Item: Accruent EMS
Rating: 9
Author: Kristi Finger

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My department (Event Services) uses EMS for space reservations and managing resources. It is being used predominantly by the Catering Department and us. There are a couple of other colleges and one other department on campus that use the software, but it is not used campus-wide. We only share a database with Catering.

Pros and Cons

It is very robust.
It is very "customizable".

I am a basic user of this software. I know how to use it to do my job, but - I don't know what I don't know. I know there is some functionality that we haven't fully utilized based on the conference I just attended. I now need to try and unpack the information I learned recently to better use what currently exists before I can provide suggestions for improvement.

Return on Investment

Unfortunately, I do not have any hard numbers. But anecdotally EMS is essential to make sure that nothing "falls through the cracks" for events that happen in our building.

Alternatives Considered

EMS is the software our department has been using for nearly 20 years; I have been in my role for a little over a year, so I have not used or evaluated any other software like EMS.

Scalability

I gave this rating because I do not have personal knowledge of the software's scalability.

Product Configurability

Again, I do not have personal knowledge of the product's configurability. Everything was done when I took on my current role.

Likelihood to Recommend

EMS is very well suited for room reservations and resource management. The reminders, comments, and confirmation communication are integral in getting all the details and following up with customers to make sure that student organizations are complying with policies, and that all of our customers have a good experience in our building.

Users and Roles

12 - We have 12 FT/PT staff who use EMS in our Event Services office; these include our reservations staff and facility coordinators. We have hundreds of customers who use the EMS Web app to reserve space in our building. Our colleagues in University Catering also use EMS to schedule deliveries to various events around campus.

Support Headcount Required

The one person who was our on-campus support/liaison retired this fall; we have someone who is temporarily filling that role only to assist in shepherding our transition to the EMS Cloud service.

Business Processes Supported

Reserving meeting rooms and event spaces.
Assigning resources (AV/technology) to these spaces.
Billing our customers for room rental and resource costs.

Innovative Uses

I don't know that we use it in any "unexpected" or "innovative" ways; the way we use it is the way it is designed.

Future Planned Uses

We plan to utilize EMS Web App for reserving outdoor spaces.
Currently we have a flat-rate for event spaces regardless of how long the customer uses the space. We are considering "chunking" up the reservation time and charge accordingly; we think it will help with efficiencies in our room change-overs.

Likelihood to Renew

We've been an EMS costumer for 18+ years. The product does what we need it to do, and does it better than many of the competitor products some of my colleagues worked with at other schools. The thought of transitioning to a different product is horrible, so unless the company goes out of business, or the customer service tanks, we will continue using EMS.

Other Software Used

Microsoft Visio

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Product Features

The decision to use EMS goes back almost 20 years, and I was not part of that decision. But I would believe that the product's features were the main selling point.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Again, I don't know what they did 18-20 years ago when they purchased it. However, now we would have 2-4 vendor demonstrations with a committee of folks - including end-users and our campus IT staff - to help evaluate the features, cost, and ease-of-use before making a decision.

Implementation Rating

I am unable to respond to this as I was not part of the implementation process.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Don't know

Change Management Lessons

Not sure - The implementation was done many years before I came on board, so I am unable to speak to this question.

Implementation Issues

I am unable to answer this because I was not part of the implementation process.

Support Rating

I am giving EMS Support a "5" because I haven't had any real experience with their support team. When I have had a couple of questions functions and features, I was not able to find a phone number to call to actually talk with a live human for assistance. After some clicking around on their website(s), I was able to find enough information to help me along, or I just forgot about it because it took too long and the question lost its relevance.
The best support I got was when I actually got to sit down with a solutions consultant at the EMS Live user conference this fall. They were able to answer feature and function questions that we'd had for a while and were able to explain some things to us (as new users) that we were presumed to already know by the instructors of the user conference.

Accruent EMS Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
None	None

Exceptional Examples of Accruent EMS Support

I've only been in my role, and an EMS user, for 15 months. Support as a desk-top user is very self driven; you have to find it on the company's website(s) yourself, or already know how to contact someone at the company for support because it is not easily found anywhere on the website, which I find frustrating. The best support I got was during a 30 minute consultation with a solutions consultant at the EMS Live user conference this fall. Sitting with someone, at a computer, with my own database pulled up, was easily the best use of my time and we took away more helpful information (tips/tricks) in those 30 minutes than we did the rest of the conference.

Usability

I am able to use the system to do what I need to do at a basic-user level. However, I'm SURE that there is a lot of functionality to the system that goes untapped because "I don't know what I don't know!" Because of this, I am also unwilling to "play around" with different features of the system because I don't know the ripple effect, and what I may or may not impact elsewhere in the system.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
None	Unnecessarily complex Difficult to use Requires technical support Not well integrated Slow to learn Cumbersome Feel nervous using Lots to learn

Easy Tasks

Creating simple room/space reservations.
Reminders are an easy way to track processes.
Creating new rooms, event types, statuses, etc. are all pretty easy and straight-forward.

Difficult Tasks

Setting up or creating new "resources" in order to generate useful reports for campus stakeholders.

It does what we need it to do - and probably a LOT more!

Overall Satisfaction with EMS Software