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Show HN: Robin – OpenTable for your office

robinpowered.com

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Re: Show HN: Robin – OpenTable for your office

#3
Pricing seems really steep. The analytics seems cool, but nothing really actionable can be done about popular conference rooms once your office is already built out.

Can someone recommend a good tablet setup for this to maybe bring the price of your total conference room "system" down?

Re: Show HN: Robin – OpenTable for your office

#4

Seems expensive. Can do the same thing with a shared resource in google calendar. https://robinpowered.com/blog/how-to-set-up-room-resource-ca...

I saw your comment and wondered "how expensive could it really be?" - the pricing is just too much. I ran it by our IT team (we're a prime candidate for using a product like this) and they shot it down immediately on price. 15 rooms for $3k/year?

Re: Show HN: Robin – OpenTable for your office

#6

Seems expensive. Can do the same thing with a shared resource in google calendar. https://robinpowered.com/blog/how-to-set-up-room-resource-ca...

I saw your comment and wondered "how expensive could it really be?" - the pricing is just too much. I ran it by our IT team (we're a prime candidate for using a product like this) and they shot it down immediately on price. 15 rooms for $3k/year?

Maybe you need to look for a new job. If your IT doesn't have that in their budget, time to run!

Re: Show HN: Robin – OpenTable for your office

#7

Seems expensive. Can do the same thing with a shared resource in google calendar. https://robinpowered.com/blog/how-to-set-up-room-resource-ca...

I saw your comment and wondered "how expensive could it really be?" - the pricing is just too much. I ran it by our IT team (we're a prime candidate for using a product like this) and they shot it down immediately on price. 15 rooms for $3k/year?

Couple perspectives you might find interesting (I say this having to learn the lay of the land over the past year myself):

Most offices are designed with 1 conference room per 10-20 employees. If you have 15 conference rooms you probably have well over 100 employees and many millions in payroll. Those people presumably have many meetings, and the cost of not being able to get their job done is measurable.

Conference rooms can be between 200-300 sq feet, so if you have a 15 of them you're looking at several thousand sq ft on your lease. Depending on where you are in the world, that's probably around $10K/month or so in real estate.

The effective rate is about $17/month/room, which in most cases is tiny compared to the cost of mismanaging office space and productive time above.

Re: Show HN: Robin – OpenTable for your office

#8
Others in this thread are saying the pricing is too steep or that this seems silly.

After working for the past 6 months in an office with 4 shared conference rooms and around 20 people, I can say with 100% confidence this pricing would have been approved pretty much instantly.

The conference room shuffle was a headache every single day and caused constant distraction and productivity loss. I know plenty of other people at other companies who have reported the same issues with their conference rooms. Hell, even in the Facebook HQ when I've gone in for meetings has had this problem (though their system is already pretty decent from what I can tell).

If you've felt this pain (regardless of how first world it may seem), I think you'd agree.

Personally I'd rather just never have meetings, but that's not always an option =)

Re: Show HN: Robin – OpenTable for your office

#10
post #3

Pricing seems really steep. The analytics seems cool, but nothing really actionable can be done about popular conference rooms once your office is already built out. Can someone recommend a good tablet setup for this to maybe bring the price of your total conference room "system" down?

I'd hope that the analytics help pinpoint all those cases of people booking a room "just in case" and then not using it.

(In a perfect world, resulting in reduced priority for their requests)

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