Case Study: Academic Institutions
Expanding commercial opportunities in education
A university was looking to build stronger links with local businesses, improve overall customer experience and expand its commercial opportunities by providing access to its business facilities and specialist equipment.
Switch’s online event management system offered a solution to simplify bookings, implement customer management processes for its commercial venues and offer specialist facilities and equipment on demand.
Extending services
Understandably, teaching schedules always take priority over availability for commercial hire. However, a lack of integration of different booking rules and the existing scheduling systems for both venue hire and resources, meant that it was difficult to manually optimise bookings.
Switch was able to implement an online system which automatically prioritised the rules for the space, so that they could optimise usage. It also meant that the team could concentrate on increasing the number of different services provided to local businesses, such as providing drop-in workspace and support workshops.
Simplifying systems
Switch was used to take bookings for the new business centre and innovation space that was delivered as a result of releasing the team from administrative activities.
Using its API, Switch added an integration with the university scheduling system to pull in academic bookings. By capturing teaching scheduling rules, live availability could be provided for commercial bookings on an optimised basis through the client’s website and lead aggregators.
The Switch supplier portal was also used to provide a live platform to interact with the caterers for the purpose of placing new orders, finalising arrangements and managing financial reconciliation and revenue allocation.
Rewarding relationships
Switch helped the university improve service delivery by integrating teaching scheduling more effectively with room hire and catering services.
Implementing an online booking service and customer portal to manage event organising, led to a reduction in administration tasks and manual reconciliation, freeing up the team to focus on revenue generating opportunities and relationship building.
Since introducing Switch, booking revenue from commercial business has increased by 15% and double booking errors that were frequent under the previous system have been eradicated.
Using Switch’s CRM system to capture all enquiries, the client has built a database of over 3,000 frequent business users for its business centre facilities, who in turn are regular users of its meeting and event space and are critical for sponsorship and ongoing financial support.
