🎯 1. The Promise of Booking Systems
When organisations roll out desk booking and space booking tools, the goals are usually crystal clear:
Support flexible, hybrid working 🏢↔️🏠
Make collaboration easier 🤝
Reduce wasted space and cut real estate costs 💸
Done well, these systems can transform the office - helping people find one another, making smarter use of space, and giving leaders the data they need to plan confidently.
But for many, the reality doesn’t quite live up to the promise - or needs and ways of working have changed SIGNIFICANTLY since these systems were first deployed.
❓ 2. When Booking Systems Don’t Deliver
If your system suffers from low engagement (let's be honest - people either can't be bothered to book or don't see the point in doing it), missed check-ins, or patchy data, you’re not alone.
Common signs?
Desks booked but left empty 👻
Meeting rooms blocked out “just in case” or for long since ended recurring meetings🚫📅
No one really sure who’s coming in - so collaboration is hit and miss 🤷♂️
Facilities or Estates teams can't get real, useful data and are unable to plan with certainty 📉
When systems aren't consistently used, users don't see value and for estate teams - the insights you hoped for disappear.
🧠 3. The Real Problem: People!
Most booking systems rely on human behaviour:
People have to remember to book, check in, cancel and...they don’t always do it. Some people never do it.
People forget 🧏
People don't bother booking🛑
People don’t see the value - there's always a desk so what does it matter ❓
In hybrid environments, this is a problem.
Even a few missed actions can throw the whole system off - leaving you with unreliable data and unhappy or indifferent users.
📉 4. The Consequences: Lost Insight, Lost Value, Failed Objectives
When systems aren't used as designed - with bookings and check-ins - it causes a ripple effect:
🔍 Collaboration suffers – no one knows who’s actually in
🚪 Resources go unused – or maybe they don't, who knows!?
📊 Planning becomes guesswork – data either doesn't exist or can’t be trusted
💼 Space is misused – and sometimes unnecessarily retained either org wide or by specific teams
The original goals - smarter collaboration, data based estate consolidation, hybrid efficiency, and estate savings, sustainability improvements, office experience benefits - these fade into the background if people don't use the system you've installed.
⚡ 5. The Smarter Way: Passive Engagement
What if people didn’t need to remember anything at all?
What if the system knew what you needed or prompted you with choices automatically?
What if the data insights you wanted about your estate and how it's used could be gained without needing users to do a thing?
That’s the power of passive engagement.
Instead of relying on users, the passive engagement offered by AskAiB uses signals like:
📶 Wi-Fi presence detection
📍GPRS location data
📅 Calendar and team context
...to trigger automatic actions - bookings, check-ins, prompts - without the user having to remember to do anything.
That means:
✅ No more ghost bookings
✅ Users do not need to remember to book or check-in
✅ Data on office usage accuracy improves significantly
✅ A system that works in the background - not one your people have to manage (unless they want to!)
🛠️ 6. AskAiB: Automation Without the Cost or Complexity
You might assume this kind of automation needs expensive sensors or badge system integrations.
It doesn’t.
AskAiB delivers all the benefits of passive presence detection with:
❌ No sensors
❌ No access control integration
❌ No rewiring or installers
✅ Just smart automation using tools your teams already have — like phones and laptops.
It’s quick to deploy, light-touch for IT, and far more affordable than hardware-heavy alternatives.
🤖 7. Let the System Do the Work
Space booking should work for your people - not the other way around.
Space booking systems should also provide both rich data for planners, and a rich experience for users.
If your current setup relies too much on users and leaves you with uncertain data or underused space, or if you are considering expensive alternatives to get basic office usage data - it might be time to look at an automate system.
With AskAiB’s passive automation, you get:
Cleaner data - because your people don't have to remember to do things 📈
Higher adoption - because your people don't have to remember to do things 📲
Better outcomes - because your people don't have to remember to do things🙌
Your people will be unburdened - all without a massive capital expenditure budget.
Sometimes, doing less is the smartest move of all.
Contact us today to learn more!
