Here’s a strange fact that has a direct impact on you: the events industry is worth over £21 billion – but no-one is benchmarking it.
What does it mean? Well, most conversations in hospitality are driven by performance:
- How are you doing?
- How is your year?
- What’s happening market-wise?
But because there’s no real benchmarking, everyone relies on ‘year on year’ performance and ‘against budget’ to supply answers.
What’s not taking place is logical conversations about how businesses are performing compared to the market and competitors – because those numbers weren’t available until now.
For two years, we’ve been working on a unique project that will change the conversation in the M&E industry.
We launched our groundbreaking and unique benchmarking service two years ago. And in addition to providing key data reference points never before been used, it’s helping those conversations to involve data.
But as they say when it comes to data – if you put rubbish in you get rubbish out.
So you know you want data on your venue – but how do you make sure it’s accurate?
Think about your data systems, and how they are used – then ask these 3 questions:
- Is your venue management system fit for purpose?
- Are you inputting quality data?
- Can you get quality data (reports) out?
If the answer to any of these questions is “No”, the data has limited value. So let’s ask some further questions.
1. Is your venue management system fit for purpose?
What system do you use and what’s your relationship with your software provider?
When did you last review the platform and make sure it was the right one?
2. Are you inputting quality data ?
Does your team understand how the system works? Are they inputting data consistently?
Do you manage the permissions on the venue management system so junior team members can’t change any settings or inadvertently corrupt the data?
3. Can you get quality data (reports) out?
Have you agreed which reports management need, when they are delivered and why?
Do you know what the reports mean?
Is it easy or time-consuming to create the reports?
Automation can be helpful – work with your supplier to adjust the reports.
Once you are sure you have a good venue management system and the team is inputting quality data, check upwards that the management team are receiving the reports how they want.
The alternative is that you don’t find that out how good your reports are until that important meeting/review. If they’re not up to scratch, the management team will drive a coach and horses through your reports…and no one wants that.
It can be a career blocking mistake.
Data is your lifeblood. Doctors turn to real blood doctors find answers to complicated questions : “I’ll do some tests and find some answers” – and you can apply the same principle to your business.
The answer to awkward performance questions should be: “I’ll run a report, analyse the results and come back with the answer.”
If your data is tainted by poor systems, you have a potential problem.
So it makes sense that if you’ve decided to treat data like the blood of your business, you need a decent venue management system to keep, record, track and measure your data.
You also need a decent process and well-trained people to use it.
The conversations for our benchmarking take us into the world of venue management systems and property management systems.
Our clients are all venues and need (or would benefit from) a decent venue management system. Rendezvous is one I come across often and NFS Technology seem to understand the issues.
Whatever system you choose, make sure you can get quality data out. We’d be very grateful and it will make our benchmarking task a lot easier – and it will give your venue valuable insight and an unprecedented level of understanding.
That can’t be a bad thing..
