Saving Money While Saving the Environment with Resource Scheduler

Implementing a “Green Initiative” has quickly become a top priority for companies, universities and other facilities around the world. Obviously, being environmentally conscious and instituting an eco-friendly strategy helps to preserve and conserve natural resources. But in many cases, going green is not only good for the environment, it can also be good for business.

Resource Scheduler provides the perfect combination to support this kind of green strategy because, beyond making it easier to schedule conference rooms, equipment, assets and other shared resources, it helps you cut costs while simultaneously reducing your carbon footprint. How? By helping you to:

• Decrease energy consumption
• Eliminate excess waste
• Enable telecommuting
• Minimize travel

Key “Green” Features and Functionality

• Office Hoteling:  Also known as hot desking or flexible workspace, Resource Scheduler’s office hoteling capabilities allow mobile workers to book temporary office space on an as-needed basis. As a result, companies are able to minimize and/or optimize their space utilization to reduce their real estate costs, limit heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) use, and conserve electricity. Further, office hoteling helps facilitate a telecommuting workforce, helping to lessen reliance on fossil fuels and carbon emissions normally associated with commuting to and from work.

• Videoconferencing Integration: Resource Scheduler helps companies facilitate videoconferencing by making it easy to schedule the needed equipment as well as the rooms where the equipment may be located. Why is this important? By streamlining the scheduling process, companies can rely on videoconferencing more heavily to communicate with others, helping to reduce travel costs and the harmful carbon emissions of airline or vehicle travel. Further, videoconferencing also promotes electronic communication which helps reduce paper use by eliminating the need to print out meeting agendas, presentations, etc.

• HVAC System Integration: Using Resource Scheduler’s API (Application Programming Interface), organizations are able to integrate Resource Scheduler into their HVAC system. What’s the value? The heating and cooling of a particular room can be regulated depending on when that room is being used rather than maintaining a constant temperature throughout the day. This not only saves heating, cooling and electrical costs, but limits the carbon footprint (the amount of harmful carbon dioxide deposits) of the HVAC system.

• Room Displays and Reservation Kiosks: Resource Scheduler integrates with several room display units, reservation kiosks and lobby displays. Implementing one or all of these units in your organization not only helps productivity but also helps the environment in several ways.  For example, the kiosk integration allows remote employees who need to come into the office to reserve the shared workspace or conference room on the spot when they arrive. This makes it easier for companies to offer a cost-conscious, eco-friendly telecommuting work environment similar to the office hoteling example above.
  
  The room display unit is another example. Used to automatically display and manage room schedules, positioning these units outside of conference rooms eliminates the need to print out room schedules every day for each room. This not only helps reduce paper use but also allows the person responsible for posting these printouts on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis to focus on more business-critical activities.

• Integration with Footprint Tracker: PeopleCube has also teamed up with Building Sustainability Ltd. to integrate their Footprint Tracker energy consumption and carbon emissions tracking application with Resource Scheduler.  By integrating Footprint Tracker with Resource Scheduler, customers are provided with a cutting edge, intuitive ‘management dashboard’ model that allows organizations to monitor and reduce energy consumption based on efficient scheduling and utilization of workspace and real estate. As a result, you are not only able to reduce your carbon emissions, you’re also able to reduce your energy consumption costs (e.g. heating and lighting) as well as demonstrate your commitment to the environment.

Configuring for Green

Resource Scheduler is highly configurable, meaning you can easily tailor it to fit your specific needs. Besides the business benefits, this configurability also allows you to be more eco-friendly. For example, Resource Scheduler allows you to order catering services during the reservation process. You can configure the catering reservation system by allowing users to request silverware and china rather than paper plates and plastic utensils. After all, reusing is even better for the environment than recycling. Further, you can make locally-grown produce and/or organic foods available as menu items. In addition to promoting organic farming and the reduction of pesticide use, you’re also emphasizing the importance of ordering local foods to help cut down on transportation emissions.

Reporting for Greater Green Awareness

Another component of Resource Scheduler that not only helps companies save money but also saves the environment is its extensive reporting capabilities. Using Resource Scheduler’s Green reports, you can run space utilization and cost calculations, telecommuting savings analysis, videoconferencing cost savings reports and more.  You can then leverage this information to make adjustments accordingly that benefits both the environment and the bottom line. By using these analytics, Resource Scheduler customers have been able to:

• Remove, reuse, or repurpose underutilized spaces
• Eliminate unnecessary heating/cooling
• Limit equipment purchases based on past and projected usage trends
• Reduce unnecessary maintenance of assets (limit light bulb replacements, maintenance on company vehicles)
• Decrease custodial services based on space utilization

Now that going green has become such an important issue for businesses, universities, government and non-profit organizations, finding applications that provide business AND environmental benefits can be a challenge. Fortunately, Resource Scheduler has always contained both. So in addition to helping customers better manage their shared resources, we also help you find new and innovative ways to protect our natural resources as well.