Archive for 15 February, 2012
Are Ticketing system providers ever going to facilitate integration with a stand-alone CRM?
Roger spotted this research conducted by Turnkey Intelligence.
For the second time, Turnkey has surveyed 141 sports teams in the: US MLB, MLS, the NBA, the NFL, and the NHL. The findings are summarised in the report The State of Data Systems in Sports & Entertainment.
The study focused on four areas:
- CRM/database management
- Ticketing
- Sponsorship
- Market research
A major issue here and a common refrain in marketing, is the lack of integration between ticketing and CRM, let alone real-time integration.
“The ability to integrate CRM with other systems (ticketing, etc.) is a critical driver of CRM manager satisfaction (or, in many cases, dissatisfaction).“
“Users of both systems identified “uptime”, customization capabilities, and access to an open API as the platform features most important to them/their organizations …Ticketmaster users expressed dissatisfaction with their system’s lack of integration and customization capabilities“
So am I correct that there are no published API’s for Ticketmaster to facilitate integration?
“a consistent theme among respondents was the importance of system integration. Today’s users expect all systems – CRM, ticketing, lead-scoring, merchandise databases, web forms, etc. – to integrate with each other easily and seamlessly, and to enable the clean, simple exportation of data.“
The use of the term ‘exportation’ worries me. Surely these days we are after real two way integration and beyond the ferrying of batches of data between stand-alone systems?
It was interesting to see how well Microsoft CRM rated:
“Microsoft scored relatively well on CRM users’ biggest satisfaction drivers (ease of use, reporting capabilities, and integration with other systems), whereas Archtics performed markedly worse, especially with regard to integration potential.“
Over 70% of respondents use Ticketmaster and Archtics is a Ticketmaster product that they say is an “integrated solution” , yet it appears that users have another opinion. OW!
The article concludes reinforcing the importance of integration:
“Overall system integration, seen as having a direct relationship with increased efficiency and better business, is becoming more important every day. The systems that can continue to adapt to this reality quickly and cost-effectively will gain market share, while more rigid, stand-alone platforms will suffer.“
15 February, 2012 at 4:54 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
