Invest Northern Ireland (Invest NI) is a regional business development agency, tasked to grow the Northern Ireland economy. Invest NI is in the process of rolling out a number of business hubs, the first outside the province is based in London. The hubs provide highly professional serviced office space (desks, meeting rooms and event space) to external businesses, on a casual basis at a reasonable cost. The agency is in the process of opening similar offices in Dublin and Brussels, with a view to expanding to other locations.
Invest NI needed a booking solution that would allow them to manage a flexible “Club Membership” style facility. Instead of clients leasing expensive office space in London, they purchase time credits, which allow them to use the office facilities as and when they need. This “Club Membership” style of operation means that clients are not unnecessarily committed to a long-term lease, and they can spend the time credits as quickly or slowly as they like, matching individual business needs.
Collaborating together, Invest NI and EventMAP designed and developed a new capability within “Booker”, EventMAP’s Room and Resource Management software, that delivers a Pay-as-you-Go Office Space Management service.
Barry Clark, Head of Territory for Great Britain and Europe International Business, at InvestNI, acknowledged that, “New business development and marketing concepts need the application of experienced, fresh and creative minds to bring them to life. We, at InvestNI, worked closely with EventMAP’s team of experts, to develop an innovative, easy to use and entirely digital solution for the Northern Ireland Hubs that will also provide us with the analytics that we need to continue to enhance the customer experience and make future decisions about investing further to support business growth and our profile in key markets.”
As Booker is cloud based, users can easily book the space and resource they need from any device, whether from home, or on the go. At EventMAP we see this as a sign of things to come, as office space provision, and usage, becomes increasingly reimagined.
If you have spare office capacity you wish to better utilise, or, if you are seeking to offer a flexible office service, please get in touch.
