What’s better – an underbooked multi-purpose venue with 400+ seats and high-quality sound plus lighting OR an intimate venue with budget-friendly string lights booked to its total capacity? Certainly the latter. You can keep streamlining other aspects of your event and venue management process, but here’s a reality check: nothing you do matters if the audience is scarcely scattered in patches on the day of the event. Your management team works so hard every time, then what goes wrong? We know what goes wrong. It’s your Booking Process that is not up to par.
Inefficient Booking Process can Cost you More than You Invest.
Like most venue operations teams, you spend your entire day ironing out the wrinkles in the management process of your facility. There is so much on the plate. From scheduling meetings, generating contracts, negotiating settlements, planning crowd management, and overviewing venue safety and whatnot. The event cycle is fast-moving. Your team is likely too busy handling the particularities of a few bookings that they miss out on potential leads. Sometimes, it’s not in your management capacity to cater to more than a certain number of bookings because you have seen the chaos it previously led to; you were either double-booked or mishandled dates. But do you know, management capacity does not build itself? You build it by simplifying the processes surrounding it.
Signs that your venue booking process needs simplification
You must streamline the workflows of your venue management and booking process to enhance your management capacity and brand reputation. If your event management processes are too complex, they can cause headaches, panic, and money going down the drain. If you are running an event and venue management business, especially today. The following signs can tell you that your booking process needs simplification:
You manually update data into systems that handle bookings
You manually update data into your system each time one of your recurring clients requests to book your venue. You spend hours updating multiple applications or paper ledgers for new bookings. Each time a new booking is made, you make sure that the changes are reflected correctly across multiple apps which handle different processes. That consumes most of your time and you have less time available to tackle other time-sensitive issues.
Lots of miscommunication because bookings are not fast-updating
On top of having to update everything manually, these changes have to be communicated to every team member in conference meetings or e-mails. That’s not it. Sometimes these changes are not updated quick enough — you get caught up in other managerial issues and don’t get a chance to update everything until hours later. This often leads to double bookings which wreak havoc on your brand name. You try to fix problems by hiring extra hands, but the cycle repeats because the real issue persists.
You have double-booked clients at least once in the past few months
Have you ever embarrassed yourself by accidentally double-booking your venue? Can you recall how it happened? There is nothing more humiliating to your brand’s name than having to redline your client’s important event because you relied on an outmoded booking system or a system that required some sort of manual intervention and paperwork. You ruined someone’s performance, screening, concert, etc. Angry clients mean negative word-of-mouth marketing (NWOM), which is reputational damaging.
Dealing with contracts or settlements manually or through separate apps
Generating contracts manually for each client is error-prone, time-consuming, tedious, and so not 21st century. Until you have entirely negotiated, generated, and signed a contract, you have to put off many of your essential management tasks aside. Whenever you have to make a settlement with a client, you keep switching between his credentials, suitable templates, event notes, etc., before sealing it off. Can you afford that? Maybe this is why you are lagging behind your competitors — because you are wasting too much time on unautomated processes.
Different functionalities are not integrated within your Booking System.
Your systems do not integrate cohesively, so more processes need to be implemented manually to bridle the restrictions faced. As a result, you feel that a collection of manual processes and siloed software are presenting more problems than solutions. This indicates that your workflows need to be simplified. Additionally, if your current system does not have a client repository available online, the booking system can auto-populate various fields. Or even worse, you rely on a document system that is not integrated with your central booking system — then it is a sign that your venue and event management process is tedious and stress-inducing.
How to Use Technology to Simplify the Booking Process for Complex Events
You can simplify the venue booking & management processes simply by leveraging what technology provides. There are many venue booking and event management applications in the market that venue professionals are switching to simplify their booking processes – but sadly, all of them are not built, keeping the needs of arena, theater, and auditorium management businesses in mind. In addition, the entire process of browsing, analyzing, and shortlisting a SaaS is time-consuming. To get you started, we suggest that you critically examine the loopholes in your current management processes and the repercussions caused by them. Then, look for apps that have features to fill these loopholes.
Features in an Event Management App which simplify the venue management processes
Suppose you are in an arena, theater, or auditorium management business. In that case, we suggest you look for the following features in venue management & booking application (also available by the name of conference booking software in the market) to simplify the booking process. The app is right for your business if it:
- It is a multi-user portal that keeps the entire management team on the same page
- It is a real-time synchronous system
- Has a multi-purpose centralized booking calendar
- Offers instant runtime and availability check
- Has integrated document management system and client repository
- Has an integrated settlement portal and Contract generator
- Auto-populates and auto-updates dependent tasks
- Offers timely reports to obtain event highlights and performance
- Has a user-friendly interface – is easy to use without any technical training
- Gives admin the control of what information is shared across the network
Despite having these features, some of the applications do not offer the security required to run a cloud-based management system. Therefore, you need to explore the safest options on the market. But where to find a feature-rich conference management app that simplifies the booking process and is also secure? VenueArc has been an absolute favorite of the users in terms of its features and security. Have a look at its feature-rich modules here.
Bonus Tips To Simplify the Process of Event Management
Here are some watertight and time-proven tips to succeed at managing complex events. Some of them require technology facilitation, and others require teamwork and foresightedness to prevent important endeavors from falling down the cracks.
Use previous performance statistics to tweak your upcoming events.
Every venue management team records their events’ performance and finances. You need to transform this data into future insights to improve your services. You can exploit the patterns your performance reports contain to detect relationships between various behavior factors. For example, if your venues were entirely sold out for the entire month of November and you generated good profit – you can concentrate your publicity campaigns in the other months. Venue management apps such as VenueArc offer compact performance statistics to help you tweak your upcoming events.
Establish partnerships and sponsorship
You can establish a ‘mutual-ism’ where both the parties benefit from sponsorship or a partnership. This would help you square the event’s costs while also increasing the potential participation in the event. It’s highly likely that when you involve other people in your event, they use their channels to publicize your venue – guess how the compound effect from your channels and theirs can help your business?
Curate creative publicity campaigns
Did you know that creative, well thought about publicity campaigns can deliver an ROI seven times higher than non-creative, outbound campaigns? Spread the word about your business but do it creatively. Use different social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to connect with your potential clients. Having a social media presence is crucial in this technology-driven era. People are more likely to use the services of a business that has a social media presence than those that do not.
Let’s Wrap it Up…
Before implementing these secondary tips, remember that simplifying the event management and booking process is primarily about automating most of the process using an event management system. The best software is the one which meets your booking needs — it has the kind of tools and features which your business needs. So the next time you conclude an event at your facility, before collapsing on that couch in your office, assess how the new booking system and the set of our suggestions have worked out for you — what went well and what could be improved the next time.
Looking for an event and venue management software but not knowing where to start? Schedule a demo with the booking experts at VenueArc now and get started!