Introduction
National Museums Liverpool Trading Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of National Museums Liverpool and boasts a range of venues, each housing nationally and internationally important collections of stunning art and beautiful artefacts, right in the heart of Liverpool.
The museum’s spaces including World Museum, the Museum of Liverpool, Merseyside Maritime Museum, Sudley House, Walker Art Gallery, International Slavery Museum and Lady Lever Art Gallery will host events for up to 1000 guests, ranging from private dining, receptions, conferences, exhibitions, weddings, filming and meetings. Also available are three lecture theatres all with integrated audio/visual technology and complimentary Wi-Fi. The conference and events team has expertly operated its events business for 21 years and excel at adapting the organisation’s facilities and services to meet and exceed clients’ expectations. All profits from hospitality and events are returned to National Museums Liverpool to support its work.
Key Challenge
Excel-based venue management not sustainable to support growth in volume of events
Head of Events at National Museums Liverpool, Katie Roberts explains, “Over the last few years we have seen a significant rise, approximately 110%, in our commercial hire bookings and we knew that moving forward if we wanted to grow our overall income from event offerings, then the Excel-based system we were using just wouldn’t be conducive. Using this approach was time-consuming, prone to errors, nothing was really linked and it was difficult to run any sorts of reports. Obviously any way in which we can maximise income for the museums and galleries is paramount. We knew we needed to embrace innovation to stay ahead of the curve and that any solution had to be sustainable in the current climate.”
“Priava was one of the best events solutions we’ve seen. It was intuitive, easy to use and attractive.”
Katie Roberts
Head of Events
National Museums Liverpool
The Solution
“One of the best events solutions we’ve seen”
Katie talks about how they found a new solution, “We looked at many solutions, a number of which seemed too hotel-focused for us. In the end it was our EPoS supplier that recommended we take a look at Priava, it was one of the best events solutions we’ve seen and just seemed more of a commercial solution and based on the specific needs of an events business. It was intuitive, easy to use and attractive. We didn’t want to be bombarded with different symbols, so we liked the clean look and could tell it wouldn’t take long to train staff. The fact that it was cloud- based was also appealing as we are quite risk-averse.” The Priava solution is now used by sales, operations and administrative staff within the events team.
The Results
Massive time- savings, ease-of-use and tailored reporting “really opens the doors to generate more revenue”
According to Katie one of the key improvements of introducing the Priava solution has been the time-savings that come with additional functionality and ease-of-use.
Don’t look back - creation of tabs saves time on closing down screens
“The biggest win for me is that it’s just really easy to use. For example if there is a missing contact in a booking, rather than close the screen you are in or click back, you simply just create another tab. Similarly, if you need to change the number of guests you can use the bulk edit’ facility rather than having to go back and change every single line.” The day to day management of events is easier says Katie, “With the old system with a single booking we would typically have to input the same information 4 or 5 times from conception to completion, but with Priava you can simply pull everything through at the click of a button – the events sheets are much clearer.” The team is now able to filter events by date or venue and with the ‘Global Search’ feature “you can pretty much find anything you want” says Katie.
New features have excited the team and boosted morale
Other new features are popular with staff too. “The ability to attach files to event bookings such as emails, signed contracts or table plans is great and has really excited the team as it just makes their jobs easier and helps to boost morale. They love the system and it’s not unusual, for me to get an enthusiastic message from one of the team talking about a new feature that’s come out and ‘look what you can do on Priava now’.”
More time to meet targets and generate more revenue
With the collective time saved, the events team now have more resources to spend with customers and be more proactive with new sales. To meet the annual targets Katie says that the new technology will “really open the doors to help generate more revenue because of the efficiency the system allows the team. The real focus for us is to maximise the income we return for National Museums Liverpool, which in turn can be re-invested. The team can now effectively reach more people not only because they have more capacity, but also because the technology assists with more effective marketing.”
“Crucial for marketing…we can focus on nurturing repeat business”
“The built-in reporting from Priava really helps to support new business development. Not only can we produce sales forecasts to the board in terms of what’s confirmed or provisioned we can also see who our ‘top bookers’ are. In the past this would have taken 4-5 hours of trawling through every single file for the last few years, but with Priava it takes just a few seconds.” “The information is crucial for marketing as we can focus on nurturing repeat business. So for example we can offer special deals to loyal customers like if they book three times then we can give them a discount. We can also create reports on other key metrics such as what venues are used most and level of conversions which again helps us to understand where to focus our sales efforts. Literally any report you can think of, we can now get, you can make them what you want them to be.”
Community Matters – “We feel we’re benefitting from a world- wide group of users”
Introducing ‘Master & Sub’ feature to manage party nights
A recent new feature that National Museums Liverpool is due to take advantage of this Christmas is the ‘Master & Sub’ which enables them to create a “master” event and attach “sub” bookings, so that they are all linked. National Museums Liverpool plan to use the feature for its Christmas party nights where they have a capacity for 1,000 guests. Using ‘Master and Subs’ they will be able to create an overarching event and add mini bookings within the event for tables of 10. In turn the system enables easy creation of individual contracts, pricing and invoicing for each sub-event. Katie explains, “This will make complex events such as parties much simpler to manage because we can easily record details to the individual bookings, see what tables are still free and also provide everything the operations team need for the different companies that attend. We can then create reports on the success of various nights and we have all the information at our fingertips to encourage repeat bookings for the following year.”
Future plans – Asset Management & integration with EPoS
According to Katie, National Museums Liverpool is still looking at how it can take full advantage of Priava’s capabilities and in the future will make full use of the ‘inventory management’ functionality that will enable them to see the return on investment for different capital equipment used for events such as trestle tables or laptops.
Summary
The benefits that National Museums Liverpool Trading Ltd has achieved through the use of the Priava cloud-based venue management solution so far include:
- Supports 110% growth in hospitality business;
- Intelligent Reporting e.g. Top bookers/ conversion rates;
- Easier to use – spend less time on training;
- Boosts staff motivation and morale;
- Time saved can be re-invested into more proactive service and sales;
- Reach more new customers;
- Ability to group events into ‘Master’ and ‘Sub’ for managing party nights;
- Encourage repeat business;
- Improved staff productivity;
- Supports increase in revenue generation;
- Track and measure use of assets e.g. poseur tables;
- Access to new technology being developed for venues globally.
Final comment from Katie
“We are also looking forward to using the CRM system more and are also hopefully planning to integrate Priava with our EPoS and stock management, so that the operations team can have access to the system and benefit from more efficient ordering.”
Favourite Feature
“The ‘profit margins’ feature is really good, you can work out what margin elements of your event has made in seconds.”
Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about how you can introduce live availability and instant bookings at your venue using Priava.
