Home> Reservation Times - July 2010
Reservation Times - July 2010
In this edition of the Reservation Times we turn our spotlight on EMS’ role in the corporate world, provide updates on key
partnerships, pedal some green goodwill, challenge you to a little summer trivia and more!
Tell us your thoughts on this newsletter – what articles were helpful, what do you want to read in the next addition, what
did we miss? – at Feedback@dea.com.
In this issue...
Tips and Tricks: Set EMS to Your Preferences
Industry Spotlight: Corporate
Can't Always Get What You Want?
Bike to Work Day Win: Pedaling Our Way to Success
Dancing with the Digits: EMS Plays an Important Role Behind
Many Scenes
So Happy Together: Two Companies, Many Digital Signage
Visions
Prophetic Partnership
Your Survey, Industry-Wide Results
Summer Trivia You Didn't Hear It From Us
Tips and Tricks: Set EMS to Your Preferences
Parameters control system-wide settings and can be changed by a system administrator. Go to System Administration > Settings > Parameters to access these.
- Flexible Labels: Many fields in EMS can be relabeled. For example, do you call your groups
"customers," "clients" or something else? EMS offers you the flexibility to maintain your organization’s
vocabulary within your software.
- A Rainbow of Recognition: If you want certain occasions
to immediately stand out, you can make them a different color in EMS. EMS Professional and EMS Enterprise-level systems offer
you the ability to use distinctive colors for holidays, weekends and dates a building will be closed.
- Booking Lockdown: To
preserve a record of past appointments and avoid future confusion, you can “lock” or prevent edits to bookings older than
your preselected number of days. Setting this value to zero prevents users from booking events in the past and changing
bookings that happened as recently as yesterday.
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Industry Spotlight: Corporate
In the corporate environment, staying on budget, informed and ahead of the competition are constant challenges. Our line of
EMS facility scheduling software is specifically designed to tackle your business’ room scheduling, resource management,
reporting and communication needs. We move companies beyond best-guess practices into the world of business intelligence.
"EMS is interactive and offers advanced reporting tools," said Bryan Sorrentino, the Manager of our Corporate
Sales Team. "Our scheduling software gives users the ability to capture and manipulate data into the insightful reports
they want, as opposed to predetermined data sets."
EMS’ power and flexibility assist corporations in a wide variety of ways, including:
- Saving Space: EMS tracks the availability of work and event areas with its sophisticated facility
scheduling functionality, which allows users to quickly schedule meetings. It can also help you assess
whether you have too much space, too little or simply need to more wisely use your current resources.
- Organizing Information: Our data analytics tools allow you to
generate meaningful reports about the use of your resources, including the number of meetings that occurred in a
particular room, sales summaries, A/V equipment usage and more.
- Staying on the Same
Page: A centralized database provides all your employees with web-based calendaring and online scheduling
capabilities.
By some estimates, companies lose $48 for each square foot of workspace that goes unused over the course of a year. No
wonder EMS facility scheduling software is a popular way for corporations to cut costs without cutting back on quality.
Mary P. the Manager of Conference Room Services at an international pharmaceutical and healthcare company summed up EMS'
positive effect on the corporate bottom line this way: "Our company began using EMS-Enterprise one year ago and found we
are able to provide reports to identify additional resources and improve service to our clients."
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Can't Always Get What You Want?
You must not be an EMS customer. If your software hasn’t been upgraded in a while, what are you waiting for? Each subsequent
version of EMS software includes enhanced features and expanded abilities, most of them suggested by customers. For example, we recently enhanced Master Calendar in a
multitude of ways, including making the software compatible with iPhones and iPads.
Organizations with current ASAs are invited to upgrade to the latest version of their software for free. (Software and documentation can be downloaded from the Online Support Center.) Members of
our Sales team are always happy to explain the nuances of any new release and our Customer Support team can assist you with the upgrade process – again, free of charge.
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Bike to Work Day Win: Pedaling Our Way to Success
We’re
all geared up about our third-consecutive first-place finish in Colorado’s annual Bike to Work Day Business Challenge for
Arapahoe County.
Employees rode to our Denver Tech Center headquarters June 23 from a variety of starting points including Parker, Colo.
and downtown Denver. The longest two-wheel commute was 25 miles and five employees rode more than 10 miles in at least one
direction. One staffer paid his neighbor’s kid $5 to rent his bike for the event, while another employee assembled her new
bike the night before Bike to Work Day.
Dean Evans & Associates had a participation rate of 65.9 percent with 29 out of 44 employees taking part.
"This event makes people realize how easy and enjoyable alternative transportation is," said Sales Manager Bryan
Peck, a frequent bike commuter who coordinated the company’s participation. "Biking to work can be a stress reliever, a
great fitness plan, a money saver, a way to reduce your carbon footprint or all of the above."
DEA competed against 87 other companies in Arapahoe County to come out on top.
Colorado’s Bike to Work Day is held annually on the fourth Wednesday in June. While most Bike to Work Day events
throughout the country take place in May, the Colorado Legislature chose this later date to avoid the state’s unpredictable
weather, according to the Denver Regional Council of Governments, which organizes the event.
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Dancing with the Digits: EMS Plays an Important Role Behind Many Scenes
Three academic departments, seven buildings, 17 acres, 450 artistic productions, more than 1,000 events and one facility and
event scheduling system: EMS. Find out how the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center uses EMS to juggle all of its activities
while successfully engaging students, professional artists and the surrounding community.
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So Happy Together: Two Companies; Many Digital Signage Visions
Were you one of the 32,000 attendees at last month’s InfoComm in Las Vegas? We hope you had a chance to stop by and see us at the Visix booth. Both companies’ solutions are designed to streamline communications in complimentary ways. Visix designs, develops and supports digital signage software applications that allow users to create, import and manage visual communications. They’re also a longtime member of the EMS Business Partner Program.
EMS has integrated with various digital signage solutions for over 10 years. Marrying EMS with modern digital display applications is easy and makes sense, whether you want to display events occurring within a facility, provide a way to find information or access interactive kiosks for check-in and check-out. Digital signage is a powerful tool whether you’re using single displays or large networks. The combination of EMS and digital signage provides a more complete and efficient package for our customers, increasing the value and adoption of both of our solutions. Intelligent, data-driven digital signage is a perfect complement to the EMS solution.
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Prophetic Partnership
We’re always looking for partnerships with top-tier companies to provide you with integrated products and services,
because we want to help our customers work more efficiently and effectively. Last month, we were excited to announce a Gold Level Partnership with Oracle . DEA's
academic scheduling capability includes a two-way interface with PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, Oracle's student information
system for higher education.
"Becoming an Oracle Gold Partner reaffirms Dean Evans & Associates status as a leader in the higher education arena
for scheduling and calendaring solutions. We continue to work with the most relevant technologies in our efforts to further
increase the value EMS solutions give to our customers," said Tim Campbell, our global channel and partner relations
manager.
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Your Survey, Industry-Wide Results
Responses to the 2010 Facilities and
Services Benchmark Survey are coming in; don’t miss out on your chance to provide valuable feedback and get access to
insightful info on scheduling practices and industry trends.
If you are interested in taking the survey, please email benchmark@dea.com. (Customers: The primary EMS contact at your organization received an invitation
recently and can share that with you.) All participants get access to survey results, and as added incentive, one
participant chosen at random will receive an iPad and five others will each receive a $50 Visa gift card. The survey
deadline is July 31, 2010.
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Summer Trivia
Summertime and the living is easy (or at least we hope so), but these trivia questions may not be...
- How many seeds are in an average watermelon?
- "Tell me more, Tell me more," was the popular chorus, not to mention the only thing the boys and girls could
agree on, in this popular song sung by John Travolta and Olivia Newton John.
- What day does the summer solstice fall on this year?
- How much land (in acres) in the U.S. is covered by golf courses?
- How many times have the Olympic Summer Games been cancelled?
- Mount Rushmore was originally intended to include the four presidents’ ______?
- If every Cracker Jack ever sold was laid end-to-end, how many times would this sticky, sweet chain circle the Earth?
- According to the American Pyrotechnic Association, the U.S. fireworks industry made $500 million in 1999. How much do you
think it made last year?
- What percent of the American population does the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service consider active anglers?
- True or False: You can tell the temperature from a cricket’s chirps?
Scroll down for answers.
- 300 in the average melon, according to the National Watermelon Association.
- Summer Lovin’.
- June 21.
- 2,244,512 total acres.
- Three. The 1916 Games were cancelled because of World War I. The 1940 and 1944 Games were canceled because of World War
II.
- Entire torsos. (Funding issues prevented the completion of the monument as originally designed.)
- 69.
- $945 million.
- 10 percent or roughly 30 million people.
- True. According to the Houston Museum of Natural Science: “A cricket’s chirp frequency fluctuates with temperature … You
can tell the temperature (in Fahrenheit) by counting the number of times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds. Just add 37 to
whatever number you reach and BAM you have an approximate outside temp!”
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You Didn’t Hear It From Us
Normally, we’d put a customer’s quote in this space, a testimonial to EMS’ positive impact on one of the more than 3,900
organizations we serve, but today we want to draw your attention to our new Testimonials page! We’ll continue to let our
valued customers sing our software’s praises one-by-one in this space, but for posterity, or perhaps our own egos, we’ve
assembled this collection of compliments – which range from comparisons to grandma’s cooking to rock-n-roll. Thanks to
everyone who provided one of these kind kudos.
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