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The meeting Management Blog

Meeting management for financial and professional services

Client meetings are where your business happens. Book the room, the catering, AV and your guests in one Outlook invite, and every team behind the meeting gets its task from it, before the client walks in.

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The challenge

Why are meetings so hard to get right in financial services?

A meeting in a bank, an investment firm or an advisory practice is never just a free room and a slot in a calendar. From the moment it is booked to the moment the client leaves, it has to come together across the room, the guests, catering, AV, room setup and cleaning, and across the people who deliver them: reception, facilities, conference services or hospitality, AV and IT, finance, and the assistants who plan the day.

Every one of them works from their own copy of the plan. When the plan changes, and client meetings change all the time, every copy has to be updated by hand. This is what that looks like for one meeting that moves by an hour.

A client meeting on Thursday at 10:00 in Room 4, with two guests, lunch for eight, a video link and a room setup. Reception, the kitchen, AV and facilities each get their own email. The organizer moves the meeting to 11:00. AV and facilities pick up the new time, but reception and the kitchen still work from 10:00. At 10:00 lunch for eight arrives in an empty room, and at 11:00 the client is not on the reception list. One change, four emails, and two teams still on the old plan.

The five challenges behind it

01

Booking tools people avoid

Advisors and partners live in Outlook. When booking a room means a separate tool with its own login and its own logic, people book through an assistant, send an email or take a room that looks empty. The calendar stops being the truth, and nobody can see which meetings will really happen.

02

No live picture of rooms and resources

Without real-time availability, two client meetings end up in the same room, or a team walks the floor looking for a free one ten minutes before the client is due. Where time is billed by the hour, every lost minute shows.

03

The wrong room for the meeting

A due diligence session needs a screen and a video link, a board meeting needs the boardroom and catering for twelve, a sensitive call needs a room away from the open floor. When rooms and equipment are not matched to the meeting, the meeting has to adapt to the room.

04

Admin that eats advisory time

Every client meeting creates tasks for several teams, and every change creates them again. Assistants and office teams spend their day relaying times, headcounts and room numbers by email, instead of supporting clients and the people who serve them.

05

A first impression that slips

The client arrives and reception has no name on the list, the host is not told, the badge is written by hand and lunch is still on its way. Clients notice how a firm handles their visit, and they draw conclusions about how it handles everything else.

One invite

A client meeting should not take five emails to prepare

AskCody puts every request in the meeting itself. The organizer books the room, catering, AV, room setup and the guests in one Outlook invite, and each team gets its task from that same meeting. When the plan changes, the tasks follow, so nobody works from an old copy of the plan.

One meeting at a large office, before and after. Before, booking a meeting took five steps: book the room, then send separate emails about AV, room setup, catering and security. At 08:05 the organizer books Room 12 for 10:00 in one Outlook invite, with AV, room setup, lunch and two guests, and each team is notified from the same meeting. Buffer time to set up and clear away is added automatically. Before the meeting, the guests receive an email or text message with a map to the room, and the reception expects them. At 10:00 everything is in place. When a later meeting is canceled in Outlook, its catering and other orders are canceled too and the teams are notified, with no one having to tell them.

An organizer plans a meeting in the Outlook invite and opens the AskCody Visitors add-in, next to AskCody Bookings and AskCody Services. Three external guests are added with their name and email. At the reception, the guests appear in the AskCody portal as expected visitors, each with their host, meeting, room and arrival time. When the meeting is moved or made recurring, the guests follow the meeting.
Client visits

Your clients are expected, not just invited

Add your clients to the Outlook invite with the AskCody Visitors add-in, next to the room and the catering. They are pre-registered with reception and linked to the meeting, so reception knows who is coming, who they are meeting and in which room.

Before they arrive, guests can receive directions, WiFi details and parking information by email or SMS. At check-in, the badge prints from the invite, guests can sign an NDA, and the host is notified. The welcome looks as prepared as the meeting.

See how visitor management works

Cost centers

Catering that lands on the right cost center

Client lunches and board breakfasts add up, and Finance needs to know who pays. Order catering in the same Outlook invite as the room, and cost centers, VAT and your own fields travel with each order, from the invite to the kitchen and on to Finance. Add the fields your firm needs, for example a required client matter number or a project code.

At month end, Finance gets a condensed or detailed report of every settled order for the period, as CSV for your ERP system or through the AskCody Services API.

See how meeting catering works

The AskCody Services add-in in an Outlook meeting invite with a required Client Matter Number field and a cost center on the catering order
What you see is what you book. An AskCody resource group called Executive floor holds the Boardroom and executive desks 1 to 6, and its members are the Entra ID group Leadership team. Maria Holm from the leadership team sees the Boardroom, Meeting Room A, Meeting Room B and executive desk 3 in the AskCody Bookings add-in, all bookable. Jonas Berg from the sales team sees Meeting Room A, Meeting Room B and sales desk 12. The Boardroom is not shown to Jonas.
Confidentiality

Discreet meetings stay discreet

Mark a meeting as private in Outlook, and room displays, dashboards, Workplace Central and maps show the room as Occupied, without the subject or description.

Resource groups link rooms and desks to your Entra ID security groups, so people see and book only the spaces they are allowed to, such as the client floor or the boardroom. Assistants with delegate access can order catering and services on behalf of the partners and advisors they support.

See booking rules and policies

When plans change

When the client moves the meeting, everything moves with it

Client meetings move all the time. In AskCody, the room, the catering order and the guest list are tied to the same Outlook invite, so when the organizer changes it, everything changes with it. Move the meeting to Friday, and the room booking, the delivery time and the guests' arrival details follow. Cancel it, and the room is released and the order and the visit are canceled.

If the kitchen has already prepared the order or its deadline has passed, the order is not changed silently: it is detached and the organizer is told, so a person decides.

Follow-the-Meeting Intelligence. An Outlook invite called Leadership Evaluation holds Meeting Room A, an order of coffee, fruit and water from Catering, and two guests, Alex Weber and Lidia Holloway. On Thursday at 12:30 the room is booked in Microsoft Exchange, Catering has accepted the order and reception expects the two guests. The organizer moves the meeting to Friday at 14:00 in Outlook, and the room booking, the catering delivery and the guests' arrival details all move with it, with no emails to the kitchen or reception. Then the organizer cancels the meeting, and the room is released for others, the catering order is canceled and reception cancels the visit.

Customer story

How an investment manager runs 98 meeting rooms from one Outlook invite

One of the largest institutional investors in the capital markets used to prepare a meeting in five steps: book the room, then email AV, facilities, the kitchen and security. With AskCody, the room, AV, room setup, catering and visitors sit in one Outlook invite, and every team gets its task from the same meeting.

5 to 1

five separate steps per meeting became one Outlook invite

1 to 2 hours

saved every day, by the catering team's own estimate

98 rooms

and 144 room displays in a 12-story headquarters

Read the investment manager story

Manager of Workplace Services
Manager of Workplace Services

Catering, setup, AV and visitors together

“I don’t believe the other vendors can do the catering, the room setup, and AV requests as well as the visitor management piece altogether as seamlessly. Also, what we found was the AskCody user experience was just slicker.”

Manager of Workplace Services
Manager of Workplace Services

Quiet is how you know it works

“I know it’s been successful because if it’s not successful we’ll hear it loud and clear from our end users, and we haven’t heard that. It’s been very quiet... Staff have commented that it’s a very slick product that looks great and it’s easy to use.”

Nabil Zerdazi, IT Project Manager
Nabil ZerdaziIT Project Manager

The whole meeting, organized in Outlook

“By using AskCody, our employees will be able to manage the end-to-end process of organizing their own meetings in Microsoft Outlook, and easily find a workplace that will perfectly fit their needs.”

Anthony Moore, IT Director
Anthony MooreIT Director

Ten bookers used to mean ten ways to book

“Ten different people booking a meeting resulted in ten different ways of creating a meeting, and everything that goes with it... With AskCody employees can now book rooms and request services themselves, and it gives them a kind of self-service aspect where they can take control of their own meetings.”

Nané Pr’Out, Director of Information Technology
Nané Pr’OutDirector of Information Technology

Cancel the meeting, and the room frees up

“The biggest impact I think is simply the ease of reserving conference rooms when you’re scheduling meetings... and also when you cancel a meeting, that the conference room frees up, and you don’t have to do additional steps to go into another system and remove it.”

Jesper Imhof Rosendahl, IT Project Manager
Jesper Imhof RosendahlIT Project Manager

Rooms and catering in one overview

“AskCody’s platform gives us an easy overview of available rooms, as well as quick access to book catering for our meetings. Without AskCody, booking premises is ineffective, which results in a large waste of resources.”

Common questions from financial and professional services

What does AskCody do for financial and professional services firms?

AskCody is a meeting management platform built on Microsoft 365. Financial and professional services firms use it to book the room, catering, AV, room setup and visitors in one Outlook invite, so each team behind a client meeting gets its task from the same meeting and follows it when plans change.
How does AskCody keep client meetings confidential?

Mark a meeting as private in Outlook, and room displays, dashboards, Workplace Central and maps show it as Occupied, without the subject. Resource groups tied to your Entra ID security groups decide who can see and book each room. Visitor data can be anonymized automatically after 1 to 365 days, 31 by default. AskCody runs on Microsoft Azure and is covered by an ISAE 3000 Type 2 report.

Read about the ISAE 3000 report
Can assistants order catering and services on behalf of partners and advisors?

Yes. With delegate access to the calendar in Outlook and the AskCody role Add-in User with Delegate Access, an assistant opens the AskCody Services add-in from the meeting in the other person's calendar and orders catering and services for them.

Read how delegated access works
Can catering be charged to a cost center or a client matter number?

Yes. Organizers pick a cost center when they order in the Outlook invite, and you can add your own fields, such as a required client matter number or a project code, as text, number, checkbox or drop-down fields. Finance gets a report of every settled order as CSV for your ERP system, or through the AskCody Services API.

Read about cost centers
What happens to catering and guests when a client meeting is moved or canceled?

When the organizer moves the meeting in Outlook, the room booking, the catering order and the guests' arrival details move with it. Cancel the meeting, and the room is released and the order and the visit are canceled. If the order has already been prepared or its deadline has passed, it is detached and the organizer is told.
Can we control who books the boardroom or the client floor?

Yes. Resource groups link rooms and desks to Entra ID security groups, so people see only the spaces they are allowed to book. For rooms that need approval, Microsoft Exchange can send each request to delegates who approve it, and the rules hold whether people book in Outlook or in the AskCody Bookings add-in.

Read about resource groups
Do employees need to learn a new system?

No. AskCody works inside Outlook, with add-ins for booking rooms, ordering services and registering visitors, and every booking lives in your Microsoft Exchange room calendars. Reception, the kitchen and facilities work from their own views of the same meetings.

See how your client meetings would run

Talk to a consultant about how your rooms, catering and client visits come together in one Outlook invite, and follow the meeting when plans change.
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