Disrupting Venue Management Software
The future of software for hotels, restaurants, wedding venues, banquet halls, conference centres and event facilities.
Whether you manage a hotel, wedding venue or convention centre, the chances are very high that you are using some form of venue management software today to manage your inquiries, booking calendar and event orders. At Event Temple, we believe that the software venues use is about to change forever through the concept of a “platform”.
Simply put, platforms allow you to link multiple software applications together seamlessly without much technical know-how needed. For the first time ever, venues will be able to connect any number of software applications together, passing data back and forth without limit. This presents a huge opportunity for hotels and venues and disrupts every existing company providing venue management software today.
Most of the current venue booking systems have traditionally been setup as black boxes, or “all-in-one” software programs. The engineers building these programs assembled literally millions of lines of code to build invoicing, online payment, membership portals, accounting functionalities, to do lists and more. As customers requested varying feature sets, the traditional software companies in this space built them, racing to beat one another by staying ahead simply by having more features than their next competitor.
Back in the late 90s and early 2000’s, this wasn’t such a problem, but as we all know, technology has been evolving FAST. Software companies have evolved from trying to do everything and have now begun to focus on being the best in the world at just one thing. Just like a hotel or venue cannot compete successfully on all fronts, software companies are now niching down. We’ve seen Slack explode as an online team communication tool. Asana is a hugely popular project management software. More and more, the best companies in the world are using extremely powerful, tightly focused software products in order maintain a competitive advantage in every area of their business.
At Event Temple, we believe in using the best tool in the world for the job you are trying to accomplish and we’re not alone. Just about every industry has adapted the platform model and the hospitality industry has been left behind. By using a software platform as your main mission control, today’s leading companies are able to connect a multitude of software applications together to their central hub. This gives them the ability to do the work and track their data all in one place and also gives them the additional functionality from third-party applications.
So where’s the disruption here?
By using a platform rather than an existing “all-in-one” solution, we believe venues will gain a significant competitive advantage, both immediately and over the long-term as well. By their nature, existing venue software is outdated simply because of their design. Since there are so many features, there are millions of lines of code. Recoding it would take years and just isn’t a feasible option for the company.
As well, existing software companies in our industry just aren’t setup to work with new technology. Let’s pretend for example, you spoke to your existing venue software company and asked them to help you connect to a new program you wanted to use. The chances are very high your request would require multiple attempts and even then would most likely not go through. If it did, it would be a significant technical undertaking with heavy associated costs. So, put simply, you would not be able to take advantage of the new software on the market. You’d be stuck using your old system, or you’d be trying to maintain accurate data across multiple systems through manual data entry. Since this would leave a lot of room for human error, this would not be a feasible option.
Let’s pretend on the other hand, your competitor adopted a venue software platform rather than an all-in-one system from the past. A brand new software has just hit the market and your competitor knows it will help them save time and book more customers. By utilizing the platform, your competitor is easily able to click a few buttons and connect the new technology to their existing platform without any technical knowledge in minutes. Suddenly, data from the new program is pushed to the platform and vice-versa. There is no duplicate data entry, no confusing connections and no requests to the software company asking for permission to make the integration. It all just works and was setup and running in no time at all.
The world is changing.
Shouldn’t you be positioned to adopt new innovations?
New technology is being invented faster than ever for almost every niche within a company. From communications to invoicing, sales, online marketing and data aggregation, software companies are focusing on being the best in the world at one thing. If you think about it, it makes sense. How can any one software company be the best in the world at Banquet Event Orders, Sales Automation, Sales Metrics, Marketing Tracking, Marketing Tools, Event Planning, Task Management, Calendar Scheduling, Tour Booking, Ticket Sales, etc. The answer is, they can’t and they never were. We settled for good enough because that’s what was available back then. But just like your venue specializes and niches to win, software does the same thing. You don’t need one program that does everything, you need one program that controls everything.
That got us thinking at Event Temple. Why is almost every industry in the world using a platform made specifically for their needs, but hotels and venues are being left behind? What if instead of the old way of thinking, which was “we need to do everything in order to win”, we changed to instead say “we need to work with everyone else in order to win”? What would that look like?
Upon answering this question, we got excited and ran the idea by some of our colleagues working at hotels and event venues. They shared our enthusiasm and so, we started coding Event Temple and spent a couple of years getting the platform just right before our official launch. For the first time ever, hotels and venues will be able to use our platform for the essentials like sales management, event management and scheduling and then connect seamlessly to other programs without limitation. Hotels and venues will be able to rapidly adapt to changes in technology and adopt new software as they require it at any time, on their own using our centralized platform as the hub to connect everything together. The platform itself has all of the fundamental features that every venue needs, but then allows for infinite customization, allowing you to use any other modern internet-based software program to create your own ideal workflow.
Here are some of the benefits of using a platform instead of a traditional software program:
- Easier to learn (less features to navigate)
- Easier to train new staff
- Add increased complexity over time
- Only pay for features you actually use
- Rapidly adopt new technology
- Maintain the ability to readily embrace change
- Avoid data entry and cumbersome admin work
- Not bound by the limitations of features in your “all-in-one”
- Build a system that works for your unique situation
- Create a seamless workflow between all of your departments and divisions
- Gain data insights into your venue like never before
- Future-proof your hotel or venue
We believe that the future should provide unlimited connectivity.
We believe that your ability to innovate shouldn’t be bound by a software decision you made years ago. Your ecosystem should be able to rapidly adapt to accept changes and innovations. We also believe in the power of having a strong focus. By choosing to be the best in the world at just one or two things, we recognize that creates an enormous advantage.
What could your venue accomplish if your software wasn’t standing in your way? What would you connect with or use in your venue if it was up to you?
How could you make your workflow easier while becoming more profitable?
We’d like to hear your ideas.
Get in touch with us at:
info (at) eventtemple (dot) com
