Maximise Your Real Estate

Matrix Booking is a specialist workplace technology company, empowering businesses to make the most out of their bookable resources

The company’s mission is to empower organisations to create a safe and flexible working environment. Its workplace management solutions allow businesses to track and understand exactly how their real estate is being used. The software provides empirical evidence that can back organisations’ decision-making when it comes to downsizing, considering investment in larger premises, or simply wanting to ensure that they have the right property strategy to succeed, to attract and retain talent, and remain competitive.

Matrix Booking became an independent SME in 2020. It has consistently punched above its weight since, becoming a global success in the private sector and the goto firm for UK central government smart workplace solutions. Its innovative products have met the challenges of the pandemic and new working patterns.

After the first lockdown ended, Matrix Booking has been quick to develop a new flow management solution. This was informed by property professionals who pointed out to Matrix Booking that scheduling a coordinated, safe, and selfdirected flow into office buildings was a concern as people started returning to their offices.

Within a month the new system was up and running, addressing these concerns. The new solution made it easy for office workers to schedule their arrival time, desk, and meeting rooms via a mobile app before they even leave the comfort of their home. This in turn allowed workplace professionals to manage the flow of people to and through buildings, avoiding overcrowding and enabling physical distancing in communal areas in their buildings or campuses.

There are two recent areas of major innovation that Matrix Booking has brought to workplace management. Firstly, its visitor management software, Matrix Welcome. The multi-purpose Welcome app is available for iOS and Android tablet devices and provides great flexibility when it comes to reception and visitor management. It gives better branding options and facilitates staff attendance reporting.

Currently, the Welcome app allows employees and external visitors (with a host) to check in and out of a building by entering their details manually, use a QR code, or a passcode, while providing support for accepting terms of visiting (e.g. security or health declarations). It then also sends notifications to the meeting host when their visitor checks in.

Secondly, the continued development of the Matrix Booking Public Sector Hub Network. Working with central government organisations and disparate hub programmes, this has supported a shift in the public sector estate away from inefficient individual departmental estates to hubs. Through this network, Matrix Booking can enable resource and technology sharing while supplying increased choice and quality of work settings for the wider civil service population.

Listening to and learning from those who run and work in the physical office space is key to the team at Matrix Booking as the company aims to raise the bar for the future workplace. Its vision is to create a world where organisations can effectively manage and unlock the potential of their bookable resources.

For Matrix Booking, the future workplace is not just about making sure you have the right number of desks or meeting rooms. The fast-growing company wants to help organisations create spaces that encourage work to be done in the best way possible and nurture the workplace culture. This includes providing business intelligence that goes beyond occupancy levels, so that company boards understand how their real-estate is used and what changes might be needed.

Matrix Booking is looking at growing its Admin as a Service (AaaS) for crossorganisational sharing of workspaces, which it already sees as a trend in the public sector and as an emerging focus in other sectors in the near future.

In the meantime, Matrix Booking is helping organisations to review their real estate, and to reassess what their workspaces are used for. This means looking at the office in five different ways:

1. A space to work.

2. A space for onboarding.

3. A space for promotion.

4. A space for collaboration.

5. A space for data to flourish.

Before organisations get too far ahead of themselves, Matrix Booking points out that the traditional ‘office’ isn’t completely dead. This would be a mistake.

Recent research suggests that 88 per cent of workers genuinely crave a hybrid dynamic. ‘Hybrid’ isn’t just a gateway drug to ‘laptop on the sofa’. It is a legitimate wish to create a balance where people can work in both spaces effectively.

An office may no longer be a sea of static desks with name plates attached. But a flexible-use space paradise comprising hot desks, booths, informal sofa settings or even pub-style benches should certainly be on the agenda.

With the best will in the world, remote onboarding is not the same as stepping into the new office on the first day. Not only do organisations need to retain a strong sense of atmosphere, culture, friendship and education in the workplace for these moments, but they actually now have an opportunity to build the space around this phase as part of their real estate reviews.

To make the office a perfect area for interviews, onboarding, training and progression reviews is one of the best ways to keep the former essence of that space alive. In its former life, that office was where people became most directly affiliated with the brand – a concept that still holds sway now.

In the same vein as channelling a brand culture through the workspace for new hires, the same applies to visitors from outside. Whether it’s prospective customers, business partners, shareholders or miscellaneous visitors, the office is still the best way to exude a company message and vibe.

Now, without the need to dilute that atmosphere with desk capacity needs, there is an opportunity to reimagine spaces for this purpose. Presentations, meetings and even gatherings can be considered through the use of interactive and digitised rooms, higher-tech media systems, or more openplan layouts.

It may be easier to focus in isolation, but it’s easier to collaborate in person. As such, converting the workplace into a space for meetings, idea sharing and more organic conversations would be an appropriate transformation of real estate.

The office in its traditional former state was rarely geared up for such instinctive and seamless collaboration, such was the need to fulfil capacity requirements. Here lies an opportunity to change that ergonomic outlook, and to give those hybrid demanders what they’re really looking for.

Utilisation and occupancy data should be the informing guide to any decisions about an organisation’s real estate; crucially, because every company’s scenario will be different. The volume of in-office workers could change according to the season, days of the week, specific ongoing projects, new hires, and many other variables. Keeping on top of that flexibility, manually, is likely to lead to missed opportunities and an unclear overview of your real estate’s purpose.

With Matrix Booking, organisations can utilise workflow management tools and security solutions to ensure hot deskers are given safe and seamless access; meeting room and boardroom booking tools can account for any training, onboarding or collaborative work that needs to be done in-house; and visitor management systems can guide outside arrivals into the newlook space.

Tel: +44 203 951 8291

Email: info@matrixbooking.com

Visit: matrixbooking.com/