Hello all!
I'm interested in learning more about how other organizations support Tessitura with personnel resources. We're a mid-size organization (in the D category for Tessitura dues) with around 65 Tessitura users. We support a 1,200 seat venue, a 200 seat black box, a 200 seat multi-purpose and we're opening a 7,000+ seat outdoor amphitheater early summer.
In addition, we have 1 current sublicensee with 2 potential sublicensees coming on board this Winter/Spring. I should also note that we are RAMP, TNEW and TN Mobile Plus users.
Currently, we have three of us who share Tessitura support duties (facility and event setup, project management for implementations/upgrades/etc., report writing, leading the user group, first level help desk support, etc.) but none of us are solely dedicated to Tessitura. In drafting out everything that needs to be done to support the application I've begun to realize that there are entire areas where Tessitura isn't getting the attention it needs (namely data integrity and analysis, but there are other areas as well).
So my questions are:
1. Do you have a Tessitura department? If so, how is it structured?
2. If you do not have a Tessitura department, do you have dedicated personnel supporting Tessitura? If so, how many and what are their roles?
3. If you do not have dedicated personnel, but split the support duties across several people, how is it structured?
4. Who do your Tessitura personnel report to?
5. What size organization are you?
Any insight you can provide into your organizational structure is greatly appreciated!!
Thanks!
Marley
Hi Marley,
I see that you haven't had any replies to this post.
We are also a RAMP client, recently moved from TNEW to another Web company, but we are a lot smaller venue than yourselves. We have only one theatre space, with a seating capacity of around 1800 depending on the layout. Our Box Office & Fundraising departments are the heaviest users of Tessitura, Marketing use it for lists and extractions and we are trying to pursuade the Production and Education departments to engage with it. In total we have just over 100 active users but only 20 concurrent licenses. Some of them are used by an external agency who take phone bookings on our behalf.
Pretty much we have one person who is solely dedicated to supporting Tessitura - Me. But each department have their own 'Super Users' who will be the first port of call for the other users if they have a problem. I do the SQL report writing, and generally offer advice on how to best resolve any issues. The Super Users are a very enthusiastic bunch and are always looking for ways to improve the use of Tessitura.
I'm looking at doing some significant data cleansing this year. Usually the data is extracted and cleaned before being used, but the cleaned data doesn't get returned to the database, so setting up a process for this is one of my projects. We are upgrading our TEST system to version 12 this weekend (Scarey!) and I don't think it will take too long before we are in a postition to ask for our LIVE system to be upgraded.
I'm sure there are many organisations where the support has grown organically, those folk who show an aptitude will naturally be used by others as the source of all knowledge and wisdom. Which is fine, but there are a lot of benefits to sharing out the knowledge and the responsibilities. I try to hold regular User meetings to make sure everyone who has a stake in the application has a voice in the short and long term plans.
Hope that helps a bit. Doubtless all organisations will have their own ways of ensuring there is enough support.
Debbie
I've been at 3 different licensees now. A single org licensee with an in house installation of Tess, a 4 org and a 6 org consortium with multiple venues (both on RAMP and TNEW). So these thoughts aren't all directly related to the current gig, but how I would choose to grow things in a perfect world.
Debbie's comments about super users are worth noting. It's important to find the folks in each member of the consortium who are not only proficient with Tess, but also evangelists for it. These people will be one of your most valuable tools in figuring out what support model works the best and how your Tessitura support needs to adapt and expand.
I would look at the following areas of responsibility and see what answers make the most sense for each:
1 - Report writer/Database manager: This will almost certainly be a single person for the size of consortium you describe. Most likely employed by the master license holder.
2 - Frontline support person (password resets, user account creation, security setup): This is often the same person as #1, but don't assume that it needs to be. It could be a trusted Box Office Lead or someone who works in a customer service roll. These kinds of tasks are not technical in nature and can eat up a lot of time, distracting a database person from larger projects.
3 - Performance Setup/Pricing Setup: Again, a typical scenario would be for each organization to do their own setup for performances. But it is worth considering alternatives. If you can afford one person for whom this is a dedicated role for all organizations you will see benefits from having the setups be consistent across orgs (things like perf code naming conventions). In the absence of a dedicated resource for this, I think it's important for the orgs to get together and agree on some standards.
4 - Data Integrity/Quality Control: Again, this often devolves to the Database role, but should be shared widely. It's important to develop standards and have some way of monitoring them. (At the AT&T Center we have a full time employee who's job is to schedule merges and ensure that all new customer records are formatted correctly and adhere to our data standards).
5 - Training/Process Documentation: Who will on-board new users and train them on Tessitura usage as well as local business processes?
I've worked in variations of all of these. In Kansas City I was a one man show with a ton of support from some very engaged box office managers. Here in Dallas, I fill the database role exclusively. And along the way I've been through variations on these themes.
Feel free to contact me if you would like more information of just want to bounce some ideas around.
- Levi
The only other thing I would add to all the above is that it can be great if your organisation has a CRM Manager or similar role, who is someone who can be responsible for working across the company and getting everybody on board with Tessitura, finding solutions to problems, ensuring that things are working smoothly for everyone.
Depending on the size of the org, they can be the database person as well. (I was a one-stop shop at my previous work, where I'd help different departments work out what they want, and then go and build it.) But it's possible to get the technical expertise to do things in Tessitura, but not be able to put them to good use because nobody at a management level is engaged. If you can find someone who can be that evangelist and visionary for Tessitura usage in your organisation, they will be worth their weight in gold.
Hint: If you haven't got such a person, and you want to create one, sending them to TLCC is a great starting place ...
Thanks all, this has been most helpful, and I appreciate the feedback!!