Summary

Condeco Room Booking Software allows BNP Paribas Real Estate UK to book their meeting rooms directly through MS Outlook, which has reduced meeting room no-shows.

Client

BNP Paribas Real Estate, a specialised division of the financial services group BNP Paribas, is able to provide targeted or integrated solutions, both locally and internationally and offers its clients a comprehensive range of commercial and residential real estate services thanks to its 6 lines of business: Property Development, Transaction, Consulting, Valuation, Property Management, Investment Management. With a ranking amongst the leaders on the market, BNP Paribas Real Estate is present in 38 countries, employs 3700 staff and has a turnover of €716 million.

Challenge

BNP Paribas Real Estate UK wanted the ability to book meetings directly through MS Outlook to prevent meeting room no-shows occurring. They were already using a room booking system, but it was a separate system from their email. This meant people needed to book a meeting through their email system, invite attendees, and then log in to a separate room booking application to book an available room.

This was becoming a problem as people forgot to book both the meeting and the room. Additionally when a host changed or cancelled a meeting they forgot to do the same for the room booking, meaning rooms were getting booked, but left empty.

BNP Paribas Real Estate UK needed a system that was fully integrated with MS Outlook and scalable to cover all eight of their offices, across twenty meeting rooms.

In order to find a suitable room booking system BNP Paribas Real Estate UK looked at various systems available in the market and compared their features.

Solution

Condeco Room Booking Software was installed in 2013 across all eight offices. The implementation was on time and setting up the rooms on the system was straightforward.

Condeco provided a small amount of training for the BNP Paribas RealEstate UK administrator team, as they found the new software intuitiveand easy to use.

Only a few people within the organisation have access to the Condeco web application as BNP Paribas Real Estate UK chose to make users book meetings purely from MS Outlook using the Condeco MS Outlook Add-in.

Employees are impressed with the small amount of time it takes to book a meeting; they rarely need to click past the first page to book a meeting room. If a host requests extra equipment for their meeting they can do this within the same booking form quickly and easily. Their requirements automatically send a notification to the IT team so they know when and where the equipment is required in advance of the booked meeting.

Workers can also opt for email notifications about their booked meetings to remind them of when it is and when extra equipment has been set up.

Results

Condeco’s solution has helped BNP Paribas Real Estate UK achieve their original goals: fewer booked rooms are now left empty and it is much easier for users to book, amend or cancel meetings through the MS Outlook Add-in.

Most employees view the room booking system as part of MS Outlook as it integrates seamlessly. The system has been reliable since installation and works well.

BNP Paribas’s response

Anthony Shama, Director of Software Development, comments: “The new system does exactly what we needed; it is easy to use and our users rarely need additional help.”