Bristol Beacon - A case study of migration driving operational excellence

About Bristol Beacon

• Organisation Type: Concert Hall, Music Education Hub & Charity
• Size of Operation: 800+ gigs and commercial events per year and an education programme that annually reaches 30,000+ young people
• Client Since: 2008

About

Built and opened in the 1867, Bristol Beacon has been at the heart of Bristol’s cultural life for over 150 years.  Located in the centre of Bristol, Bristol Beacon is a contemporary and versatile venue that can adapt to host the best large-scale contemporary and orchestral music, festivals and family shows, but also conferences, exhibitions, meeting spaces, weddings and filming.

Since 2011, Bristol Beacon has been managed by Bristol Music Trust with the purpose of supporting music and music education across the region.  In 2009, phase one of its transformation was completed with the opening of a new foyer.  In 2018 BMT embarked on phase two of its transformation which will see Bristol Beacon’s spaces sympathetically restored and reimagined for future generations.  Bristol Beacon is due to reopen in Autumn 2023 and expects to increase overall activity from delivering a programme of 600 events a year when the auditoria closed to delivering 800 events per year on reopening.

Our Solution

Artifax has a 15 year long relationship with Bristol Beacon who first signed up to use the hosted platform ArtifaxEventClassic, later migrating that data to the cloud-based solution, ArtifaxEvent.  Following a review of business processes, Artifax was chosen as trusted arts and cultural sector consultants, to support the team with redefining Bristol Beacon’s operating procedure and implementing its Event Management solution to support the growth in the business and effective delivery of that procedure.

Artifax met with a range of departmental teams at Bristol Beacon to explore their current processes and site configuration, leading to a recommendation to reimagine both, in line with the modern business they were seeking to become.  Together they explored the desired flow of information on an event journey from initial enquiry through to delivery and beyond, exploring the what, when and who of required information and the appropriate communication channels for sharing that information including to do lists, emails and scheduled reports.

Bespoke reports including external information gathering booking forms, quotes and contracts, and internal documentation for operational delivery and evaluation ensure that information can be formatted in a user-friendly manner according to different team requirements.  Standard analytical reports have been created which will  facilitate easy access to data from the site for interrogation and the creation of dashboards, all contributing to Bristol Beacon having a 360 degree understanding of their organisation from one central source.

With the site configuration finalised, Artifax embarked upon critical business data migration, to save hours of data entry and the ensure confidence that accurate data was available from go-live.  Bristol Beacon chose to train all staff in using the solution on a read-only basis and a core group of operational staff trained to use the solution operationally.  The system is filled with accurate information, processes are in place to communicate relevant information to the correct people at appropriate times, and it  is all framed in a way that enables them to effectively report on their whole organisation activity.