Overview
Bitdefender connected 64 meeting rooms in 10 offices to Yarooms room booking in just 2 weeks. In the same 2 weeks, 1,200 staff were set up to book them. This case study looks at how the cybersecurity company did it, and what integrators can take from it.
The company holds a lot of meetings. As it grew, staff found it harder to get a room when they needed one. Bitdefender rolled out the Yarooms Room Booking system across its offices. It also put a Yarooms room panel at each meeting room.
AVD distributes Yarooms workplace software across Australia and New Zealand. Local integrators can offer the same Yarooms room booking setup here. It suits clients with rooms in more than one building or city.
About Bitdefender
Bitdefender is a security and anti-virus software company founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 2001. It protects consumer, business and government systems around the world. By 2021 it employed more than 1,600 people, and over half of them were security researchers and engineers.
The Challenge: More People, More Rooms, More Offices
As Bitdefender grew, it opened offices in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Iasi and Timisoara in Romania. It added Den Haag in the Netherlands, plus sites in California and Florida.
The team kept growing, and so did the number of meeting spaces. That made a simple question hard to answer. Where is a free room with the right equipment, in the right building, at the time I need it?
- Rooms were spread across 3 continents. Each new office made it harder to find a room in the right place.
- Rooms differ. People needed a room with the right amenities for the meeting, as well as one that was empty.
- Scheduling had become inefficient. Bitdefender’s own service desk says it had problems before Yarooms went in.
“As a global leader in cybersecurity, we hold a lot of meetings, sales discussions, development sprints, and workshops. Meetings are an integral part of working in a company with 1600 employees, spread across 3 continents.”
George-Lucian Talaba, Service Desk Engineer, Bitdefender
The Solution: Yarooms Room Booking With a Panel at Every Room
Bitdefender put all of its shared meeting spaces into Yarooms Room Booking. Staff in any office can now see and book them from their own devices.
Each meeting room also got a Yarooms room panel. The panel shows whether the room is free right now. Anyone walking past can book it on the spot.
What Was Deployed
| Component | Scale | What It Does Here |
|---|---|---|
| Yarooms Room Booking | 64 meeting rooms in 10 offices | One place to find and book any room in the company, from a laptop or phone. |
| Yarooms Room Panels | One at each meeting room | Shows live availability at the door and takes bookings on the spot. |
| User management integration | 1,200 users | Staff accounts came across from the user management system Bitdefender already ran. |
How a Yarooms Room Panel Works at the Door
Bitdefender’s story doesn’t go into how its panels are set up. Yarooms’ own product pages describe what the room panel app can do. Each feature below comes from Yarooms, so check which ones suit your client before you scope a job.
- It shows the room’s status in colour. Green means free, red means busy and yellow means a meeting is about to start. The screen also shows who booked the room, the meeting title and the rest of the day’s schedule.
- It lets people book at the door. Anyone can reserve an open slot from the panel. A badge tap or PIN can be required, and the system blocks clashing bookings.
- It asks people to check in. If nobody checks in within the grace period, the room is released for someone else.
- It lets people extend or end a meeting. A meeting can run on if the room is free afterwards. If it finishes early, the room can be handed back.
Whatever happens at the panel syncs back to the Yarooms room booking system. Yarooms says it also syncs with Outlook and Google Calendar. That way the door and the calendar show the same schedule.
Why the Rollout Took 2 Weeks
Bitdefender linked Yarooms to the user management system it already ran. That meant it didn’t have to create 1,200 accounts by hand. The integration likely did a lot to set the pace.
Key Outcomes and Results
The headline result is speed: all 64 rooms in 10 offices were on Yarooms room booking within 2 weeks. The 1,200 users were onboarded in that same window.
- Staff book rooms themselves. People in every office now schedule their own meetings.
- Availability is live. The booking system and the panels show which rooms are free right now.
- The busiest sites run smoother. Bitdefender says the old scheduling problems no longer happen in its most meeting-heavy locations.
“Before using YAROOMS, we had problems with scheduling inefficiencies. These are now prevented in our most meeting-intensive locations. The YAROOMS team has always been helpful when we needed them. I warmly recommend both them and their solution.”
George-Lucian Talaba, Service Desk Engineer, Bitdefender
Choosing Hardware for Yarooms Room Panels
Bitdefender’s case study doesn’t say which screens it used. That’s useful in itself, because Yarooms Room Panel is an app rather than a device. It works with Yarooms room booking. Yarooms says the app runs on iPad, Android and Amazon Fire tablets, as well as on commercial touch panels.
For commercial installs, Yarooms lists ProDVX touch panels from 7 to 37 inches among its hardware partners. AVD distributes ProDVX too. You can source both the room booking software and the door panels from one distributor.
A client can also start with tablets they already own and change hardware later without changing software. For a look at ProDVX panels outside meeting rooms, see how GGM Gastro uses ProDVX APPC-10SFN touch panels.
Why Yarooms Room Booking Suits Multi-Site Offices
In our view, the room panel is the part of this job most worth copying. Booking software only helps if people trust it. A screen at the door that matches the system is what builds that trust.
- It suits companies spread across cities. Bitdefender runs one Yarooms room booking system across Romania, the Netherlands and the United States.
- Rollout doesn’t have to drag. Linking to an existing user system brought 1,200 people on board in 2 weeks.
- It works for walk-up and planned meetings. People book ahead on their own devices, or grab a free room at the panel.
- It holds up at other big sites. Verizon uses Yarooms to manage its event spaces. Closer to home, the University of Sydney Faculty of Science saved $100,000 with Yarooms space management.
Partner With AVD
AVD distributes Yarooms across Australia and New Zealand, including the Room Booking system and room panels used at Bitdefender. You may have a client who needs what this Yarooms room booking case study shows. Our team can help you scope a rollout, from the software to the panels on the wall.
Contact the AVD team to talk through Yarooms room booking for your next workplace project.
