Client: Mishcon de Reya LLP
Industry: Legal Services
Implementation Portfolio: Africa House, WC2, 122,000 sq ft
Trimble Solutions: Space Scheduling – Room & Desk Booking System
Customer Since: 2015

When you create a memorable visitor experience by turning your reception area into a huge luxury hotel-style coffee lounge for clients, you need a flexible system that can help keep track of everyone. That’s why leading British law firm Mishcon de Reya turned to Trimble’s Space Scheduling solution.

Who are Mishcon de Reya LLP?

Mishcon de Reya LLP is an independent British law firm based in London with offices in New York. It provides a wide range of legal services to a fast-growing international community of clients and undertakes work which is often cross-border, multi-jurisdictional and complex. The firm employs some over 7800 people – including more than 400 lawyers.

Overview

When Mishcon de Reya relocated to its new 122,000 sq ft headquarters in Holborn, London, the firm wanted to provide an unrivalled visitor experience for its clients. So it created an expansive reception area designed to feel more like the lobby of a luxury hotel than an office—complete with marble floors, sweeping staircases and a huge client lounge where baristas offer coffee and pastries.

The client lounge was conceived as an informal but organised setting where visitors can turn up to meetings early to work, relax, or even hold meetings of their own after being greeted and checked in by the front of house team. It’s a huge space in which more than 50 people can gather and chat—either in private in one of the booths, or more openly around the bar.

However, this bold approach to delivering a memorable visitor experience gave the firm’s front of house staff a huge challenge. While some clients check in and go straight to their meetings, others arrive early and prefer to mingle in the lounge instead of being announced to their hosts immediately. So how can you keep track of everyone?

Given the increasing number of employees, clients, meetings and guests to be handled, Mishcon de Reya recognized that its existing room booking system would not be able to provide the sophisticated level of support its front of house team needed.

The firm identified that they needed to manage the complete ‘visitor journey’ 

The firm identified that it needed a more advanced, cloud-based meeting room booking & visitor management system capable of managing the complete ‘visitor journey’ with easy-to-follow procedures. From booking a meeting to arrival and departure … and all touch points in between. Key requirements included:

• Prompt and efficient processing of visitors to allow front of house staff to spend more time welcoming guests and creating a good first impression.
• Improved internal and external communication between users, clients, catering and AV providers, and the front of   house team.
• The ability for all client-facing users to pre-book visitors (or cancel meetings) themselves without having to involve front of house staff.
• Full tracking of visitors, from arrival to departure.
• Pre-booking of catering and audio-visual requirements by meeting hosts themselves.
• Powerful reporting, covering both operational and statistical information.
• Integration with touch screen panels outside meeting rooms to provide live room information for all users.

Solution

After conducting extensive research and assessing a number of other approaches, Mishcon de Reya selected Trimble’s Space Scheduling — a scalable, future-proofed and cloud-hosted solution for optimizing the booking, utilization and management of meeting space through to meeting and greeting visitors.

Ease of use, intuitive ‘drag and drop’ functions, colour-coded displays, visitor tracking, calendar integration, powerful reporting, and integration with interactive touch screens were seen as some of Trimble’s greatest strengths when compared with other products.

Result

The configured Trimble solution was implemented in less than 10 weeks. According to Mishcon de Reya, it has helped to make room booking and visitor processing more efficient and less time-consuming—despite a huge increase in the number of meetings, guests and client lounge users.

In fact, all of the firm’s procedures and standards for managing the entire ‘visitor journey’ within the building were designed around the capabilities of Space Scheduling. The system now provides complete visitor management support—from meeting and greeting guests, coordinating catering deliveries and arranging AV equipment, through to automated reporting and full visitor tracking from arrival to departure.

Colour-coded room booking charts—displayed on large screens—now show, at a glance, the status and availability of every meeting room, while a daily on-screen Visitors List gives the front of house team immediate ID details about each new guest. Special colour-coding is also used to confirm the location of individual visitors. For example, ‘client arrived/host informed’, ‘client in meeting room’, ‘client in client lounge’…

Internal communication has also been strengthened through Space Scheduling’s ability to integrate with AMX touch screen panels outside meeting rooms.

This provides live room information, such as availability and the current occupants of a room. It also serves as an easy-to-use platform for booking and managing meeting rooms via the touch panel.

According to Mishcon de Reya, all client-facing departments are now benefiting from Space Scheduling—and the new system has received positive feedback from clients too. The firm says its streamlined processing of visitors via the new system has fostered a more relaxed atmosphere—for guests and staff alike—in an otherwise extremely busy reception area.

Book a Demo of Trimble Space Scheduling

If you would like to learn more about Trimble’s room and desk booking software, please visit the Space Scheduling product page.