We’re excited to announce that you can now integrate your room and building heating controls with MIDAS.
Inspire Home Automation are a UK based business who design, develop and sell smart heating controls.
In conjunction with Inspire Home Automation’s Smart Thermostats, spaces can be heated according to when bookings are due to take place in them.
Benefits of a calendar based thermostat
There are a range of benefits to automatic scheduled temperature control based on a calendar of bookings. Most notably, it can help:
Reduce heating costs by only heating rooms and spaces when they are in use.
Reduce administration and staffing costs – no need to get somebody in before a booking to switch the heating on and ensure it’s turned off again afterwards.
Inspire Smart Thermostat
Fully Configurable
Inspire Smart Thermostats with MIDAS calendar integration are fully configurable.
For example, you can setup your heating schedule to automatically switch on one hour before a booking, and then automatically switch off, or turn the temperature down, at the end of the booking.
If you want greater control, and have different heating zones for different rooms, multiple Smart Thermostats can be added.
There are two options for having Inspire Smart Thermostats control temperature based on your MIDAS room bookings.
Option 1: Export Bookings
Simply export bookings from your MIDAS system, and then import them into your Inspire Smart Thermostat. The Smart Thermostat then automatically controls a heating schedule based upon the booking calendar you import.
Option 2: Sync Bookings
For fully automated temperature control, Inspire Smart Thermostats can read an updating Data Feed of bookings from your MIDAS system.
This avoids the need to manually export bookings from your MIDAS system and then manually import them into your smart thermostat each time bookings change in your MIDAS system.
Instead, the Smart Thermostat automatically pulls an updated schedule from the Data Feed every 24 hours, so that any changes to bookings since the last check can be automatically captured.
Need an updated booking to be pushed to the Smart Thermostat schedule quicker? No problem, Inspire Smart Thermostats also have the option to refresh a Data Feed on demand.
Basic Inspire Thermostat integration (Option 1 above) is included as standard in both cloud hosted and self hosted editions of MIDAS room booking software.
Automated calendar sync functionality (Option 2 above) is available through our optional “Data Feeds” addon.
Six years on, and we were curious to revisit this and try to understand if this is still the most suitable duration to offer for a software trial.
To that end, we began by researching what our competitors currently offer in this regard.
We analyzed 64 online software vendors who develop room booking / scheduling / appointment systems.
The results were quite surprising!
Length of Software Free Trial Periods
Nealy 44% of vendors we looked at didn’t offer any form of “free trial”!
Of those who did, the most common length of free trial offered was 30 days, with 18 businesses offering this. 30 days is also the length of free trial that we currently offer for MIDAS.
The second most common length of free trial was 14 days – which is what we previously used to offer for MIDAS. A total of 10 out of the 64 software vendors analyzed offered a 14 day (two week) free trial.
Of the remaining vendors we looked at, the shortest free trial period offered was just 3 days. The longest on offer was 90 days.
What is the best duration to offer for a free software trial?
The best duration for a free software trial largely depends on the complexity and capabilities of the booking system being evaluated. As we found, some software vendors offer trials that last just a few days, while others offer trials that last for several months.
Now some more “basic” scheduling systems may be easy for prospective customers to evaluate within a few days.
Others may require more time to fully test and evaluate all the product’s features and capabilities.
We were finding that some prospective customers were reaching the end of their 14 day trial and were then requesting a 1-2 week extension so they could complete their evaluation. In most cases, we were generally able to extend 14 day trials upon request. However, over time as we added more features and functionality to our booking software, we decided that there was quite a lot to evaluate and digest in just 14 days.
We certainly didn’t want prospective customers to feel “rushed” into evaluating our product.
That’s why we increased our free trial period length to 30 days, to allow extra time for users to get a good feel for what MIDAS is all about.
Would an even longer free trial period not be better?
Looking at our our own data, we don’t believe so. On average, those prospective customers who evaluate a free MIDAS trial make their decision within 21 days of the start of their trial period.
That’s why we still feel that offering a 30 day trial is still the best length.
Some vendors offer considerably longer trial periods. One of the reasons for very lengthy trial periods may be because purchasing their solution ties you in to a long and potentially expensive contract, and so potential customers want to take extra time to evaluate their potential long-term commitment.
However, there are potential drawbacks to offering longer trial periods (a couple of our competitors offer 90 day trials for instance);
Firstly, people have limited attention spans and may not be willing to to commit to a long trial period. If a prospective customer can’t get a good “feel” for your product within 30 days, it’s unlikely that they will. (or it’s likely that the software is far too complex for them to be able to readily get to grips with)
Secondly, the computing resources needed. These days, it’s fair to say that the majority of room booking, scheduling, and appointment systems are online. The days of stand-alone, downloadable software packages have all but gone. Therefore, for each free software trial, that system has to be “hosted” somewhere, at a cost to the vendor. A free trial that lasts for 90 days will cost a vendor three times as much as a trial that lasts for 30 days.
What about those vendors who don’t offer ANY free trial?
Going back to our analysis of 64 software vendors, 28 of them (44%) didn’t offer any “free trial” period.
We did however find that 22 (79%) of these vendors instead encouraged prospective customers to “Book a demo” with a sales representative to schedule a live “guided demo” presentation of their software.
Software vendors not offering a Free Trial, but a scheduled “Guided Demo” instead
For completeness, we also found that 11 out of the 63 vendors offered both a free trial and a “guided demo” option.
Is a “guided demo” better than a free software trial?
Free software trials and guided demos can both be effective ways to showcase a product to potential customers and help them evaluate whether a product is a good fit for their needs.
Free trials allow potential customers to try out the software at their own pace and in their own time. It allows prospective customers to experience the software firsthand, which can be more effective than just watching a demo.
Guided demos, on the other hand, can be a good way to answer questions and address any concerns potential customers might have about the software.
Ultimately, both free software trials and guided demos can be effective tools for showcasing software to potential customers and helping them decide whether it’s suitable for their particular needs.
Do prospective customers want to see a “guided demo”?
A recent poll on Reddit, revealed that of the 444 people who voted, 300 would want to see a software demo on their first interaction with the vendor. 133 people would want to see a demo after 2-3 interactions, and 11 people wanted a demo after 4 interactions.
Looking at the poll’s comments though, many people want to evaluate software without any interaction with the vendor.
One person commented that “Sales-led demos only exist to give the sales people leverage in the interaction.”
Another commented “Software selection is a part of my job description — if I can’t see a demo without needing to put a meeting on my calendar, it’s an automatic no-go.“
Whilst another commented “Users should be able to signup for [a] free trial without having to talk to sales“.
We’re in agreement with these sentiments and feel that a “free trial” a customer can explore at their own pace is far better than “guided sales demos”.
In summary…
For prospective customers who insist on a “guided demo”, we can accommodate, however here at MIDAS we prefer to actively promote our FREE 30 day room booking system trial.
We believe that trying a fully-functional copy of our software free for 30 days yourself – with no credit card required, and with obligation to buy – is the best way to get to know our software and to explore its extensive capabilities.
…and our responsive sales team are always happy to answer any questions you have on our software before, during, or after your free trial.
There are plenty of acronyms and terminology in the world of computer software and technology. You may have come across some of them on our website.
An acronym is a word formed from the first letters of a phrase. For example, “SQL” is an acronym for “Structured Query Language”.
Whenever we use a computer term or acronym on our website that may not be obvious to readers what it means, we endeavor to define it there and then in plain English.
However, sometimes this isn’t enough – ok, great so SQL means “Structured Query Language”… but what does THAT phrase actually mean?!
For some terminology going into too much depth and detail may detract from the context or theme of the actual article in which the terms appears.
The glossary is an alphabetical list of terms and their definitions. When we use technical terminology, jargon, or acronyms on our website, we’ll link to a description in the glossary.
Links to definitions in our glossary will appear with a dotted underline. When you move over a link, the cursor will change to a question mark.
We’ve currently defined close to 50 terms and acronyms and will be adding plenty more in the future.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering what the acronyms SaaS, SPF or SSO mean, click those words in this sentence to view their definitions in our new glossary!
“Addons” further extend the capabilities of a MIDAS booking system beyond the extensive features that are already included as standard with our software.
Did you know that with one of our optional addons you can actually display a calendar of bookings right on your own public website?
Display a calendar of bookings on your website
The Web Calendars addon allows visitors to your organization’s public website to see what’s on at your venue.
You can embed daily and monthly calendars directly into your public website. You also have precise control which events appear (or are hidden) on these calendars, and how much information is shown for each.
Example of a MIDAS calendar embedded in a public website
Plus, if you already make use of the built-in Public Booking Request or Public Web Booking features of MIDAS, you can also configure Web Calendars to allow a visitor to directly book/request a specific date by simply clicking it.
