Travel & Financial Services Case Study

Supporting agile working across nine countries with Clearooms

When Collinson Group moved from traditional to agile seating during the COVID-19 pandemic, it needed a booking system it could introduce quickly and adapt to a global business. Clearooms was rolled out across 12 offices in nine countries in a single weekend.

More than five years on, Clearooms is part of the way Collinson works. It supports desk booking, office attendance and visitor management for more than 2,500 employees, backed by a development partnership that continues to shape the product.

The product works. If I want to have a dialogue with Clearooms and say, ‘Have you thought about this?’, they listen, and that’s reassuring.

SHAF RAHMAN VP Facilities and Real Estate Management
Collinson Group office
  • Travel & Financial Services Industry
  • 2,500+ Employees
  • 12 Offices
  • 9 Countries

BACKGROUND

Collinson Group is a global, family-owned business operating across the travel and financial services sectors. They deliver airport experiences, loyalty programmes and insurance for some of the world’s biggest brands. With more than 35 years of history, the group employs over 2,500 people across 19 offices worldwide.

During the pandemic, Collinson moved away from fixed seating towards an agile working model. That model is built around shared desks, large lounges and collaborative spaces, and Collinson needed a simple way to manage it.

A traveller with a suitcase walking through an airport lounge

THE CHALLENGE

With no existing booking system in place, Collinson had to introduce one quickly as its offices moved to agile seating and a hybrid working model. They needed a solution that could:

  • Be deployed rapidly across multiple countries
  • Offer pricing that made sense for a workforce of more than 2,500 people
  • Integrate with the group’s Microsoft environment through single sign-on (SSO)
  • Support a mix of desks, casual seating and collaborative space
  • Provide reliable attendance data as hybrid working policies developed

Just as importantly, the platform needed to keep pace with a large, fast-moving business rather than lock it into a fixed way of working.

An open-plan Collinson Group breakout area with café tables and chairs

THE SOLUTION

Shaf Rahman, who oversees Collinson’s estates and property and has a background in systems development, led the search. Several platforms were considered, but most offered a fixed product at a set price, with little room to adapt it and making scalability a concern.

Clearooms stood out for combining flexibility with its pricing model, charging by desk and room rather than per user, so costs are tied to the workspace itself. That is an important distinction for a business of Collinson’s size.

What began as a response to COVID-19 soon grew into something broader, as the team saw how far the platform could be shaped around their own ways of working.

Collinson Group office in use

IMPLEMENTATION

The implementation was configured and deployed over a single weekend, rolling it out to 12 offices in nine countries.

Once SSO was in place through Microsoft Azure, Clearooms became part of Collinson’s standard environment. New starters receive their Azure credentials and a small set of core applications, one of which is Clearooms. They can start booking straight away without training.

For Collinson’s the platform supports a workspace designed around collaboration. Alongside bookable desks, Collinson’s offices feature large lounges, breakout areas and collaboration tables seating up to 16 people. Staff can use casual seating check-ins to register that they’re in the office, even when they won’t be sitting at a desk.

Visitor management was first introduced at the London headquarters and is now used across all of Collinson’s offices.

Collinson Group team returning to the office

As soon as we had single sign-on, it was just integrated within our environment. We don’t even talk about it anymore.

Shaf Rahman, VP Facilities and Real Estate Management, Collinson Group
The difference it made

The Results

Clearooms has become a seamless part of daily operations across Collinson’s global offices.

  • Rapid global deployment Nine countries went live in a single weekend, configured entirely in-house
  • Frictionless access With SSO, new starters simply log in with their existing credentials
  • Attendance insight Booking and check-in data is combined with Collinson’s HR system to support its policy of at least two office days a week
  • Built for flexible spaces Desks and casual seating are managed together, reflecting how people actually use the office
  • Consistent visitor management One approach to welcoming visitors across every office
  • Reliable performance Very few system issues in more than five years of use
  • Responsive support Direct access to the Clearooms team whenever it’s needed
  • FUTURE PLANS Collinson plans to bring its Boston office onto Clearooms, along with further brands as they join the group’s global domain. It is also looking to enhance its visitor management, and ArrivalsHQ, Clearooms’ new visitor management platform, offers a natural next step. With a product that simply works and a partner that listens, Collinson is confident Clearooms will continue to evolve alongside the business.

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