The company–customer relationship depends a great deal on direct interaction and on respecting people’s time, which is why bookings and access to services are essential. Calendis, one of Banca Transilvania’s partners in the BT Store project – an online hub of complementary solutions to banking for entrepreneurs – can be a solution for customers and business owners alike.

Calendis is a start-up from Cluj-Napoca and an app of the same name that helps organise online bookings, 24/7, for services in areas such as healthcare, sports, salons and more. On the one hand, it is a modern solution for customers, who can use calendis.ro to book the services they are interested in, and on the other, it is the solution for businesses via business.calendis.ro, where entrepreneurs and their staff can manage bookings and monitor activity.

Calendis has over 35,000 active users and, over four years, has handled almost 60,000 appointments. Investment in the business has been over 350,000 euros.

How Calendis started: helping entrepreneurs run more productive businesses

“More and more of the processes we carry out every day are being digitised, and our expectations are centred on how easy, fast and efficient it is to complete them. Various methods used today will become outdated, and adapting to new expectations will be crucial to surviving in a competitive environment. Calendis was born out of this need, a project started in 2014 at the Cluj-based company Evozon Systems, after dozens of discussions with owners of different businesses that rely on appointments to operate. Those conversations revealed real business needs that software like Calendis Business could cover. Our software aims to help businesses in Romania keep up with the trend and become more productive by digitising a significant part of their processes and activity,” Calendis product manager Catalin Corutiu told us.

Key benefits Calendis brings to customers

• By using www.calendis.ro, customers can find their favourite services in one place and discover new providers across a wide range of sectors, where they can book services;
• Save time by booking directly online, from a computer or phone;
• See transparent availability for the time slots they can book;
• Receive SMS reminders for their appointments.

Calendis for entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs who want to use the app can turn to Calendis Business, which is very useful for companies whose activity relies on services delivered by appointment. How it helps:

• Create and organise appointments
• Notifications that remind customers of their appointments
• A clear customer record
• Reports on appointments, services, customers and revenue
• Record receipts directly in Calendis
• Run marketing campaigns
• Specific settings that are useful for employees

Calendis’ key strength

“Compared with other apps of this kind, Calendis offers a more comprehensive set of features that gives greater control over business processes. It also has the potential to raise performance, all built into a user-friendly design. Calendis Business guarantees improvements in business performance across many aspects of a company’s operations,” said Catalin Corutiu.

After using the app for 3 months, Calendis clients saw a 50% drop in no-show rates for scheduled services, largely thanks to the SMS reminders sent for upcoming appointments.

The Banca Transilvania–Calendis partnership, built on a good relationship and developed “naturally”

“I have a friend who’s a doctor, very digital-savvy, who realised the benefits of an automated appointment system and, enthusiastically, built his own app together with a programmer friend. After I booked an appointment on his website, I recommended Calendis. He gave up his own app and now uses Calendis. Why? Because for a small, entrepreneur-led business, it doesn’t make sense to invest in building your own product when there’s a dedicated product on the market. A product with a dedicated development team focused on continuous improvement, that adapts to the multitude of business types out there and is much more affordable. Calendis is a basic tool for any service provider and I recommend it!” – Daniel Szekely, Coordinating Director – SMEs and Microbusiness, Banca Transilvania

“The partnership with BT is built on the good relationship we already had with Banca Transilvania and developed naturally, given that both Calendis and the bank focus on supporting SMEs. With BT’s team and know-how, we even configured some of the features together,” said product manager Catalin Corutiu.

As part of the BT Store project, Calendis and Banca Transilvania offer entrepreneurs discounts on subscriptions, as follows:

Plans for the future: contributing to the development of smart cities in Romania

“We want to help SMEs serve as much of their communities as possible. It’s important to us to build an ecosystem that brings together the customer, the reception desk, specialists, administrators and entrepreneurs, where everyone can communicate quickly and easily,” Catalin Corutiu told us. He added: “Through Calendis, we want to continue contributing to the transformation of Romanian cities into smart cities, alongside other apps and software that make people’s day-to-day processes easier and more efficient. Cluj, the city where Calendis itself was born, is increasingly benefiting from this dynamic of digitalisation, and we believe other cities in Romania, including local SMEs, can make much more of what the digital age has to offer.”