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More clarity at SSBU thanks to Yesplan

After having chosen for Yesplan, employees at De Stadsschouwburg in Utrecht (the Netherlands) have been working with Yesplan for a few years now. “The clear overview in Yesplan is of great value”, says Anne-Britt Heijtel, Event Planner at SSBU.

At the end of 2018 the Yesplan team and our Dutch users enjoyed the gathering at the theatre in the centre of Utrecht for our user day. A year and a half later their Yesplan installation has gone another few steps forward. Standing still is going backwards, we think and so does Anne-Britt. By using Yesplan very intensely, she knows every bit of the software. Whoever has a question about Yesplan at SSBU, e.g. a field that should be added or a report that needs to be created, goes to her.

“Yesplan gives us structure” 

“We used another tool before”, Anne-Britt says. “But at a given moment you realise it was too limited. The event structure and what you can do yourself in Yesplan is so much better than in the tool we had. Furthermore, it is very user-friendly and it gives you a good overview of everything that goes together.” The good overview turned out to be very important to the theatre.

“Because of the uniformity in Yesplan we keep an overview very well” - Anne-Britt Heijtel

“Yesplan’s biggest impact is in programming. Yesplan helps you to work according to a fixed structure, while some employees used to have different ways to book shows for example. Uniformity makes sure that everything is now clear from the very beginning”, says Anne-Britt. 

Still, it was important that an organisation can configure the tool to its individual wishes. “To some extent, we needed to be able to add fields and buttons ourselves. Software should not force you to completely change your processes. That works very well in Yesplan.”


(image: Dorien Hein)


Switched overnight 

When configuring their installation Anne-Britt and her coworkers were assisted by Customer Success Manager Wim. “We were assisted really well”, she says. “At SSBU each department has a key user, a Yesplan representative for that department. My IT colleague Gerard and I are Yesplan administrators. We did the implementation training sessions with the group of key users.” 

“After only a few weeks of using Yesplan everything went great” - Anne-Britt Heijtel

Switching from the old system to Yesplan was completed swiftly at SSBU. The theatre made the switch overnight. “Early April 2017 I let all employees know that old systems had been decommissioned and Yesplan was now our primary system. In just one week everything ran fine.” 

The main reason for a hassle-free switch were the good training sessions, support and the manual. “All employees were taught brilliantly how to work with Yesplan in a few training sessions. Afterwards, I also got to work and designed some manuals that were SSBU-specific.

“And the follow-up is also going well. Support is working really fast. It gives us peace of mind knowing that if a problem occurs, there is an entire team ready to fix it. People like Wim and Chris think along with you trying to reach a solution that works best in your specific situation.”

Going the extra mile with dataviews 

“The next step is to experiment further with dataviews (useful reports giving you an overview and that users create themselves). They are so good to create a proper overview and they are much more dynamic than status reports. On top of that, you build them yourself. The combination of these things enables you to get some nice overviews in no time.” Anne-Britt recommends all people at SSBU to experiment with dataviews so they keep on learning and discovering new options. She also looks forward to new possibilities so she can do even more with dataviews.

We have a meeting with the group of key users every three months. During these meetings we discuss what can be done better, how to do it differently and list needs. This continual improvement process is really important at SSBU. Standing still is going backwards, in their view.

“Dataviews’ possibilities are wide. We want to use them to full extent.” - Anne-Britt Heijtel

When asking what Anne-Britt thinks Yesplan’s biggest assets are, she does not have to think long. “The overview, the good support and the possibility to configure the system to your own needs. Three very important features.”

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