What Is Venue Management Software?
Venue management software is used to manage multiple operational processes for various types of meeting and event venues.“Venue” is a term that encompasses many different types of venues.
Types of Venues:
There are many different types of venues, including:
- Hotels
- Restaurants
- Wedding venues
- Special event venues
- Coworking spaces
- Art Galleries
- Museums
- Colleges and Universities
- Cruise ships
- Yachts
- Conference centres
- Convention centres
- Churches and Religious facilities
- Government facilities
- Corporate event venues
- Concert venues
- And more!
What Does Venue Management Software Do?
Venue Management Software has different functionality depending on the type of venue it’s design for.
Typically though, the software helps manage several business process including:
- Inquiry management and lead response tracking
- Sales process management
- Customer relationship management
- Account and contact management
- Digital contracting
- Digital invoicing
- Digital proposals
- Event management
- Event scheduling
- Meeting management
- Banquet event orders
- Catering management
- Menu management
- Group room scheduling
- Event ticketing
- Event reporting
- Catering reporting
- Room reporting
And more.
How To Choose The Right Software For Your Venue
As mentioned earlier, venue management software is a phase used to describe the software used in many types of venues. Ideally, you should find a venue software provider that aligns with your exact type of venue.
You will want to do a Google keyword search for some of the following terms:
- Venue crm
- Venue software
- Venue management software
- Hotel sales tools
- Hotel crm
- Hotel event software
- Hotel sales and catering software
- Catering software
- Banquet event order software
- BEO software
- Wedding venue software
You can also add your venue type before the keyword in this format (venue type + keyword) using any of the keywords above.
How Much Does Venue Management Software Cost?
Venue software can cost anywhere from $30 per month to over $100,000 a year for a single venue. Software is typically priced due to the complexity required by the venue and the ROI (return on investment) that it can provide to potential customers.
Sometimes venue software will have one flat price for everything and other items you’ll pay per user or based on the size of the venue. In other circumstances you’ll need to pay based on which modules you use, or on some form of metering (such as transactions you process through the system).
What Is A Venues Typical Workflow?
Typically venues have the same high level workflow, despite the fact that they are so different.
Here is the workflow:
- Customers inquire about the venue’s pricing and availability using web-based forms or email
- The venue salesperson checks the availability and pricing and responds to the prospective customer with a quote
- The customer reviews the quote and once approved, the venue sends an official contract
- The customer signs the contract and the venue sends and invoice
- The customer pays their invoice and together the venue and the customer solidify the details of the event
- The venue executed the event and later reports on the financial performance of the event
Though some venues have different use cases (the event rooms may be free for example), this is the high level workflow that the majority of venues share. There is an inquiry, a sales process, a planning process, and finally the venue reports on historical performance.
What is the best venue management software?
The best venue management software is the one that is designed to serve your type of venues needs. Though we’d like to say Event Temple is always the best fit for every venue, in every circumstance, that just isn’t true. That’s because we’ve picked a very specific set of problems to focus on, which tend to be the main problems that a specific subset of venues tend to request solutions to. When those types of venues try us, we are the best because we’ve focussed all of our energy and effort on solving their particular problems.
So to find the best venue management software, you’ll want to use the following checklist:
- Identify your type of venue
- Identify the problem you are trying to solve with the software
- Identify what you are looking to get from the software solution - mot just the functionality but also the benefit - normally to save time or increase revenue or both
- Quantify the return on investment you are looking for from the software (how much money or time can you save exactly)
- Quantify any other intangible benefits to your business that the software will allow you to have (for example, more face to face time with customers which will improve your brand)
- Use the ROI and intangibles to create a budget
- Determine all the decision makers involved and have them agree to the budget, goals of the project and decision process
- Ensure the people who are required to sign off on a final purchase decision are involved in the process from the beginning
- Establish a list of priorities from the software and rank them by high, medium or low priority
- Determine a timeline of when to purchase the software
- Venue Management Software Purchasing Tips
As you search for a venue crm, we recommend the following tips and resources to help make the process easier
- Establish your buying criteria, decision makers, budget and timeline before you begin
- Search “keyword + your venue type” to find a solution for your particular type of venue
- Utilize review sites like Capterra, G2Crowd and Hotel Tech Report to read reviews
- Normally you’ll need to attend a live demo - expect to attend 3-5 demos and bring all the decision makers if possible to save time
- Ask to speak to current customers if possible - it’s okay to ask for a reference before making the final call
- Expect to sign a 1 year contact and pay annually - most providers require this and it is actually a good thing - you’ll need to commit to your project in order for it to be successful
- Ask for a free trial if you still aren’t comfortable or need more time testing the system
- Read blogs, case studies, YouTube videos and ebooks from providers
- Learn more about the providers roadmap, history and core values
That’s it!
By this time, you should have a good idea of what venue management software is, what it does, how to buy it and how to find the best venue management software for your business.
If you have any questions, please contact us here for help. If you are looking for additional resources, you can learn more about venue sales and marketing, operations, tips and tricks and other useful information here.
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