Case StudiesThe Art Gallery of New South Wales moves from a custom-built, in-house software solution used for several years, seeking increased functionality and support to meet the Gallery’s venue hire business.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales (“Gallery”) has implemented a new venue management system, EventPro Software, which will support increased commercial capability. With the construction of the Gallery’s expansion project currently underway and scheduled for completion in 2022, the Gallery is poised to deliver a new state-of-the-art building located next to the existing and much-loved building. Delivering close to double the current exhibition space, the expanded Gallery will bring opportunities to share more art with more people, and provide more family, learning and educational programming for all audiences.
With the expansion completion, the Gallery requires software to help streamline their venue and event management booking processes. EventPro Software is the one solution to manage all venue booking, event management and catering management requirements for the Gallery.
Key milestones EventPro Software currently achieves for the Gallery are:
Previous venue and events management software was a bespoke system build for the Gallery some years ago. It was used across the Gallery, by teams from venues, learning and participation, members, and our external catering contractors.
The decision was really born from the advancement of the Gallery’s expansion plans, which is scheduled for completion at the end of 2022. The project was tasked with the key objective to automate many manually performed work processes and introduce data flows between the new system and existing Gallery business systems. This integration of data flow has provided enhanced financial control, improved work processes, reduced the need for manual work interventions, and realised time and labour savings associated with all these tasks.
The culture of Profit Systems Inc. (“PSI”, developers of EventPro Software) was identified as a great fit for the Gallery. Their pre-purchase support and presentations provided a clear understanding of what we were purchasing and provided a high level of comfort for all Gallery staff involved in the procurement process. This flowed through to the implementation phase, where we received a high level of support and attention to detail in meeting our specific business requirements.
EventPro’s out-of-the-box system functionality is wide, strong and reliable. They were also able to adapt the software to meet our very specific and sometimes challenging business model.
Affordability – EventPro offered a choice in system module selection and user structures that enabled the Gallery to meet our budget targets.
Ongoing support is first class, whether it is delivered from their Sydney base or their parent team in North America
The implementation phase was planned with a proven methodology used by our EventPro implementation team. The system set up was completed by the EventPro team with input from our team leaders; this got us up and running in the test environment almost immediately. Consultation and training progressed the teams steadily and efficiently to reach a functional system within days.
Pre-set and automatic features save time, which is good, as the system is a little more time consuming than previously
Taking a look at our business from this new system procurement perspective highlighted various avenues for improvement. EventPro has been at the forefront of helping us through these and improving our work processes, which has enabled our staff to engage with our customers more and spend less time at the desk!
The online registration for small to medium events or programs is in line with the “self service” models we are all used to. This has significantly reduced workload and administrative tasks.
Reporting has enabled us to understand our business better and provide a snapshot at a given time, which has been invaluable in venue space management. The ability to produce automated reports saves time and means they are never forgotten.
Reporting dashboards are our most important tool in Education, as we frequently need to provide accurate statistics and other reportable data such as postcode or group types to government, usually at short notice. The dashboard has made that a quick and easy method that anyone in our team could access.
Also, being able to quote, receive and send emails, and produce all information required from the one system saves time, and looks streamlined and professional.
The EventPro implementation team was first class; nothing was too hard, and the high level of attention to detail was outstanding. This led to the great successes the software has provided our teams. Specifically, the integration with our finance system, a first for EventPro and the Gallery, was a great success.
During Covid-19, we have had to pivot to more online programming. The online module to create registrations has made that much more streamlined. Also, as we are mostly working offsite, EventPro has created a central point of information that we can all work from and also communicate with other departments more easily.
Our most positive experience, though, has been working with the amazingly accommodating EventPro team, especially Adam [Ronald, Operations Manager, PSI Australia], who regularly goes above and beyond to make the system work for us.
EventPro has helped us on many fronts; these are a few:
Due to Covid-19, we haven’t had a full reporting period as “business as usual”, but we were able to accurately report our losses for insurance reasons due to the shut down, which we believe we would not have been able to do previously.
Service and support are very strong with the EventPro team; they are responsive and knowledgeable about their system and the industry, which enables them to address support queries.
We would recommend EventPro as a venue management system, as it clearly has all features required for that purpose. However, more importantly in our department, the EventPro support team have worked with us to tweak the system to work for the types of events/programs we run and our requirements, which are at times separate from venue management. While it has not always been straightforward, the EventPro team is solution focussed and always available, which has made using EventPro that much easier.
The system might be similar to others, but ultimately the service is what sets it apart.
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