| Auckland Museum Books Rendezvous |
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Auckland Museum currently offers four venues, from the huge Grand Foyer, which seats up to 250 for dinner, to the nostalgic Centennial Street. In January 2007 the Museum dramatically increased its venue capacity with the completion of the three year Grand Atrium project. This included a purpose-built events centre on the roof seating 450 banquet-style, a 200 seat auditorium and smaller function rooms. What’s more, these new facilities will be available during the day.
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Managing events in such a venue presents unique logistical challenges. Preparing an area like the Grand Foyer, which closes at 5pm, for a fully catered dinner event takes careful planning and coordination. Timing is everything, and it’s vital for the Museum to be able to capture information and easily report to all concerned.
After looking at several alternatives, Auckland Museum chose the Rendezvous venue management tool from software provider Savio Solutions.
Auckland Museum’s commercial manager Scott Ashton says Rendezvous more than meets the needs of the Museum. “It delivers all we want but is obviously capable of a whole lot more,” he says, referring to the extensive capacities of Rendezvous to manage in-house catering, inventory control, marketing and all ancillary requirements for convention-type event centres.
Ashton says the Museum chose Rendezvous because there was no simpler venue management tool on the market, and customized software would be costly. “To have something custom-made was obviously going to be more expensive than buying something off the shelf and tinkering with it a little bit,” he says.
For less than the cost of a custom-built solution, the Museum has implemented a future-proofed system which will grow with its requirements.
The Savio team customized Rendezvous to match the Museum’s existing venue management systems and practices for booking rooms, services and equipment. The software also generates invoices, online quotes and customized contracts for venue bookings. It can also integrate with third-party accounting software.
Another possibility Rendezvous offers is the ability to create a graphical layout of room and floor space, ensuring clear understanding between venue and client.
The Museum’s events manager, Lucy O’Mahony, says the software has been simple and easy to use. Savio’s events solutions manager Claire Webber says the installation was seamless. “We were able to adapt the software to ensure a smooth transition, and Rendezvous slotted in nicely with existing systems and processes used by the Museum’s venue management team,” she says. “Scott and Lucy seemed to find the web based interface simple to navigate, and learning the software was quick and easy.”
Another influencing factor in the Museum’s decision was Savio’s local support and service. “The other packages we looked at were serviced offshore,” says O’Mahony. “With Savio the support people were actually in NZ when we needed assistance.”
Savio provides 24/7 software support whenever required with a Savio Support Agreement, offering immediate assistance or problem research to keep vital systems running.
The browser-based nature of the software also means Savio’s team can fully customize reports and make enhancements remotely - effectively resolving any challenges while minimizing disruption to the client.
With bookings already rolling in for 2008 and 2009, Rendezvous looks set to get a whole lot more use in the coming months at Auckland Museum.
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Rendezvous
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