Venues are reporting a huge surge in event bookings as the reopening approaches, and need to capitalise on these opportunities. But with resources tight, time is scarce.
Introducing elements of automation of tasks can free up your time significantly. Having a robust venue management system in place can pay dividends in terms of increased productivity and efficiency.
Technology – your key to productivity
A venue management system is key to managing the processes of your business.
While the focus used to be on diary management, venue management systems have grown to play a pivotal role in managing the day to day organisation of venue business.
So how can they streamline your operation?
Better internal bookings
Internal meetings will inevitably increase as staff come back to work. For such meetings, a self-service booking interface is a great option, offering several benefits:
Saves time – typically for a team of 100 staff it will save 5 hours a week spent on booking internal meetings.
Reduces interruptions – it eliminates unnecessary phone calls and emails between colleagues.
Ease of use – it’s easily configured on the intranet and is designed to offer a simple and easy interface.
Convenient – staff can make bookings any time of day – great for hybrid workers.
Outlook integration – bookings are automatically synchronised with staff’s Outlook calendars – no need to rekey any data.
Improved sales and marketing
Prospects like to weigh up their options and it make take several attempts to get them to make a booking. In a competitive market you need to grab and keep their attention.
Thanks to integration between the venue management system and CRM solutions such as Dynamics the process of following up sales leads and generating new enquiries can be automated.
Such an approach offers:
Peace of mind – no need to worry leads are being neglected. They get regular campaigns automatically.
Proactive lead management – features such as integration with Google ensure that returning site visitors are added to an email nurture campaign. Your most motivated enquirers get automatic VIP attention.
Efficient social media management – set up the messages once on a calendar and the solution will post them automatically. Set it up for week or month – there are no limits.
Lead scoring – sales teams will automatically receive only the most motivated and engaged leads to follow up. Gives them the ammunition they need to hit their sales targets with laser-like focus.
By taking care of such tasks automatically your sales and marketing teams can free up time to respond to serious enquirers, write winning sales copy and work on web content which in turn will attract more site visitors.
Convenient online bookings
Speaking of site visitors, venues increasingly rely on online sales to sell late availability and small booking spaces. Integration between the website and venue management system can help here too.
Benefits of moving some of your room inventory online include:
24/7 availability – prospective clients can select and book space quickly and easily at a time that suits them.
Minimises paperwork – full integration between the online booking engine and the venue management system ensures all data is captured and entered into the system with no need to rekey in data.
Yield management – make sure you always obtain the best rates for your space with prices determined automatically to give the best yield.
Great visitor management
In addition to creating a professional first impression, visitor management software has evolved to become an important weapon in the war on Covid.
Such a system can save time by:
Automatically sending out health questionnaires to visitors – this process is triggered when a booking is made. It reduces any margin for error.
Manages the process of sending out QR access codes – these are sent automatically to delegates so they can safely enter the building; they just scan the email with a QR code reader.
Automatically cancelling bookings – if there’s a risk, the system will cancel the booking, deny visitor access and notify the relevant health officers.
Collecting data for track and trace – all collected automatically, fully compliant with GDPR and with two-factor authentication fully secure and accurate.
Superior business intelligence
The venue management system generates a lot of valuable and actionable data and when combined with a CRM it becomes a veritable goldmine. The key word is actionable.
Thanks to technology you can:
Set it and forget it – hours can be wasted pulling standard reports every week. Simply ask – once – for them to be emailed to you and selected team members every week. Forever!
Focus your mind – attractive dashboards make it easy to present information simply and graphically to get a high-level view of sales and operational KPIs in seconds. Drill down to get to the heart of the matter in moments.
Get the bigger picture – access data easily through the leading Microsoft SSRS reporting engine – review every data point from bookings, occupancy, revenue contribution, sales pipeline and more.
Customise data on your terms – using a simple Query Tool feature, venue managers can create reports on the fly bespoke to their particular business needs. Save them and reuse them again and again.
Accurate accounting and billing
The venue management system takes out all the guesswork of billing clients. No more needing to total up costs manually on Excel or Word. All associated costs are captured automatically and accurately.
The benefits include:
Flexibility – issue credit notes, receive deposits and create invoices effortlessly.
Integration with accounting packages – produce accurate invoices automatically and to a schedule.
Efficient contract processing – integration between electronic signature systems and the venue management system simplifies the whole process of processing orders.
Improve cashflow – reports on aged debtors can be generated in seconds and the necessary corrective action taken.
Conclusion
Where previously venue management system were designed to make efficient event diary bookings they are continually evolving and increasing their usefulness.
Great efficiency savings can be made in areas including internal bookings, sales and marketing, online bookings, generating management information, visitor management and billing.
By removing the repetitive and unnecessary elements of these tasks, time can be reinvested in growth strategies, content creation, closing sales, focusing on client services and process improvement.
We have produced several other blogs which cover this in more depth – check them out:
