Streamlined Resource Scheduling Saves College More Than $10,000 Each Year
Client Profile
Founded in 1947, Pierce College is a comprehensive two-year college with more than 100 disciplines being taught to more than 18,000 students each semester. The college is one of nine campuses of the Los Angeles Community College District and is fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, a nationally recognized accrediting agency.
Located on 427 acres in the western San Fernando Valley, nestled next to the thriving business district of Warner Center, Pierce College combines state-of-the-art technology and learning with the picturesque beauty of its rolling hills. The campus’ setting among 2,200 trees, thousands of rose bushes, a nature preserve, as well as agriculture, equine, and equestrian education centers, and a forest area boasting giant redwoods makes it unique in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
The Situation
Prior to selecting their scheduling software, the college’s scheduling process consisted of a manual process:
- Fully centralized, manual confirmation process.
- Two primary technical admins and five other people responsible for the entire set of rooms and resource schedules; among all, there was no visibility into what each was booking.
- Reservation requesters include: College vice presidents, staff, visitors and external end-users (the latter are essentially customers of the College).
- Direct communication between requesters and schedule administration via telephone and email.
- High resource contention: scheduled resources are utilized approximately 60% of the time.
- Scheduling administration offers basic catering and equipment in support of special events.
Meeting Rooms, Facilities and Resources
- Nine meeting rooms, three executive conference rooms with capacity to support up to 18 people (for VPs and senior management); one conference room that supports 50 people.
- Sports facilities:
- Two gymnasiums
- Olympic-size swimming pool
- 12 tennis courts
- Golf range
- Two practice fields
- Football stadium
- Four soccer fields
- Movie sets in designated campus locations.
- Outdoor stage.
- Farm market where campus grown vegetables are sold.
- Wine tasting room. (in planning process)
- Heavy farm equipment.
- Equestrian center with visitors’ stalls
The Issues
- Double-bookings from the lack of schedule visibility on the admins’ side led to booking cancellations. Lost revenue opportunity was often the result as facilities bookings are paid for by users. Furthermore, double-bookings impact future revenue as dissatisfaction from the first cancellation leads to reduced bookings. Users simply look to and book other facilities in other parts of the city.
- The lack of schedule visibility created a situation in which important resource needs were not always being met. For example, College vice presidents were often assigned a conference room not appropriate for their meeting because the slow manual process did not allow admins to quickly coordinate and find a more appropriate conference room.
- Over 500 staff and end-users made facilities booking requests to the seven administration people; the sheer volume of requests was overwhelming. The manual telephone and email process took up a good portion of each admin’s time, even though scheduling is only one of many tasks and duties they have. Change requests to existing reservations increased the administrative burden by about 30-40%.
- Due to their inherent nature, the different types of resources require different reservation processes. For example, reserving a campus location for a movie shoot requires a different set of equipment requirements, which is inherently different from reserving an executive conference room with extensive catering choices.
- Catering process is a problem as many reservations/events require this; the tracking of this is all manual, via emails and pen and paper.
The Solution
Led by Brian Silk, administrative analyst at Pierce College, the IT administrative team undertook an extensive search and evaluation of potential software solutions. After learning of the flexible capabilities of Meeting Room Manager, Brian and his team determined Meeting Room Manager as the solution of choice and began to draw out a plan to take full advantage of the features in the software.
All the facilities and resources were grouped based on not only their respective admin’s responsibilities but also by location and resource type. For example, certain sports facilities were grouped together and created under one “location” in Meeting Room Manager; permission rights to manage those facilities were then assigned to the respective admin. The admin group then took advantage of Meeting Room Manager’s flexibility to have multiple unique reservation processes. Essentially, an admin managing a specific set of resources can have their own unique reservation process, based on their needs. The ability to provide multiple unique reservation processes based on location and resource type is unique to Meeting Room Manager.
End-users were also given access to view the schedule of facilities available to them. However, the admin group has chosen a “resource assignment” scheduling model. In the resource assignment model, end-users have access to view the schedules but must submit booking requests to the respective resource’s schedule administrator. Based on the resource’s location or type requested by the end-user, requests are funneled to the appropriate admin’s Meeting Room Manager interface. The respective administrator then assigns the booking request accordingly. The resource request/assignment capability is a core feature set in Meeting Room Manager.
The Results
- Centralized reservation schedules for all the locations and resources of the College, with schedule administrators having instant visibility into their respective resources’ schedules.
- Complete elimination of double-bookings, previously costing staff and end-users an average of 20 minutes a day in downed productivity as well as revenue from cancelled bookings. The estimated loss of productivity for just one secretary amounts to approximately $1,500 per year. In addition, the revenue lost is more than $10,000 per year.1
- Fully automated request/assignment reservation process for staff and other end-users of the College’s facilities.
- Each resource administrator has an automated way to capture and manage booking requests; resource assignments and notification to persons making requests are done via automated email notification. This process has virtually eliminated the previously time-intensive manual process of taking booking requests by telephone and email.
- Increased utilization rate of resources as a result of schedule visibility — admins are able to instantly see the schedule and search for resource alternatives.
- Time savings for schedule management among the numerous resource administrators: 25-50% depending on the administrator.
- Users at all levels have immediate and accurate visibility of resources which has increased not only their confidence in the system, but the professional way the college operates. A good public image.
- Provides much greater detailed information about scheduled meetings
- Telephone operators and information desk employees fully utilize and appreciate the search capabilities of MRM when helping students and visitors trying to locate where a scheduled event is located. The staff does not always have the complete titles of the meetings, organization, room number or facilitator. With partial information, Meeting Room Manager’s search capabilities can find where the attendee should be.
1. labor cost of secretary is $19.50/hour = $6.50/day = $32.50/week = $130/month or $1,560/year. Lost revenue was more than $10,000/year.