All in the app – Hot-desking made easy for TOI TOI & DIXI

TOI TOI & DIXI – All in the app – Hot-desking made easy for TOI TOI & DIXI

On building sites, at events, in open spaces—the portable toilets, sanitary trailers and containers, multi-purpose office containers and security fences will most certainly have been provided by the TOI TOI & DIXI Group GmbH. The global leader in portable, connection-free sanitary units owns the DIXI® and TOI TOI® brands among others. In Germany, TOI TOI & DIXI Sanitärsysteme has a total of 122 service sites and at the company headquarters in Ratingen near Düsseldorf, employees can make use of a Bechtle app to book desks before they get to the office.

Project details.

Services

Software

Industry

Trade / Service

Company size

> 1,500 employees

Challenge.

The first company specialising in portable toilets was founded in Germany in 1973 by American Fred Edwards under the name DIXI®. These days it would be unthinkable to imagine building sites and large events without them and the TOI TOI® toilets and containers, which came on to the market later in Germany.

The DIXI® and TOI TOI® merged in 1997 to form the ADCO Group, which is today known as the TOI TOI & DIXI Group. The company doesn’t only produce toilet cabins and containers, but rents and cleans them, too. Over 4,000 employees are employed by the company around the globe, but the headquarters of the market leader in sanitary units remains in Ratingen near Düsseldorf.

Here, the employees can use fixed desks in their respective departments, but also have access to hot desks shared by several people. As people began to return to the office after working predominantly at home during the coronavirus pandemic in 2021, it became clear that some things had to change in order to comply with all hygiene regulations. Instead of just taking the first free hot desk, now a booking has to be made in advance to avoid rooms becoming too crowded.

The TOI TOI & DIXI Group were therefore looking for a solution that offered an overview of all available workstations which could then be booked for a certain period of time. Booking permissions were to be on a department-by-department basis and all this had to be done as automatically as possible without much manual intervention.

Bechtle’s booking app is the next step on our journey to digitalising our business processes. Desks can now be selected, rooms booked and contacts reported directly in the app. We were able to test the system and adapt it to our needs using a test app Bechtle provided with three desks, proving themselves to be very flexible. Bechtle then very quickly implemented the app so that we can ensure we are always compliant with COVID-19 regulations.

Noël Fyen, IT Business Partner Manager, TOI TOI & DIXI Group GmbH

Solution.

Bechtle had the perfect solution. The newly developed booking app based on Microsoft PowerApps gives a customised overview of the company’s premises and can be used quickly and easily from anywhere as a Microsoft app, enabling companies to comply with COVID-19 regulations. If required and in consultation with the works council and data protection officer, the app can also be used for contact tracing. This was exactly what the TOI TOI & DIXI Group were looking for as Microsoft Office 365 was already being used by the company and PowerApps is a component of the software package.

For this reason, Bechtle developed a concept for the group that was based on its own version of PowerApps, which is already being used by may of its customers. The first step was for the Bechtle experts to add the office layout of the Ratingen headquarters to the app. Leveraging just one UI, TOI TOI & DIXI Group users can view available rooms and workstations. When new bookings are made, the app adds them to a SharePoint list and checks if the room or desk are free at the time requested.

TOI TOI & DIXI Group can also request information on who was in which office at any given time. To create a team, the app also displays the names of those making bookings.
Employees are able to view the calendar for a specific workplace to see which colleagues will be sitting there and when. It is also possible to make multi-day bookings.

To avoid abuse and bookings being made in the wrong team, Bechtle also implemented a permissions concept into the app that assigns each employee to a department. Bechtle was able to get the entire solution up and running in just a few days and the TOI TOI & DIXI Group can now access it via Bechtle’s own Azure tenant with cloud technology making sure that the app is always ready to use.
While Bechtle is on hand for the TOI TOI & DIXI Group in case any adjustments are needed, the group is able to leverage the PowerApps WYSIWYG editor to add new places or make other changes.

Business Benefits.

Bechtle’s booking app has given the TOI TOI & DIXI Group the ability to view all workstations, book them and trace contacts in the office. The app is easy to use, can be quickly adapted by the TOI TOI & DIXI Group itself and can therefore be adjusted depending on whatever the future holds.