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Your reasons for needing an enterprise scheduling solution vary, you could need more locations, isolated systems, the list goes on. I delve a little deeper into that in this article on Why Businesses Choose Enterprise Scheduling Solutions. It doesn’t matter why you need an enterprise solution to your company-wide scheduling; the recently released Enterprise Cluster Solution was designed with you in mind.
In the video, we’ve covered some of the most significant aspects of the Enterprise Cluster solution, that makes it ideally suited to large and growing businesses.
Now, I will talk about how you can utilise the different features of the cluster solution to facilitate growth, integration and even segregation of the constituent parts of your business. Several things might prompt you to choose the enterprise cluster solution, and how that affects your business.
More Locations, Sites & Users
“We were doing okay with adding locations. But now there are too many to scroll through, and we need more resources.”
Adding additional locations to your business is a fabulous tool when your business first starts to expand. However, you can only add so many sites to before you reach the limits your premium account can handle. Once you reach a point of having to share admin logins between branch managers and having to scroll more than once to get to the bottom of your locations list, you know it’s time to move up in your scheduling provision.
Create separate accounts for your regions, or even individual sites, and link them all for your convenience with the headquarters dashboard. From there you can access every subaccount. You know your business better than anyone, so you know which sites need the most resources, new staff logins, and how many bookings they need.
Security & Privacy Concerns
“I need to maintain privacy between my departments. But also to let me see everything.”
Whether your business has grown organically or if you have bought out others in your expansion, there are times when you don’t want cross-system visibility between your separate company identities. However, there are other requirements for maintaining secure information away from unsolicited eyes. If you have a medical business, that has numerous clinics and sites; you might want to ensure that private and sensitive patient data doesn’t have the same
It’s your business. Even if you have franchisees and different subdivisions within your company, you still need to see the company performance in its entirety. At the same time, you also want to drill down into the component businesses to discover where any issues might be arising. Problems such as frequently missed KPIs, or poor reviews or on the good news front, you might be able to see where some sections of your business are thriving and need more resources diverting their way.
More Divides your Branches Than Just Location
“I have twenty branches across the state, but my clients are in two different time zones. How can I ensure that clients can book in their time zone?”
If you don’t display your appointment times in the local time zone, how will you ensure that your clients or associates turn up on time? Businesses with branches and offices spread across multiple time zones have to accommodate the local customers, clients and associates with a display that makes sense. With separate accounts for specific time zones, you can allocate the appropriate timezone to each cluster.
Your business might not even cover a whole country, but maybe a state in the US or Canada, where some regions observe different time zones. Two examples that spring to mind are Tennessee and Idaho. Tennessee is split East/West between Eastern Standard Time and Central Standard Time, while Idaho diverges North/South between Pacific Time and Mountain Time. What would be the point of having branches all across the state if you only allow clients to book in a single time zone? Even your reminders wouldn’t help.
“Your appointment is due to start in one hour at 10:00 am.”
“What do you mean? It’s already 10:00 am. Am I late?”
Separating your branches into different time zones allows you to tailor your company coverage to local clientele.
Different Resource Requirements
“My regions and branches have very different resource requirements. One region in Cumbria has only three branches and not many bookings, but my Teeside area has 14 branches and thousands of bookings per month. Do all of my regions need to have the same level of subscription?“
That’s okay; they don’t all need to have the same level of subscription. A tiny cluster in a low population area doesn’t need anywhere near as many bookings, providers, or even locations as a bustling “top ten” city. It might not even need the same number or diversity of features.
The Enterprise Cluster Solution enables and encourages you to use different levels of subscription to match the needs of your constituent businesses and subsystems. A small cluster in a region with few branches and a low population will not need as many users, bookings, or features as a large bustling city region with thousands of clients, and bookings.
Hidden Locations & Sites
“We use scheduling both for our external clients and our internal meetings and collaborations. Can we hide the internal meeting locations and offices from the public?”
With the use of the geolocator widget, you have the options available to hide any non-public locations from the view of the clients. For a branch or office to show on the Geolocator widget, you have to “opt-in”. This active decision to list the location as public means you have to take action. You can’t accidentally list a private site by forgetting to tick the “private” box. This is especially important when you might have hundreds of sites, but a few select ones are not available or open to the public.
You can also choose not to to show your private site booking systems and only add internal scheduling to company systems.
SimplyBook.me Cluster Solution
One of the great things about SimplyBook.me is that you can grow your business from a solo start-up into a large enterprise, while still keeping the system you know and love, and that has scaled alongside your company.
When a business begins to grow and expand, it needs tools and systems that will facilitate that growth. The best way to sustain that business development you need a system of integrated tools that will stay and develop with your company.
Everyone knows that nothing can grow in a constrained environment. If you find your company in the position where you have outgrown your existing scheduling system, or you will soon, you can’t go wrong with a meeting with a SimplyBook.me enterprise account manager. You can talk over how your business is growing and the increased control and management you need over an increasing number of sites and branches.
Let your business grow without hindrance, and with the scope to reach for the stars.