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Resource Booker Touch

Staffordshire University

In partnering with TechnologyOne to develop and implement Resource Booker Touch, Staffordshire University has enhanced their staff and students’ experience through digital innovation, increased productivity and gained valuable data insights.

Case study highlights

  • Increase in staff and student engagement
  • Maximised facility usage and operational efficiency
  • Money saved from reduced administrative burden

Challenge

Staffordshire University is an award-winning higher education institution in Staffordshire, England. The main city campus in Stoke-on-Trent is home to over £100m of professional-standard facilities including one of their most recent projects, The Catalyst, an 8,800 sqm four storey building that brings together social, study, teaching and support functions as well as delivering an events space, community space, food outlets and more.

With The Catalyst building open 24/7 for the university’s staff and students, the university wanted to ensure the facility’s spaces would be utilised in the best way possible and give staff and students the ability to self-manage bookings simply and efficiently.

“We wanted to be able to provide digital information around room bookings through an accessible and on-location interface,” said John Melia, Head of Registry Operations, Staffordshire University.

“The aim was to give our staff and students a more efficient method of booking a space, rather than just walking into a room because it was empty. We also wanted to improve the data we captured about room utilisation to help inform how we might allocate rooms or use spaces more productively with scenario modelling,” says Melia.

Solution

Managing people, places, and resources effectively is one of the biggest challenges faced by education institutions today.

To optimise the use of The Catalyst by the institution’s community, whilst it was being built, Staffordshire University sought a software solution that would fulfill their room booking requirements.

“Our main objective was that we had this new building being constructed [The Catalyst] and we wanted to utilise the space efficiently. We wanted to get room booking panels installed so people could see what rooms were available or unavailable, be able to do instant walk-up bookings directly from the panels and check-in and out of rooms,” says Rob Oakes, Digital Solutions Manager, Staffordshire University.

A key consideration for the University when undertaking a market scan for solutions was the ability to integrate with their timetabling system.

“When we looked at other systems, the integrations that we were going to have to build were complicated to say the least. We wanted something that would be simple to integrate and as we already had TechnologyOne’s Timetabling and Scheduling solution, the ease of which we could do that made it the most efficient and attractive option,” said Oakes.

Recognising an increasing demand for Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that would enable room panel solutions that could display information such as room usage, walk-up bookings and room check-in and check-out, TechnologyOne was in the process of developing an API and proof-of-concept panel solution when approached by Staffordshire University to help fit out their new building [The Catalyst] with approximately 50 interactive panel displays.

Seeing an opportunity to collaborate, TechnologyOne and Staffordshire University partnered to develop Resource Booker Touch (RBT) - a solution that puts a room’s schedule on an interactive panel outside of the room itself and natively integrates with TechnologyOne’s Resource Booker and Timetabling and Scheduling solutions.

“It felt like a true partnership as we were working together. We could discuss ideas and issues with TechnologyOne, to determine what we thought was the best way of the software operating. Everything was very collaborative in the way that we worked,” says Owen Carr, Solution Architect, Staffordshire University.

Staffordshire University is the first institution in the UK to implement Resource Booker Touch, recognising that by becoming an early adopter, they could address their room utilisation concerns while being at the forefront of digital innovation.

“The stars aligned and enabled us to work together so that we could get something that we wanted and TechnologyOne could develop a product that they could go on and offer to other universities,” says Oakes.

Digital Solutions Manager
Staffordshire University

For brand-new software that no one else had used before, we are really pleased with Resource Booker Touch, it did exactly what TechnologyOne said it was going to.

Outcome

Through the adoption of TechnologyOne’s Resource Booker Touch (RBT), Staffordshire University has been able to optimise the utilisation of their new building, The Catalyst, and improve staff and student experience through digital innovation.

“We’ve been able to increase engagement because the screens look so fantastic and really have that ‘wow’ factor,” says Melia.

Staffordshire’s community can now see a room’s availability at a glance and simply walk up and instantly book directly from the interactive panels, allowing users to easily check-in and check-out of their bookings.

The University has also been seeing the benefits of Resource Booker Touch’s configurability.

“You can have pretty much any set up that you want. You can have one room set up different to another room and it’s very easy to configure which has really helped us,” says Rob Oakes, Digital Solutions Manager, Staffordshire University.

Head of Registry Operations at Staffordshire University, John Melia, says that with less bookings needing to be manually made, changed, or cancelled by staff, productivity has significantly increased.

“The administrative burden on making bookings has been reduced so we’ve made savings in that sense. We’ve been quite open in singing the praises of Resource Booker Touch,” says Melia.

The University are now looking to implement Resource Booker Touch in future projects.

“We’re doing some refurbishments and looking at potentially putting in additional room booking panels. Moving forward, with any new building or renovations we’re considering extending the use of the panels and Resource Booker Touch as much as we can,” says Oakes.

By using TechnologyOne’s Resource Booker Touch solution along with Resource Booker and Timetabling and Scheduling, Staffordshire University is improving effective engagement with their community, maximising facility usage and creating operational efficiencies.

Spotlight on Resource Booker Touch

Managing people, places, and resources effectively across multiple faculties and sites is one of the biggest challenges faced by education institutions today.

TechnologyOne’s Resource Booker empowers students and staff to make and manage their own room and resource bookings, reducing the burden on administration.

Resource Booker Touch puts a room’s schedule on an interactive panel outside of the room itself and natively integrates with TechnologyOne’s Resource Booker and Timetabling and Scheduling solutions.

It allows users to see a room’s availability at-a-glance and if it’s free, walk-up bookings can be made instantly directly from the interactive panel. A QR code on the display can also be used to book the room through Resource Booker on any mobile device.

Using the interactive panel, users are required to check-in and check-out of their bookings, with unfulfilled bookings automatically cancelled freeing up the room for others to use and optimising the use of the space.

A wealth of configurable options allows features to be enabled and controlled for each individual panel and aligned to the look and feel of an institution’s branding and the surrounding environment.

Resource Booker Touch can run on any web-connected tablet or room display panel.

Resource Booker

About Staffordshire University

Staffordshire University is an award-winning higher education institution in Staffordshire, England. Their main city campus is in Stoke-on-Trent, with their Centre for Health Innovation located in Stafford, Digital Institute at Staffordshire University London, and a campus in Shrewsbury.

The University prides itself on being digitally innovative with a mission to provide the next generation of education opportunities.

Staffordshire University website

Publish date

12 Jun 2023

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