Booker Improves Utilisation and Reduces Costs at King’s College Hospital
King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust is one of London’s largest and busiest teaching Trusts, with a strong profile of local services primarily serving the boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Bromley. Their specialist services are available to patients across a wider catchment area, providing nationally and internationally recognised work in liver disease and transplantation, neurosciences, haemato-oncology and foetal medicine.
Poor room visibility and difficulty in discovering how to request rooms meant that, historically, there was frustration by both staff and administrators at the time being wasted engaging in e-mail/phone based processes. The old room booking processes and the dated room booking tools varied between the departments who managed the rooms. King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust’s objective required a more streamlined, centralised and user-friendly way to request and manage all rooms so that staff and administrators could spend more time focusing on core tasks.
A solution was required that not only made booking rooms easy for staff, but that could help staff find rooms which best suited their often very specific requirements.
King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust needed a solution that not only made booking rooms easy for staff but helped staff find rooms which best suited their meeting styles and needs. The Trust wanted users to have the capacity to quickly identify sites across London with video-conferencing facilities that could be used for inter-site meetings in order to reduce cross city travel. They selected Booker because they felt its search and booking features would help users to clearly understand room facilities quickly – through pictures and clear and comprehensive room specifications and availability. They felt Booker’s design makes it easy to make an informed choice of the best room without the need to either contact the Room Manager or visit the room.
According to one Room Manager, the new room booking system has resulted in an estimated 70% reduction in time spent dealing with room booking requests.
Booker’s multiple user roles mean all aspects of a booking can be self-managed by users. Booking users (staff, students and external bookers) can now self-service their own bookings. Room manager tasks are kept to a simple approval-based workflow, and room custodian users can also monitor and manage assigned rooms and update an event’s participants.
Improved room visibility has led to a substantial increase in room utilisation – which now means the university is getting much better value from the use of their facilities by internal bookers and allowing them to release more space, more efficiently for external event use.
Feedback and monitoring are ongoing between EventMAP and the King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust.
Both staff and Room Managers have found Booker’s user interface simple and easy to learn – reporting that bookings can now be made quickly and easily.
Staff are now self-serving their own room bookings – the Trust’s Room Managers are now simply tasked with managing the approval of the request and only need to intervene with a request when there is an exceptional request (such as whenever the system highlights a room request outside of working hours).
Staff are now booking rooms that they never knew existed before and as a local knowledge of each department is no longer necessary, newer staff members unfamiliar with a campus, room or building have been able to easily discover what’s available.
This improved room visibility has led to a substantial increase in room utilisation – which now means KCH are getting much better value from the investment in their facilities.
According to one Room Manager, the new room booking system has resulted in an estimated 70% reduction in time spent dealing with room booking requests.
The system is very simple and easy to use. EventMAP made migrating to Booker very easy and seamless.
