I hope that headline caught your attention. :)
When I first started working in this industry I visited a major and long-term client of ours, I found the following; They had assets at approximately 15 venues. The manual work required was, in my opinion, surprising, unexpected, and unnecessary.
Events were added to a spreadsheet from all venues by reference to a website or venue calendar shared by a venue or team.
One day per week the team would go to each venue's portal to download tickets (with very standard and unhelpful naming conventions) to email to their guests. Sometimes these were shared as hard tickets or emailed as a ZIP to them - to be shared with guests.
For SMS, clients were expected to add each recipient's name and number to a "ticketing system" - even if those numbers were private data of the client company - 'not to be shared'.
One day per week the team would go to a portal for catering orders, (if required) A different portal for each venue.
for FBT all Ticket values and catering values need to be added to a spreadsheet by event for FBT calculation. This process still exists today with little improvement.
All processes around guest optimization and compliance were separated and secondary to the very basic "tickets and catering" steps explained above.
This team, at the time, had over 5 FTES managing these events. That was all "on cost" and added to the true cost of consuming Hospitality and managing Sponsorship.
This looked to be an extraordinarily archaic set of processes in a world of digitisation, API''S, automation, and ever-increasing manual handling costs and rotation of staff. None of these processes add much value to or improve any customer experience.
Hence, the creation of Event Hub. (EH)
EH has now automated many of these processes where a Venue (also) uses our software, If you have an event at a VNSW venue you might have experienced some of those features.
Our future commitment is focused on the improvement of "Guest Optimisation and insight" aspects of the event Supply chain.
What about Venues that don't use Event Hub Software?
Over the years a few of our customers have asked -
"Scott, how do we automate the process at other venues, teams, Agents?"
It's a good question and I usually reply - "well I can't force other venues as I am not "Vladimir Putin" :P....
But I can suggest and now share one idea.
"Please request barcodes (+ data) instead of PDF tickets and make this a caveat of buying the Hospitality or Sponsorship."
The mechanics of this are pretty easy and this DOES already happen at some venues/teams and Organisations.
Event Hub would provide a cloud folder (bucket) and identify a standardised format (a template) for barcode sharing.
Event Hub would transfer those barcodes automatically to your event when available and notify users of "availability".
This would enable and trigger (automatic) Ticket building (using agreed designs) - based on a venue or team's requirement or your branding. Whatever is agreed in your contract.
Full automation of the execution activity could be enabled leaving more time and effort allocated to Guest Optimisation and insight.
EH also supports full SMS and digital wallet sharing of tickets. Where we have the barcode.
"Best practice" data sharing might include the Nominal value of the barcode and if the barcode was used (shared later). This will automate compliance reporting and FBT reporting.
We can fully support a required venue or team design..eg . . "The venue T&Cs" . (Whatever information is needed on the ticket can be supported)
The Tools needed to do ALL of the above ALREADY exist in Event Hub,
Here is a sample of the data needed via a template that could be shared. By adding a link to Venue T&C we would comply with Venue Ticket design and by adding Nominal Value we could help with FBT report production, By incorporating barcode scan data - we can help with true compliance and usage data.
Folder - venue > client (Customer ID)
We fully recognize - through lots of experience - that this may be challenging for some Venues and teams .......lets...
Believe Big. The size of our success is determined by the size of our belief. Think of little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Remember this, too! Big ideas and big plans are often easier -certainly no more difficult - than small ideas and small plans. ........'Schwartz
Let me know if you'd like to learn more about this initiative :)