At Shedd, I’m part of the team working on an institution-wide initiative on Event Management and as part of it we are reaching out to other institutions to get a better understanding of what software is being used within the industry. If anyone on this forum is currently using Event Management software (or using Tessitura in a creative way to manage event booking and execution), I'd love to connect with you and learn more.
I appreciate any insights or knowledge you might be able to share with us!
All the best,
Heather McLaren
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Director, Guest Relations
John G. Shedd Aquarium
p 312.692.2702
www.sheddaquarium.org
Hi Heather,
Here at the MFA Boston, we have been using a program called EMS from Accruent since around 2010. We used to use a similarly complex combo of multiple Outlook calendars, Excel docs, and simple sheet binders in various departments to coordinate space usage across the Museum (far from efficient and very prone to multiple space RSVPs). We still use EMS in 2 of the forms that we first started out with - a Client application that is sort of the SysAdmin/Power Users/Space Managers platform, and a Virtual web-driven platform that the majority of Museum staff use for day to day meeting spaces, etc. The software now also has App-driven platforms, a Master Calendar feature (we explored but didn't end up going with), as well as a myriad of ways to configure it for your organizations purposes (they market to Colleges/Universities, various Corporations, conference centers, etc.) so you can effectively create campuses, buildings, zones within buildings, etc.
While we have yet to figure out a way to directly link it with Tessitura (this would be a fantastic way to initially import data into Tessitura to start the event building process!), reporting can be pulled out of EMS as Excel, PDFs, and XML, so we have tweaked the general reporting queries over the years to present the data in a close format of the critical fields needed to create performances in Tessitura.
It also can create invoices, confirmations, send notices about requests and the like that allow users to coordinate across departments - and most importantly, everyone is going to the same source to look at space and availability (no more double-booked spaces!) and to see what is happening at any given time in the Museum. It doesn't do everything we would like it to do (there is a tremendous amount of initial configuration and in some cases, ongoing configuration - like with any complex program), but it ticked alot of the boxes on our list of what we were looking for at the time.
Cheers,
Anne
Thanks for your feedback, Anne! We'll check out EMS.