Optimise your team with our expertise

Sometimes an external viewpoint can be priceless.

Our team brings a broad range of viewpoints - including audience development, engagement, ticketing, venue management, digital innovation and revenue diversification - married with skills across the business and technical landscape. Our core team's strengths include systems and processes to improve efficiency, user experience on and offline, systems thinking, team dynamics and customer psychology, and we work with a range of partners for specialist areas such as fundraising, market segmentation and much more. Having provided software and services for over 170 venues worldwide, and worked in more than a few ourselves, we'd never be so bold as to say we've seen it all, but we must come pretty close!

Whether you use our software or not, you can leverage our consultancy to help you meet the challenges facing venues today such as increasing earned and unearned revenue and doing more with less.

Best practices for industry challenges

The arts, culture and events industry is facing unprecedented challenges - new requirements on data protection driven by GDPR, increasing pressure to improve accessible ticketing for Equality Act compliance, reduced funding across the sector from central and local government austerity and increasing pressure on arts and culture from in-home entertainment.

For these, and many other challenges, PatronBase can help.

The solution to many of these challenges is a mix of digital systems together with training, teamwork and process - our consultancy can help with an external viewpoint, and best practice from other organisations we've helped to meet these challenges already.

Design innovative bespoke technology projects

Digital innovation can give you the edge - help you reach more patrons, build a stronger relationship with those patrons, or make better use of those resources.

There are many different systems and packages which can help you embrace digital technology - fully featured venue-wide systems such as PatronBase, role-specific systems working in isolation for ePos or fundraising or marketing, or general packages not specifically designed for arts and culture at all such as Wordpress, Mailchimp, Magento and many more. But where should you start?

That's where we come in.

Through wide-ranging digital skills, we can help you plan a system which perfectly meets your needs, then choose and integrate the components such as PatronBase modules or third party products to make that system a reality. Perhaps your creativity takes you further - we've worked with innovative technologies such as facial recognition, machine learning, sensors and biometrics, and Bluetooth beacons, so can bring the technical flair to make your cutting edge project a reality.

Consultancy to make the best use of our products

As part of our ethos to help you build an audience your way, the PatronBase range of products gives a wide range of flexibility.

Provided as standard as part of a PatronBase implementation, we gain a detailed understanding of your organisation and tailor your configuration, enabled features and options and security permissions to your needs. However, even the most experienced users can benefit from a review to ensure that you are getting the most out of our products, especially new features and functionality.

During a review, we refresh and update our knowledge of your organisation, and identify changes which could be made to your configuration, features you aren't currently using which could benefit you, and services, integrations or development which could help you do more. Above all, our measure of success will be to see you making the most of your PatronBase software and services.

Structured role-specific training programmes

We offer structured training programmes for a range of job roles that are designed to develop you and your team members’ knowledge and skills to ensure that you have a informed and effective team who can make the most of the wide range of functions that the PatronBase software has to offer.

We can deliver in-house training programmes to your teams including box office, retail, fundraising, food and beverage, financial reporting and venue management, individually or in groups. This training approach allows us to focus on the functions and skills that are exclusive to each individual role to develop your team members specific areas of expertise, ensuring that training provided is relevant, covering all of the features your team members will need, and none of the functionality they won’t.

All of our training programs include regularly updated handouts and "cheat sheets" which your team can keep for future reference.

Training personalised for your organisation

We offer a range of bespoke training programmes that are developed specifically for your organisation. Whether you would like a small group session specifically for your front of house staff or a full day session for all of your employees, we can tailor a training programme to suit your needs. Our training coordinator will work with you to identify your needs, whether that be software for box office, merchandise and retail teams, bars and restaurants or management.

Developed and delivered by our expert team that includes specialists in a diverse range of backgrounds including the arts, sports, IT and education. The training team is coordinated by our Operations Director who has over a decade of experience in delivering training and leading training teams.

In addition to providing training on our software, we can also offer training in a range of complimentary areas for your organisation including marketing, social media, equality and diversity and safeguarding.

Remote or on site training delivery

We offer a range of bespoke face-to-face training structured training programmes delivered either in-house at your venue or at one of our training locations. These sessions are designed with your individual needs in mind and tailored to your specific needs and are available to individuals or teams.

In addition to our range of face-to-face training programmes we are able to offer a range of online resources and FAQs that are available 24/7, allowing you and your team to access the information as and when needed to upskill new members of staff or refresh the knowledge of existing team members.

If a more personalised approach is what you are looking for, we can arrange for remote training to be delivered through a range of online methods to individuals or teams allowing the training to be tailored to your needs whilst also allowing for opportunities for individual questions to be addressed by our expert team.

Transformation workshops to empower your team

Organisational change is a fact of life - whether you want to do more, adjust to a lower budget or new funding requirements, or simply innovate to attract new audiences. Reusing the same formula year on year is a rare luxury few venues can afford.

Whatever the reason, change is hard, especially as the pressure of "doing" leaves little time for thinking about and planning new ways of working. No matter how dedicated and committed a team is to being the best they can be.

Often the catalyst to transformation can be an external facilitator - as your team discuss your organisation, what they do, how they work with an outsider, it's easier to question why and how things could be different. Using techniques such as systems thinking, we can help your team to look at their daily routine in new ways, drawing out your team's natural creativity. This can be combined with an away-day, organised by us from start to finish, giving your team the space to think.