As everyone who manages events understands, the biggest mistake you can make is double booking a room. Two groups arrive, confusion ensues, and everyone turns to you for an explanation.
Second only to that scheduling nightmare is overbooking resources like equipment. An event can’t take place without a data projector and when the customer arrives, you realize you’ve inadvertently booked the same unit in two places at the same time, and the other group is already using it.
Fortunately, Mazévo can prevent both of these scenarios from ever happening. With the overbooking of resources in particular, there are multiple ways that the system ensures you’ll never be left scrambling to figure out how to address a resource deficit.
Defining Resources and Indicating Inventory Quantities Is Simple
Creating items like equipment or furniture in Mazévo takes just a few minutes. All you have to do is go Settings > Resources and click Add Resource.
Then you simply give the item a name (Laser Pointer, for example), indicate its Resource Grouping (like Equipment) and Service Provider (Audio Visual, for instance), and check the Inventory box. When you do that, you can indicate how many laser pointers you have.
There are a few other options when defining resources, and their function is explained in the Mazévo Knowledge Base, but essentially, you’re now good to go. The system will track how many of the items are in use at any given time going forward.
How Mazévo Helps You Manage Your Resources
Now that Mazévo “knows” how many laser pointers you have (let’s say 3), how does the system help you manage the use of those devices? It does that in a couple of ways.
First, if you’re adding resources to an event you’ve scheduled, Mazévo displays an eye-catching banner alerting you that your request may have overbooked the resource. You can then click Check Inventory. The system then either displays the message “No resources are overbooked!” or displays a pop-up window on which you can click the graph icon to see what the inventory is for the item and at what time(s) the item is overcommitted.
If an item is overbooked, you can decide how you want to handle the situation. You might tell the client that they can only have the number available, or you might know that you can obtain more laser pointers—from another department, for example—and choose to go that route.
You can also check the quantity of resource items used in two reports: The Daily Operations Report and the Resource Usage Report.
- Daily Operations Report: Shows you the quantity of the item that is being used in the context of the event(s) in which they’re being used.
- Resource Usage Report: When run in the Quantity In Use (Inventory) view, lists dates/times when an item is being used, how many are being used, and the total number in inventory so you can monitor upcoming events and make changes as necessary.
The automatic overbooking caution and Check Inventory function, along with the inventory reports, make it easy to stay on top of your resource inventory so you never make promises you can’t keep!
Real-Time Inventory Information That Enables Great Customer Service
Not only can using Mazévo’s inventory management functionality keep you from accidentally overbooking, it provides other benefits as well. For one thing, team members can tell meeting hosts on the spot whether the items they require are available in the necessary quantities. And, the ability to run inventory reports for future dates prevents “fire drills” that give meeting attendees a bad impression of your operation.
Instead, you manage events with full confidence that you’ve got the resources you need.
For a deeper dive into other resource management tools in Mazévo such as packages, room exclusions and selections see Improve Your Event Services with Mazévo Resources or contact us today to schedule an online demonstration fully customized to your operations!
Photo by Kane Reinholdtsen on Unsplash
