Event Edge - An eDGEVANTAGE SOLUTION
Event Edge is a solution for any Company managing Event Venues. It provides functionality that allows all aspects of an Event to be managed. From show casing your Venue, to generating a quote, accepting a booking, arranging a tasting session for the event, to a pre-event checklist, creating an agenda, staffing for the event, and event management dashboards for both the Client and the Venue Director on a Tab or Mobile interface.
The Client's Problem
The Grand Receptions in Melbourne approached us to help build a solution that could help them achieve several objectives in a common platform.
- Enable them to market their Venues using Social Media channels
- Enable them to capture customer while ensuring they had customer consent and were not violating any privacy laws and regulations
- Ensure the Sales Staff took a customer through the entire gamete of services on offer and understood and documented the customers event story
- Ensure that proposals were of the same standard and any price deviations were approved by the MD
- Ensure that checklists were generated based on the event customized for the client and that sufficient visibility was given to the operations and planning teams for menu, decor, and entertainment
- Ensure that a sanity check had taken place and the event was ready to be managed for the client
- Ensure that every event progressed smoothly and that the venue managers and senior managers had visibility on how each and every event was progressing
Client | The Grand Receptions Melbourne |
---|---|
Designer | Jehan Bastians
Dinesh Wijeysinghe Stelan B Symons |
The front-end screen that show-cases bookings received for each venue and availability
Notification of all actions taken on the froint end by Sales Staff and Customers since the last login
Set a pick up location and generate a voucher for the driver to pickup a client for a tasting session
The Main Operational Screen that allows the Ops Team to check and control all aspects of the event
Event eDGE - A Marketing Tool
Solution Overview
Event Edge takes care of a range of functions in managing events:
- From an active front-end site that helps promote your venue
- To a complete set of operational functions to manage the sale from the costing to confirmation and payment
- To pre-event planning, resource allocation and vouchers to suppliers including decorators and entertainers
- To creating and event agenda
- A pre-event checklist that must be completed 3 hours before the event starts
- To an event management dashboard that allows both the event director and the customer to monitor the progress of the event on a tab or any other mobile device remotely.
Promoting Your Venue
Event Edge has unique functionality designed to allow a venue to market itself from a front-end web-site that is linked to its social media channels and to its backend sales platform the solution is built to help our customers engage with their clients.
Clients can login using Google or Facebook accounts, enabling the sharing of details with their consent and giving the venue access to the client’s details that would usually have to be keyed in and thus avoiding data entry errors, which can be costly.
Venue availability links and special events can be linked to Social Media channels direct via the platform.
In addition a Facebook-esque notification bar allows the sales staff to see what activity that a has been from customers on the front-end.
The Use of Templates
The system uses templates to achieve several of the objectives stated by the client:
- The Customer Story – capturing the customer story accurately helps you to up-sell the customer and add little elements that create delight! These “delight” factors are the prime drivers of repeat customer ship. The platform now comes with an event type based template which allows the business owner / manager to define a set of questions and use the responses received from the client to design and price the event. This is especially useful when managing weddings, birthdays and other events such as school alumni dances etc.
- Proposal Templates – All cost proposals are based on pre-defined proposals, if you know your customer well, then by using a previously used proposal template and changing only the required functions you can ensure you respond to a customer fast.
- Menus – menu templates allow an event manager or sales person to Drag and Drop previous created special menus that may be re-ordered by customers. This is especially valuable for repeat events and specifically designed menus
Drag and Drop Elements
The system allows a user to take a customer through a questionnaire designed by the management and then based on the customers response select the item in the inventory based on the customers response.
Example:
Q: Do you need transport to the venue?
A: Yes
Action: drag the vehicle type selected and add to cart and set the number of hours / distances
Vouchers, Checklists & Dashboards
Any item selected through the questionnaire is added to the proposal. Once the proposal is confirmed, the system generates vouchers for pre-selected suppliers and for other items allows the ops team to allocate and generate a voucher for the respective suppliers.
The system also generates the entries in a staffing panel for all staff required to man the event.
Once the food, beverages, decor and entertainment have been finalized, the system will allow a prevent checklist, a seating plan and an event agent to be created.
- The pre-event checklists need to be confirmed X hours before the event. Failure to do so will prompt an escaltion via email and SMS to the selected users.
- The seating plan can be created by the customer and can be uploaded to the system and will allow guests to search using their names for the allocated table and the location
- The event agenda needs top be cerated before the event and will be taken over by the event coordinator between 30 mts and 60 mts befote the scehduled event start time
- Thereafter he is provided a tab based mobile interface to indicate as each agenda item is complicated. The completion of each item in a timely fashion is reported in the event dashboard
- This allows managers to check and manage events remotely. Knowing full well any delays will create a visisble escalation. Which can then be resolved.Any item selected through the questionnaire is added to the proposal. Once the proposal is confirmed, the system generates vouchers for preselected suppliers and for other items allows the ops team to allocate and generate a voucher for the respective suppliers.The system also generates the entries in a staffing panel for all staff required to man the event.Once the food, beverages, decor and entertainment have been finalized, the system will allow a prevent checklist, a seating plan and an event agent to be created.The pre-event checklists need to be confirmed x hours before the event. Failure to do so will prompt an escalation via email and SMS to the selected users.The seating plan can be created by the customer and can be uploaded to the system and will allow guests to search using their names for the allocated table and the locationThe event agenda needs to be serrated before the event and will be taken over by the event coordinator between 30 minutes and 60 minutes before the scheduled event start timeThereafter he is provided a tab based mobile interface to indicate as each agenda item is complicated. The completion of each item in a timely fashion is reported in the event dashboardThis allows managers to check and manage events remotely. Knowing full well any delays will create a visible escalation, which can then be resolved.
Invoicing & Collections
The moment a proposal is accepted by the client in can be converted into a booking. This generates an invoice for the advance payment, which will be a percentage of the event cost (parameterized)
The system can then be setup to generate the final invoice X days before the start of the event and track settlement. Where non-settlement would require a special approval by the manager before the event agenda can be run.
The system will track all invoices raised and update all invoices settled.