As the mobile workforce population continues to grow, companies are looking for ways to optimize technologies to enable effective telecommuting. However, in doing so, they may also miss another important cost-savings opportunity that addresses an unforeseen effect of telecommuting: hoteling.

Hoteling, also known as hotdesking, is the practice of intelligently managing your workspace to accommodate mobile workers who occasionally frequent the office. With more employees working remotely, more desks remain vacant, taking up valuable – and costly – office space. By effectively using workforce management software, companies can create a workspace “on demand” for mobile workers, thereby saving money on office-related expenses.

It is, of course, standard business practice for companies to establish temporary work spaces for telecommuters. On the surface, this makes perfect sense: these workers should have a place to call home when return from the road. Yet many companies – particularly those with different business units – lack a clear, unified view of who, in fact, will or will not be in the office.

Think of a sales team, for example. Each salesperson may spend a day a week on the road. Each has their own administrative assistant; in larger organizations, up to a half a dozen administrative assistants may be spread across the same sales team. You can imagine the pitfalls: seeking to reduce overhead, a unit may have only a handful of workstations available, shutting out salespersons. As a result, the salesperson must find alternate accommodations, often bringing their administrative assistant, IT, and Operations into the process. The entire ordeal translates into lost productivity for all parties, not to mention a less-than-pleased salesperson.

Conversely, a glut of workstations can result in scores of desks, equipment, lighting, and hardware sitting idle: resources that should not have been purchased in the first place.

By investing in workforce management software that centrally manages mobile worker resources, needs, and schedules, companies can reduce the headaches associated with last-minute space assignment and save money on extraneous operational costs.