Focusing on our latest offering, it will include a live demonstration of this flexible and powerful scheduling solution as well as its benefits over using Outlook alone for scheduling.

Rendezvous Workspace works with Outlook in various ways, including:

• Full integration with Outlook – no need to disrupt your email session or open multiple applications; simply launch Rendezvous Workspace directly from Outlook.
• Ease of use – The user interface is uncluttered, user-friendly and efficient. With “drag and drop” functionality, schedules can be changed quickly on the fly and without the need to rekey data.
• Highly configurable – Rendezvous Workspace is customized to your exact needs and business processes, and it integrates fully with several database platforms.
• Portability – Simply use your laptop, smartphone, Blackberry or iPhone to do everything you can do in the office – book meeting rooms, hot-desks, catering and resources.
• Seamless automation – Save time by automating meeting reminders, change notifications, cancellation and service alerts.
• Video-conference scheduling – Schedule multi-timezone and multi-location video-conferences, and notifications will be sent automatically.
• Smooth Integration – Rendezvous Workspace is flexible; whatever your choice of email platform, it delivers. It integrates as seamlessly with Lotus Notes as it does with Exchange server technologies.
• Interoperability – With Rendezvous Workspace you are not tied to one browser. The system is interoperable and works perfectly with Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.

To find out more about Rendezvous Workspace and to register to attend the free NFS webinar, visit www.myrendezvous.net/webinar.html today.