The Studio Venue

The current team at The Studio inherited the original conference reservations system, that of a strong competitor in the conference software market. Initially, it served the team well, being easy to use and entirely appropriate for the task of taking enquiries and processing conference reservations. However, the Orange Studio team were also running a separate marketing database alongside, as the system didn’t handle both, so data had to be transferred from one to the other on a regular basis to ensure the sales and marketing teams were working with the same information. Although a lot was achieved with the two systems, it was frustrating having to switch from one system to another in order to check client history.

The company who installed the original system put The Studio under pressure to upgrade. This was used as an opportunity to investigate alternatives that would enable the integration of the sales and marketing functions. While the suggested upgrade would have been an improvement on the original through the reservations functionality, it did not provide the marketing options that would enable consolidation of the two databases.

During research on the internet, the team identified Kinetic Solutions as a strong contender. The company stood out because of the level of the sophistication of the marketing module that would enable greater efficiency.  Particularly significant was the fact that The Studio felt that their requirements were understood fully by the Kinetics team.

Changing to a new system is not an easy thing. Whatever the challenges of the system used, there is at least familiarity and the change process is going to cost time and effort before any benefits are felt. At The Studio, the events module is installed and just about to go live, having transferred the data over from the old system. The next step will be to add the marketing module. Time will be saved in no longer having to transfer data manually from one system to another; reports and client info will be instantly available to everyone; duplications will be limited and both the sales and marketing teams will be able to access all client history including marketing info while they are talking to them, if necessary.

“As we are still in the throws of the change process it's difficult to see beyond the next few months at the moment. However, we are very pleased with the way things are going and the level of support we are getting. I am sure that in a few months time we will wonder how we ever coped with the previous set up”. Clare Satterley, Assistant Conference Manager, The Studio.