With bookings from several retail companies, two non-profit organisations and the public to track, Canada’s Centre of Health & Safety Innovation (CHSI), had a real need for an online meeting room booking system.
Based in Ontario, CHSI boasts 27 rooms including training rooms, boardrooms and conference spaces, plus trade show halls holding up to almost 300 attendees
The Infrastructure Health & Safety Association, and Workplace Safety & Prevention Services, are located in the CHSI building, and these two internal non-profit partners book rooms through the Corporate Event Centre.
Bigger external corporations reserve meeting rooms for reasons including the launch of new products or when they are carrying out improvements to their workplaces.
It added up to a busy life for Murray Parr, Guest Services Manager at the Corporate Event Centre, whose booking system could easily go awry.
So he found the solution to meeting room management in Rendezvous meeting room booking system by NFS Technology.
Parr investigated a number of systems, and chose Rendezvous because of its easy set-up and quick implementation. He and his team trained to use the software in just two days through teleconferencing.
Thirty people trained and now use Rendezvous to book meeting rooms. Administrators reserve meeting spaces for managers, and Corporate Event Centre, oversees the whole reservation system.
“I assign colour codes, yellow or orange — confirmed or tentative,” Parr said.
He designates yellow to one internal CHSI partner and orange to another to keep things running smoothly, and uses other colours to track of external companies. A further colour is used for room maintenance.
Larger companies sometimes run out of space and need extra rooms for offsite meetings, announcements etc.
If a large retail company has a special event, such as rolling out a program it will book CHSI rooms, sometimes for months.
The Rendezvous meeting room booking system allows him to input different price points for non-profits.
“Rendezvous enables us to set up different price points and register clients with different account numbers,” Parr says.
He opens the calendar for the year in June, and the two organisations in the building book training sessions for the year, followed by bookings from other clients. The rooms are opened up to the public for booking in August.
The centre has used Rendezvous for over four years, and Parr particularly appreciates how easy it is to use the meeting room booking system’s reporting, audit trails, and invoicing.
“Because CHSI has so much space and many types of booking it is crucial to have a robust, easy to use web-based solution,” says Natalie Appleton, NFS VP Americas.
“They sometimes need to change a reservation, which is easy with Rendezvous.”
Parr states it’s also easy to go online or call NFS and get 24/7 assistance.
“NFS has always answered our questions,” he said. “I highly recommend NFS Rendezvous. It is the easiest system to set up – I know, because I’ve used and researched other programs that do not compare.”
Good support is crucial, because the Rendezvous meeting room booking system is so important to the organisation. But with the colour-coded system, great customer service from Rendezvous and close attention to detail, emergencies can be avoided.
“Nothing’s off the shelf, ready to use when it comes to booking meeting rooms, but Rendezvous comes close,” he said.
About Corporate Event Centre
Corporate Event Centre at CHSI provides unparalleled service for meeting, training, conference and event rental space. The facility is open to the public, and can accommodate groups from 8 – 288. Close proximity to airports, highways, and hotels makes it the perfect spot for events, whether they are a training program, conference, strategy session, board meeting or reception.