Hi Simon, all
Thanks for the report - useful, and good reading.
I’m interested in the basic question, though - which as you outline below is put forwards as “in-house vs 3rd party”.
In my experience, the process of [building/developing/adapting] in-house very often isn’t a feasible thing for 95% of museums, even when in-house systems have good API’s (most don’t) - it’s just too complex and expensive a thing to do.
So what I think this tends to become is a slightly different question, which is: “which of these 3rd party tools should we use?”, and then “how can we make these tools work better together?”.
I’ve just sketched out a simple diagram when thinking about this with some likely paths between these systems, and the data that is shared or duplicated between them and it comes as no surprise that it’s an absolute minefield. Even something as apparently simple as event data (ticketed or not) can and probably will exist in lots of places at once - website, ticketing system, CRM, etc. In order to make things work fluidly together you then have to sync stuff, which means API’s you can write to, data consistency, etc - and it all rapidly becomes easier to just paste in stuff from Excel :-)
The problem as I see it is typically that “Goliath systems” (often labelled “CRM”) are brought in to solve these complexities - but then the end result is a system which actually doesn’t do any of those component parts well. A common example: organisations who are shackled to using their CRM system to send bulk emails, when they know that MailChimp does this much better.
It seems to me that the “small pieces loosely joined” approach is the only one that will work. It’s just trying to understand how best to do the joining..
cheers
Mike
_____________
Mike Ellis
Thirty8 Digital: a small but perfectly formed digital agency
http://thirty8.co.uk
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On 1 Feb 2017, 10:44 +0000, Simon Cronshaw <[log in to unmask]>, wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> At our recent REMIX London summit we launched a new report on ticketing, which was commissioned by Eventbrite but REMIX retained full editorial independence in writing it. As part of the research, we spoke with a wide range of museums and arts orgs of all sizes and one of the main questions the report tackles is in-house versus third party platforms, and the pros/cons of each.
>
> You can download a free copy at http://www.tinyurl.com/bigticketquestions
>
> One point to highlight from it relating to your email is the cost of in-house versus third party solutions. Very often we see organisations directly comparing the transaction cost of third party providers with the 'free' cost of in-house systems, without taking into account the actual costs of the original build (often costing several thousand, even if its configuring/skinning open source software), ongoing updates/improvements, administration (e.g. exporting databases if the systems aren't properly integrated) and staff training.
>
> Similarly, card processing fees are obviously a cost irrespective of whether the system is either in-house or third party, yet are only clearly displayed and therefore front-of-mind for third party providers. As an example, the 2% card fee charged by Eventbrite is sometimes lower than the card processing fee an individual museum can negotiate. Paypal for example has a 3.4% starting fee for card processing for smaller organisations, and it's not uncommon for major card processors to offer 2.5-3.5% for smaller transaction volume. Given that paid events on Eventbrite have non-profit fees of 3%+£0.49 (for paid events, free ones have no cost), the difference from both the booking and the card fees combined when compared to just card fees in-house can be as little as around 1.5%. This can also obviously be passed on to the customer and built into ticket prices, and most importantly is only paid as and when a ticket sells - there's no upfront build cost.
>
> I agree that third party solutions aren't suited to everyone, and in the report we go into plenty of detail about deciding which route is best and all the decisions that need to be weighed up. However, I don't think cost should be considered the biggest barrier to using third party systems, and the majority of museum-specific functionality (e.g. timeslots, Gift Aid, memberships, social purchasing, seating charts, etc.) is well accommodated now.
>
> I'm very happy to chat through further and look forward to hearing your thoughts on the report as well - do let us know if you have any questions or comments on it.
>
> thanks
> Simon
>
> --
> Simon Cronshaw
> Managing Partner & Co-Founder
> REMIX Summits
>
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