TANDBERG is the leading global provider of telepresence, high-definition video conferencing and mobile video products and services. With headquarters in both New York and Norway, TANDBERG designs, develops and markets systems and software for video, voice and data, and also provides sales, support and value-added services in more than 90 countries.
TANDBERG, in common with many major international companies, operate a number of Executive Briefing Centers (EBCs) to support presentations and meeting with clients and prospects. An Executive Briefing Facility provides the environment, technology and staff support infrastructure to conduct meetings requiring the coordination of multiple resources, in many cases on a multi-country basis.
An important facilitator of such meetings is video conferencing and telepresence technologies. The advanced TANDBERG telepresence facilities (T3) available at the Executive Briefing Centres offer a rich visual collaboration experience, ideal for a Briefing Center to deal with bringing together important components of a multi-location meeting.
Improving The Processes and Productivity for Booking EBC Meetings
 TANDBERG operate a total of six Executive Briefing Centres; two in Europe, three in the Americas and one in Asia. There are thirteen T3 Telepresence rooms located in Europe and the booking of these rooms through Outlook used to be a time-consuming, multi-step process.
The booking process for rooms and resources like catering typically involved booking the room in each location, then separately identifying staff resources available to support meetings and presentations and booking these separately. Any changes to meeting times, locations or other requirements would mean complicated and time-consuming changes to a booking.
A further complexity could be the number of different groups of staff involved in multi-location meetings, from sales and technical consultants to coordinators, and also different groups from a client account who might need to participate in a multi-location meeting and share documents via audio and video communications. In addition to the booking process, the task of maintaining calendar coordination and updating calendars of internal and external participants is just as critical to a successful meeting.
TANDBERG have for many years deployed a highly successful and functional tool for VC management, the TANDBERG Management Suite. The missing link has traditionally been the booking of all the other components required to effectively create and manage a complex multi-location meeting; rooms, resources, documents and staff resources, for example.
The Solution for Scheduling of Multi-Site EBC Meetings
In June 2009, TANDBERG and NFS Hospitality, developers of the Rendezvous room and resource
booking software, started an engagement to adapt the browser-based Rendezvous Workspace solution to meet the needs of TANDBERG’s Executive Briefing Center facilities.
 The challenge was to take an Outlook-based, multi-location scheduling solution and adapt the solution to fit the EBC booking model, whilst at the same time enhancing functionality to deliver benefits in key areas, such as the management of meeting agendas and the booking of staff resources required to deliver training and presentation support.
A critical factor for success proved to be how easily and flexibly booking rules could be adapted to deal with the booking of high-cost and complex facilities like T3 Telepresence rooms. "We realised this was going to be a challenge, as our business requires many different processes to be undertaken together in harmony to make the EBC booking process more efficient," comments Eva Burnette, Head of TANDBERG’s Executive Briefing Centres.
"We were successful in getting the Rendezvous solution to do what we needed as a specialist user of a scheduling tool, but it took us longer than we expected and the NFS team had to deal with a number of challenges along the way. However I am delighted to report that the main objectives of the project have now been delivered," concludes Eva.
Rendezvous has now been enhanced to enable the EBC Coordinators to book multiple rooms in different locations, checking the availability of supporting staff and creating an EBC meeting fast and efficiently. Most importantly, changes to location, times and resources required can be dealt with as part of a single integrated process, rather than having to deal with many different systems and processes. Rendezvous updates Outlook Calendars, ensuring staff involved in a meeting are kept fully up to date.
"Not only will time be saved in meeting planning, but we will also be able to secure better utilization of expert staff resources and have the information available to deliver a better service to our consultants and clients," comments Jo Torkel Lie, Technology Director for the EBC business, based in Oslo, Norway. Rendezvous has been implemented for the European EBC facilities initially and will soon be extended to other EBC operations.
The Practical Aspects of EBC Workflow Scheduling
The diagram below explains the main aspects of how Rendezvous is used as a scheduling tool for EBC bookings.
Future Developments
Rendezvous Workspace is being developed to offer a wider user community access to the web-based solution where they can make quick inquiries about space availability in the early stages of planning a multi-location meeting. The development of a business intelligence based reporting tool will in future provide better information on usage of rooms and resources. In addition, improved management information will assist TANDBERG with more effective processes and solutions to deal with the more abundant and more complex meetings envisaged in the future.
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