Leeds Castle

Leeds Castle in Kent runs a thriving business offering conferencing and events, residential accommodation, dining, weddings, and other events open to the general public.

Logistically, the conferencing and events department has its work cut out with 45 bedrooms over three buildings, a maximum of 420 meeting delegates in six conference venues, potential for 550 dinner guests in six venues, and the capacity to have 2000 guests in its grounds at any one time.

The business had previously outsourced its booking and administrative functions, but when it changed caterers in 2009, Leeds Castle took the opportunity to bring these operations back in house.

The complexity of the offering meant that any software chosen had to combine functionality with flexibility and ease of use. And this is why Leeds Castle chose KxConferencing and KxResidential as its software solution.

Jenny George, Senior Sales Executive, says: “We took the opportunity to change our system for something that was completely suitable for our needs. The look of the system and its ease of use were the main things that convinced us to buy the package. It does everything we want it to do.”

The ease with which the Castle’s staff were able to pick up the system and run with it has paid dividends for the business in terms of time and efficiency. Jenny explains:

“We can pull off reports easily and find this really useful. It also means we can keep an eye on how sales are getting on and it tells us what campaigns are working.”

There are also parts of the software that the staff are finding invaluable, particularly the booking contract facility. Because all information is gathered on the initial contact, Castle staff are able to use these as operational notes, which means they no longer have to re-enter or duplicate information.

Staff can also block send notes and emails rather than having to deal with each one separately, which is also improving efficiency.

In fact, Jenny has found the whole process of changing to Kinetic Software a seamless and easy one. She says: “The system is easy and straightforward to work with, reports are easy to generate and the system itself is pretty self-explanatory.”

“We’re really happy with the set-up, the system and Kinetic’s service.”

The Challenge
To bring its conference, events and accommodation bookings function back in-house by finding an integrated software system that would bring together all of Leeds Castle’s offerings – event management, conferencing, dine and stay, catering, and meetings. The aim was to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its marketing and sales efforts, whilst making cost savings by not paying an external organisation to manage administrative functions.

The Solution
KxConferencing and KxResidential from Kinetic Solutions were the software packages chosen, not only because they had all the functionality that Leeds Castle was looking for, but also because of its ease of use.

The Outcome
The software has enabled Leeds Castle to completely streamline its operations. Reports can easily be generated and the information used to gauge sales levels, what’s working and what isn’t working so well. Time and effort has been saved because information no longer needs to be duplicated. Staff training has been much simpler and has taken less time and effort because the system is far more intuitive than the one used previously.

Products and Technology
The integrated suite of products at Leeds Castle includes:
•KxResidential
•KxConferencing Physical server with a 2 partition hard drive supporting a 200GB environment Windows Server 2003 standard edition Database environment SQL Server 2005