Those of us who have worked with almost any of the world’s major pharmaceutical firms – as well as biotech corporations – know that during any single day there are lots of meetings. Many of them involve participants at numerous company sites around the world.
Big pharma often holds global town halls for department updates. IT frequently has meetings in a variety of countries to discuss the latest enterprise-wide technology implementation. Research and development groups may need to train the next team of clinical trial investigators simultaneously on multiple continents. And that’s just the tip of a pharma’s meetings iceberg.
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Between a collection of buildings at a headquarters campus, offices in many – if not all – major cities, ongoing clinical trials at sites throughout the world plus partner organizations, too, there are thousands of people conducting thousands of meetings connecting almost countless meeting rooms in any given month. Without the advantages of workspace technology, big pharma has the potential to waste company resources, real estate and a whole lot of time.
Coordination Cure
While pharmaceutical companies continue to work on much-needed cures and therapies, a remedy already exists for generating healthier meeting room management and coordinating global meetings. Today, the combination of meeting room booking software for a pharma firm and touch screen digital signage for each meeting room can dramatically simplify the coordination of people across continents, time zones, and available meeting rooms as well as every other aspect of meeting set up, execution and post-meeting reporting.
The right meeting room booking software can do much more than just arrange the meeting room itself. Top technology streamlines the coordination of people and services needed from when attendees walk in the office and greet a receptionist, to notifying the IT help desk of needs, to the audio/visual, food and beverage needs in the meeting room, to after-meeting reporting of attendance and any applicable cost allocation charge-backs. Sophisticated software can provide comprehensive workflow management for even the largest number of attendees and geographical locations.
Digital Signage
The benefits of digital signage for each meeting room can also add to a pharma’s savings of time, resources and real estate. No-shows of booked meetings or meeting room double bookings can be a big problem in companies where many meetings occur each day. How many productive hours are lost if just five people discover their meeting is double booked and start wandering around looking for an open room? With high-tech digital signage, it is easy to control room access with a PIN or RFID card, see availability to book or rebook rooms and set up auto-bumps to release a room at a set time, or to open it up when a planned meeting does not occur.
For large pharmaceutical companies or any major, worldwide business looking for an easier way to manage meetings or reduce real estate costs by cutting the number of meeting rooms, the savings can be significant. Having more than 100,000 meetings globally each month is not unheard of in a big operation. That means investigating an investment in innovative workspace technology may be the next type of research your pharmaceutical firm should pursue.