e-skills UK Guide

Managing appointments

Managing appointments and meeting schedules

This guide is designed to assist you understand the benefits of online calendaring and appointment management for your business and take the steps to implement a solution.

Online calendaring is a useful tool that enables you to create and store your diary electronically. You can then decide what aspects of that calendar you want to share with others – from the entire diary so others can make appointments straight into your diary through to just having the ability for people to view your busy times.  

The sharing of a calendar is probably one of the more useful features of online diaries as others can see when you may be available for a meeting. They can then send a meeting request electronically enabling you to agree or decline to the session. Some systems allow a tentative acceptance of a meeting – useful if you are uncertain about attending or may need to move another appointment before hand.

Calendars can be downloaded to mobile devices and personal digital assistants (PDAs) and then kept with you when you are out and about. There are even some systems that can download data to a digital watch, but these have not been too successful due to the limited size and usability of a watch based diary.

The benefits of online appointment management

In the very small business a diary can be useful as it can be kept on a PDA, along with other contacts and probably email, instead of a paper format which some people may consider old fashioned. This may also present a “hi-tech” image for a business person that works in that type of area.

Having the ability to see where people may be for the day is also useful, as it may prevent a wasted telephone call or time spent tracking someone down.

For many people that work alone or with one colleague there may not be a business need for an online scheduling tool as they can quite easily manage with paper diaries and confer directly to schedule meetings.

For businesses with more than about 5 members of staff an online scheduling tool can enable you to set up meetings a lot easier as multiple diaries can be checked automatically to see when convenient meeting times appear for all attendees. Other resources such as rooms and presentation facilities can be booked in a similar way.

Online diaries are also useful for external sales people that may be working closely with an inside sales person fixing appointments. By using an online diary both parties can quickly check if a time and location is convenient.

Culturally some members of staff may push back against online calendaring as they see it as having their movements too closely monitored. It is possible in most solutions to determine the level of calendar access, which can ensure meeting details can be kept private. This is an important cautionary tale as many confidential meetings have been revealed by exploring insecure calendars belonging to senior managers and board members, even in very small businesses.

Other risks associated with online calendaring include poor systems management. Many calendars link to email systems which could mean the loss of vital messages and appointments if the systems are not managed properly and should have a problem.

Choosing the online appointment management solution

There are broadly two types of online scheduling systems; those that you host on your own computer network and those that are hosted by a vendor on the internet.

Creating the infrastructure to support an internally hosted scheduling system can be quite complex. You will need to ensure that you have the correct hardware and software installed and that the computers are communicating via a network.

The benefit to this approach is that you are in control of the system and can tune it so that it integrates into your email system as well. Generally the functionality of these systems is much greater than that found in online systems and the solution can grow with your business. The risk is the loss of data as we have described and the costs of implementing this solution can be quite high. You may wish to work with an external supplier to help configure your system.

Scheduling systems hosted on the internet provide a much cheaper way of obtaining online calendars and require minimal setup as they are accessed from a web browser. The downside of these solutions is that they may insist you use a specific email address supported by the vendor and the subsequent integration into your own email may be complex or not possible.

The fact that the system is hosted on the internet generally means that the system is more robust as it would be managed by experts in computer servers that have all the necessary backup and maintenance systems. There may be a slightly increased security risk of passing confidential data across the internet but it is really negligible for the vast majority of businesses and should not worry you. 

In Summary

• If you are a sole trader with no staff and working in a non-hi tech industry then online calendaring is probably not much use to you.
• Consider an internally hosted solution if you have the skills or budget to implement it.
• Consider an internet hosted solution if you want to have a simple solution up and running quickly and easily.

Implementing online appointment management

Implementing an online system can be quite involved if you want a complete solution installed and tailored for your business. The online systems require much less time and effort and can often be installed in a few minutes.

You will need to consider the cost of staff training when implementing an online system. For the more basic systems most users can get up and running in a couple or hours. For the more advanced solutions user training can take many days if you wish to use all features of the software.

One of the most popular calendaring solutions available for internally hosted calendaring is Microsoft Outlook. This integrates with Microsoft email systems and provides a platform to share other data such as contacts and email folders.

Another well know calendaring solution is Lotus Notes from IBM. This also provides a lot more functionality than simple calendaring and is more suited to businesses wanting a more advanced solution.

The implementation of these systems can be quite involved, which will be reflected in the overall cost of implementing these solutions.

Providers of online internet hosted calendaring solutions include:

YAHOO

GOOGLE 

MHSOFTWARE 

These systems are either free of charge or have a small subscription fee. Setup can be done in a matter of minutes.

 

For more information on how best to manage your time, take a look at the following guide:

Effective time management