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Olympus EMEA runs meeting rooms, meeting services and visitor management for its Hamburg headquarters from Microsoft Outlook. One Outlook invite books the room, orders the services and registers the guests, and the receptionists are notified the moment a meeting with guests is booked. The setup now connects seven receptions across the EMEA region.
When Olympus moved its Europe, Middle East and Africa headquarters into the new Olympus Campus in Hamburg in July 2021, the building was made for hybrid collaboration: more than 200 bookable rooms across 11 floors, a medical training and education center, and receptions expected to give every guest a white-glove welcome. Olympus, the global medtech enterprise, has been an AskCody customer since March 2021. Here is how they run meetings and visitors at the Olympus Campus, in their own words.
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Customer: Olympus Europa Location: Hamburg, Germany Vertical: Medtech Size: 1,200+ employees Customer since: March 2021 Uses: Meeting room booking, meeting services, visitor management and room displays Case study first published: June 2022 |
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What Olympus needed from its new headquarters
Before the move, Olympus described these challenges:
- The former solution did not match the technology expectations for a modern headquarters
- There was no intuitive way for admins and users to find and book the right room for their needs
- Complex meetings made coordination inconvenient
- There was no standardized solution that could scale to other regions
- Handling visitors meant laborious processes for the receptionists
After a five-year planning and construction phase, the Olympus Campus became one of the largest and most modern office buildings in Hamburg, built for hybrid collaboration. The goal was one intuitive platform for room booking, meeting services, visitor management and IT management.
Why Olympus chose AskCody
For Olympus, a meeting management solution had to be fully integrated with Microsoft Outlook to fit its global digital workplace strategy on Microsoft 365. Because AskCody is built on Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD), Olympus could use its own Microsoft environment as the backbone. The AskCody Outlook add-ins let employees book rooms, request services and manage visitors from the Outlook invite, all linked to the same meeting. See how AskCody integrates with Microsoft 365.
The standardized setup also met the requirements for the EMEA region, with the potential to be adopted by the US and Japan locations later.
"The main benefit for our employees is that AskCody will make their life easier. 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.
The user pathway was our main concern to address. The easy and simple process to find the needed meeting room, book it, request services, and manage visitors has been our main success criteria."
Nabil Zerdazi, IT Project Manager, Olympus
How Olympus runs meeting rooms and visitor management from Outlook
At the time of this case study, Olympus EMEA ran AskCody with:
- 200+ bookable resources
- 2,900+ active users
- 200+ room displays
- Seven connected receptions across the EMEA region
Walking the halls of the headquarters, you find offices, co-working spaces, meeting rooms, themed areas for exchange, relaxation capsules and conference rooms. Some spaces are bookable; open areas are left unbooked so employees can use them spontaneously. In the AskCody add-in, employees choose from more than 200 bookable rooms in the 11-story building, and every bookable room has a meeting room display by the door, where people can book, extend or end a meeting directly from the screen.
Meeting room display at the Olympus office in Hamburg, Germany
The Olympus Medical Training and Education Center lives on the same campus, so the reception needed a white-glove experience for guests. With visitor management connected to the room bookings, the receptionists are notified as soon as someone books a meeting with guests, and they have a full view of who is arriving, whom they are visiting and where they are going. Guests receive a welcome message 30 minutes before they arrive.
How one Outlook invite reaches the reception and the room. Illustrative example with fictional names.
An implementation built as a partnership
Nabil Zerdazi describes the implementation process and strategy as a really good experience and, in the end, a success. The AskCody project team helped find the best configuration for the Olympus requirements and ensured a smooth rollout together with the Olympus project team, and along the way the Olympus team learned what the software can do and which configuration fits them best.
"Our goal was to find a partner who can hear our concerns, understand our requirements, support us in our project, and then provide a solution that best fits Olympus. AskCody has covered many of them. Working with AskCody means working with an actual familiar team that gives you great support. It is not only a business arrangement, it is a partnership."
Nora Furchner, Project Manager, Facility Management, Olympus
The result
With its European headquarters in Hamburg, Olympus has realized its vision of a future-oriented, digitally modern workplace. The move-in was slightly delayed by the pandemic, and by 2022 employees were back in the office with the flexibility to work on site or remotely. The connected AskCody visitor management and booking system has since been expanded to seven receptions in the EMEA region.
Key takeaways
- Olympus books rooms, orders services and invites visitors from one Outlook invite, built on its own Microsoft environment
- More than 200 rooms have a display by the door, so people can book, extend or end a meeting on the spot
- Receptions see every expected guest as soon as the meeting is booked, and guests are welcomed before they arrive
- One standardized setup now serves seven receptions across EMEA
Want to see how this works in your own Outlook? Talk to an AskCody consultant
