Contributed by Dan Izydorek, EO Detroit. Dan is a partner at ITS Detroit and chief revenue officer of Intelligent Technical Solutions, which helps growing businesses fully leverage technology to improve business efficiency. Dan and his team shared their expertise on how scheduling software can improve productivity—and which ones are best. 

In an ideal world, scheduling important business meetings is as easy as saying: “See you at 3pm!” In reality, it’s more like playing a twisted game of Tetris, where you spend too much time arranging and adjusting schedules, hoping the pieces fall into place. 

Trying to corral people with varying workloads, deadlines and schedules into one time slot can be overwhelming. The constant back-and-forth eats up a lot of time—around 4.75 hours per workweek on average, according to a Hubspot white paper.  

Consider how many meetings you (and your team) organize or attend each day, and that time adds up quickly. In an average employee’s 48 working weeks a year; if they spend 4.75 hours per week planning meetings, that’s 228 hours per year! And that’s the time spent arranging meetings, not attending them.