Marieke Van Gent, through her company IT Efficiency, assists organisations in the Arts & Culture Industry with event optimization. She shared her thoughts on the growing trend of digitalisation with Yesplan in cultural venues.
Marieke Van Gent: “We have been digitalising organisations and their event planning, in the Arts & Culture Industry since 2012. On a more practical level, this means application management. Our main focus is on streamlining event optimization with a human-centred approach.
My first client was the Wilminktheater in Enschede, in The Netherlands. They had Yesplan, but a lot of employees preferred using their old working method within Excel. Through custom configuration, we were able to change the settings and increase enthusiasm for using Yesplan.”
“Yesplan has seen significant improvements in recent years. I think it’s a very user-friendly tool. The cultural sector has also evolved, with smaller venues realising the importance of digital capabilities. The times of working with just Google Calendar and other individual tools are over.
For example, I recently visited a new client. This theatre still used a magnetic board to organise its planning. It felt like stepping out of a time machine and arriving in the 1980s. We completely transformed their digital processes, but the magnetic board had to stay. They just couldn’t get rid of it.”
“At IT Efficiency, our goal is to provide a single source of truth for all data. This is why we often recommend Yesplan to our clients. Because Yesplan works really well with external integrations.
You can easily connect a ticketing system or accounting software. We love using Yesplan, but we want to keep our independence. So when I propose the software to a client, I don’t want a commission for it.”
“There are so many people working daily on the floor at a venue, who need quick access to the information within Yesplan. This is why the mobile application is indispensable.
With the app, they can quickly check the technical rider of an artist. At what time is the lunch buffet again? It lowers the threshold for people to start using Yesplan actively."
"The excellent customer service! Which is something I miss with a lot of other tools. I’m also a fan of the Teamplanner. A number of large organisations Arts & Culture Industry use this as the basis for their personnel scheduling.”
“Event optimization is easy with Yesplan when regularly cleaned up. I’ve got a really neat trick for that.
Create a dataview* with all the fields you think are being used. Then set the time back to two or three years ago and download the rapport. If you see a field that is not or barely being used, just throw it out. Repeat this action once a year. If you keep Yesplan clutter-free, everyone in your organisation will eagerly use the tool.”
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