A trend or shift in my industry that the Next Generation software will need to anticipate and address

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Hi Chuck

Great idea to have a forum for discussion especially for those of us who can't attend the July summit (stupid pre-booked holidays!).

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Anyway. A trend or shift in my industry that the Next Generation software will need to anticipate and address is...ticket touts. As  touting and the use of Ebay to resell tickets becomes more and more of a problem anything we can do to limit the access touts have to our big selling shows would be a great help.

Something we had been hoping for throughout each enhancement process was the ability to limit the amount of tickets sold in an order as standard -  (I believe this is possible through offers and the API but it would be good to have a standard tick box and number entry cell that could do this in order to make the process easier.)

Good luck with it all and I look forward to hearing what the summit team come up with at the sessions in San Antonio.

Siobhan

Thanks for jumping and being the first to post on the forum!  You'll be happy to know that v9.0 does allow you to limit the number of seats sold per lineitem per price type in an order. 

I hope others will give this question some thought and post your ideas.

Social Networking.  Is it important to consider this growing phenomenon as it applies to this question?  People are becoming connected faster and in many ways using the many tools now available.  We want to bring people closer to our organizations.  We want to foster the feeling of belonging and connectedness in our patrons.  Providing an easy and free way for these interactions will promote these relationships.  Hey, we're using social networking right here.  And look what it's done for us!!

A trend or shift in my industry that the Next Generation software will need to anticipate and address is...

PCI and the whole nature of security scope containment. As we work through the PCI requirements we're finding that even strict scope containment there is a HUGE volume of work to do.  It's hardly an option though, so whatever can be done to simplify the process will save the collective community of Tessitura client’s significant costs.

It seems that parts of the PCI puzzle that can be hard to piece together are due to the nature of the distribution of transaction processing in the Tessitura environment.  For example, in our environment our web site is hosted.  Patrons enter card holder data on the site which is then transferred to our web API server in our facility, and then eventually on to the database server and credit card server where it's ultimately shipped outside of our facility again for authorization and settlement.

Bringing these pieces together into one PCI "security domain" (for lack of a better term) can significantly reduce the work necessary to prove PCI compliance. 

While I don't really know what form it might take, I feel that a new architecture that understands the requirements of PCI from its inception will ultimately make it easier for client organizations to demonstrate compliance with these standards.

A trend or shift in my industry that the Next Generation software will need to anticipate and address is...the increasing level of educational activity in arts organisations. More and more performance venues, for example, are running classes and workshops - these can even include direct links with the artists i.e. planning a concert and a related series of workshops involving that artist in the same week. This increase in educational activity is mirrored by the inclusion of participation spaces in the design of new arts buildings like ours.

A trend or shift in my industry that the Next Generation software will need to anticipate and address is...

Personalizing the patron experience.  In the advent of new technology, patrons are used to getting what they want, when they want it. I think we need to be asking ourselves how Tessitura can offer us more nimble functionality and how our websites can be an extension of this for our patrons. 

I think "Choose Your Own Price" functionality is the first example of the ability to be more flexible so that our patrons can make their own experience.

Two trends or shifts I can think of right away...

Reshifting the idea of "Box Office" to be nimble and customer focused - can you take your Box Office "on the road" so you can provide great service (even though you have a website, that's often not enough), wherever you might be?  Trade shows/expos/other parts of your lobby?

I-Phone integration - I'm sure there are some custom solutions now, but what does the future look like in the handheld mobile world?

A trend or shift in my industry that the Next Generation software will need to anticipate and address is... donating on the web!

You might think this is old hat but in the opera world is still a pretty new issue. 

Right now I feel like its a bit of a square peg in a round hole especially when dealing with the huge variety of different kinds of contributions that can come in through the web - planned gifts, membership gifts, special appeals, memorial gifts, stock gifts, special events etc.

There seems to be a lot of manual work involved and of course the source code issues...

"A trend or shift in my industry that the Next Generation software will need to anticipate and address is..."

In no particular order....

1- Interfacing with TV...with interactive TV is becoming a reality - perhaps while watching a commercial a message pops up to say "Press 2" to order tickets now?

2- Expanding on the IPhone thoughts - deliver and be able to receive tickets through various formats, of course electronically .... be earth minded .... less paper

3- Promotions via Text messaging...rush tickets....press # to purchase tickets now

4- Subscriptions/membership/loyalty points/gift cards delivered via a "plastic card" either RFID or Mag stripe to be used for entry/redemption/logging in etc.

5- Use handhelds for messaging directly after performances get feedback on experience, get folks to blog....

6- Connect via itunes/apple tv to purchase tickets? Seems like tickets/subscriptions should be available while looking for and purchasing music/movies/tv shows/podcasts etc

Michael

During workplace discussons on this project, our internal team has identified all of Michael Sampson's bullet points.  In addition to these we've identified a trend or shift in my industry that the Next Generation software will need to anticipate and address as...

Ability to survey our audience directly from the web into their Tessitura account recording responses interactively and immediately and report/analysis with the same immediacy.

Record and recover virtual and social customers where no ticket is purchased.  Elaborating, we've a live free event which captures none of the "normal" customer information; we've a youtube channel; we're investigating a facebook group.  None of these customers come to us through Tessitura channels and the data captured does not conform to "regular" standards.  To identify and inform these customers, the capture of IP addresses, mobile phone information (only) and various other electronic means of IDing potential and interested customers is needed.

Marketing and financial tools built in which mirror the efficacy of the one stop shop approach such as Google Analytics to report of sales trends, income received and customer profiling in a live, streaming environment.

Smart card technology to be able to record and access data from Tessie to provide and distribute loyalty credit and reward which is easy to define, upload, inform and utilise.

There's more I'm sure.  I'm now thinking of recording sales of download services for music and video recordings for our recorded performances as well as fulfilment and tracking for education packs and other online media and recording interest in streaming live events.

Lesley Diskin
Opera Australia

Unknown said:

A trend or shift in my industry that the Next Generation software will need to anticipate and address is... donating on the web!

You might think this is old hat but in the opera world is still a pretty new issue. 

Right now I feel like its a bit of a square peg in a round hole especially when dealing with the huge variety of different kinds of contributions that can come in through the web - planned gifts, membership gifts, special appeals, memorial gifts, stock gifts, special events etc.

There seems to be a lot of manual work involved and of course the source code issues...

Removed by user

I think Microsoft Workflow should be used to develop the software.

the difference is:

using Workflow, codes will attach with business logic, otherwise, business logic will attach with codes.

Microsoft CRM, Biztalk, all using this Workflow tech.

It will be a good choice.

My thoughts ...

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), Cloud computing, RIA (Rich Internet Apps) are the trends in building new generation of enterprise software. I don't want to be too technical here but anticipate three aspects of software which will be needed in nextgen Tessitura. A nextgen Tessitura should be easy to install, maintain and provide rich and easy interactive experience to users, customers, partners and decision makers.

1. Services such as Webapi, TN Express Web, SYOS, Kiosks, TPHATS, N-Scan, TMS, T-Stats .... should be optional parts of Tessitura instead of separate product.  IT Administrators should be easily able to add or remove features by using checkboxes and following wizards. See Image. 

2. It may be easy to predict various upcoming technologies but it not easy to predict human behavior. There is no way to know if most tickets will be brought by using cell phones or computers or TV or something new in next five or ten years. Tessitura web interface should be accessible on small screen and provide rich interactive experience on medium and big screens. It should have tools which can help to generate organic demand, site traffic and leads. It should be able to store and deliver content like flash, videos, pdf, documents pertaining to performances. One thing is for sure that Web scalability and growth will happen and RESTful (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer) interface similar to Google, Amazon API will help developers.

3. I would like to think nextgen Tessitura not as software but a platform which can be scaled and extended by developers. With changing business needs it becomes harder to align software with customer needs and company goals as time passes by. At present Tessitura business logic is complex and it takes years for a developer to understand. It would be nice if the Entity Relationship and Business Logic are not inside triggers and stored procs but available as Workflow, E-R diagrams to Tessitura community.

Thanks for listening.

I stumbled across an article today about some various state laws (MA & NV)  that are being enacted regarding data encryption and privacy of information:

http://xandros.ulitzer.com/node/1046285

I think that a current shift and trend not only in our industry, but across the board, is going to be a greater focus on security of all information and transactions - especially as computing moves more to online interaction and even possibly cloud computing.

Many of our organizations serve people nationally, and even internationally, which will make for some interesting requirements when it comes to security of personal information.

- Heather