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Schouwburg Kunstmin’s professionalisation process got a boost with Yesplan

Since starting to use Yesplan Schouwburg Kunstmin in Dordrecht, the Netherlands has made good progress. “Not only in terms of saving time and increasing efficiency, but also in terms of appeal”, employees Martijn and Marlous say.

In this interview we speak to Marlous de Groot, who is responsible for events and partnerships with regional companies in Kunstmin and Martijn Lohuis, coordinator in the theatre facilities and technical department. Marlous is using Yesplan to draft quotations, invoices and schedules to plan events. Martijn is using Yesplan mainly to roster personnel and coordinate pre-production schedules. Both are noticing a huge improvement in terms of efficiency since they started using Yesplan. “We haven’t regretted making the shift”, Martijn says. “Everything we need is included in Yesplan.”

Can you give us an insight in how you planned events before using Yesplan? 

“We had two different software systems, but that was becoming very impractical. Everything had to be double entered. And if something changed, you couldn’t forget to adapt it in both systems. That was a waste of time. Furthermore, we did not have an integration with our ticketing system, but we knew that would be useful. Also, the software was running on a server in the building itself but we had an aim to reduce our on-site technology. That’s why we were looking for cloud-based software”, Martijn explains. He even made a list of requirements for the new software. It included

    • Cloud-based
    • User-friendly
    • Company-wide
    • Possibility to add fields and buttons yourself
    • Roster planning
    • Possibility to plan and settle all kinds of events

“Yesplan met all criteria I had listed.” - Martijn Lohuis

How did the Yesplan implementation period go? 

“We decided to take our time”, Martijn says. “We rolled it out one department after another. This way, we never experienced any problems and we were guided well by our Customer Success Manager Chris. We connected well and for me it didn’t matter if the training was on- or offline and it helped that there are a lot of training videos available, e.g. on the online learning platform.

How did you organise the internal Yesplan training? 

“There have been some training sessions, but we basically let the Kunstmin employees discover the options themselves. After they watched some videos, we said: “Log into Yesplan and see how easy it is to use the system.” If they ran into something they weren’t able to fully process, they could always come to me or another employee who was present at Chris’ training sessions for some explanation”, Martijn tells. Recently, Marlous used our learning platform when she had to create a dataview (useful overview page you create yourself). “It had been a while since I created one and I didn’t get the result I wanted. It’s a good thing you can simply look it up.”

“Kunstmin employees explored a lot of Yesplan features themselves with the help of useful learning videos”
- Martijn Lohuis

Does support go smooth as well? 

“For sure! If we can’t work something out, we can always contact Chris. And there’s also the helpdesk. You get an answer to your question really quickly in the form of a clear text or a useful video. At some point the quick response time made me wonder if my question was answered by a robot rather than a human being”, Marlous laughs.

You have the integration with your ticketing system. What other integrations do you have?

“We also have the narrowcasting integration. The narrowcasting system retrieves information from dataviews in Yesplan”, Martijn tells. “This way, the information screens in Schouwburg and Energiehuis change automatically, if something changes in Yesplan. Now, we want to do the same with our ventilation system. Based on time slots it retrieves from a Yesplan dataview it will switch on and off.”

In what way has Kunstmin changed since you work with Yesplan?

“The biggest impact is the increased efficiency and the amount of time we save every day”, Marlous says. “To give an example: in the old systems I wasn’t able to book resources and people I thought were needed for an event. With Yesplan that is no problem. This saves pre-production a lot of work.”

“Since we work with Yesplan, we have become a lot more professional.” - Marlous de Groot

“Furthermore, it’s good that everything is connected. Documents such as a breakdown are created at the flick of a switch. And if you fill out time slots and resources thoroughly, the quotation and invoice are basically ready. Before every event we used to send an email with the latest information to all employees. Now they simply have a look in Yesplan.” 

Martijn and Marlous are convinced that in the future some nice steps forward will come. “The Yesplan team is constantly trying to improve the software. Without a doubt, that will be a positive evolution for us.” 

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