Why do we do what we do at EventBooking? President Steve Mackenzie discusses the original mission and core values behind VenueOps, and why we set out to make the most intuitive platform on the market for venue management and booking.
Consider one of Google’s company values – “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” If you’ve found an answer to a question within seconds via a Google search, you’ve seen this value displayed first-hand. Core values are the deeply ingrained principles that guide all of a company’s actions; they serve as its cultural cornerstones.
While EventBooking is made up of a diverse group of individuals with various backgrounds and skill-sets, we’re unified by our four Core Values:
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Servant’s Heart
We’re here to serve venues and to help them achieve more. Our business model is “Software as a Service” and we really mean it. A Servant’s Heart is required to work at EventBooking. It’s the cornerstone of our 4 core values.
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Innovator’s Mind
No process or solution is ever completely finished. EventBooking was born from an innovative idea, and we have grown because of the constant pursuit of innovation by our employees.
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Playful Spirit
Don’t forget to have fun! Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” We recognize employment at EventBooking for what it is: an exciting privilege.
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Owner’s Grit
We ask our employees to “Own Your Role” and to take extreme ownership and pride in their work.
We celebrate these core values on a weekly basis as we see them embodied by our staff. If we see a fellow coworker going above and beyond in any of these areas, they are nominated to be recognized the following Friday in a company-wide meeting called the Weekly Wrap-Up. These “shout outs” from company peers serve to honor them and the effort they put in on a daily basis.
When EventBooking employees uphold these values, they fulfill our overall mission and goal:
To provide software that allows our clients to spend more time doing the things they love.
This mission originated from an email our founder, John Platillero, received from a client in the early years of EventBooking. He quickly realized it was the stuff mission statements are made of:
“EventBooking has literally changed my life. Literally. Working with our calendar used to be a nightmare. My daily routine at work is night and day compared to what it was two years ago when we opened our doors. Thanks to your team, my third year will be a walk in the park. Thank you for making my job easier and giving me more time to spend with my family!”
– Lynn Wilkie, District Events Planner, Mansfield Independent School District, Center for the Performing Arts (Mansfield, TX)
Years later, feedback of this nature continues to guide the way we approach building our software. If everything we do is focused on saving time and energy for our clients, then the value is exponentially higher than providing a tool that just manages to get the job done.
That’s why when we hear about the “night and day” differences VenueOps makes in the lives of venue professionals, it energizes and spurs us on. One such encouraging conversation was with SAFE Credit Union Convention Center and Performing Arts District in Sacramento, where they laid out the explicit improvements they saw:
VENUEOPS VS. PREVIOUS SOFTWARE :
End-of-month reporting: 15 minutes vs. 1.5 days
Proposal Creation: 10 minutes vs. 1.5 hours
Training time: 1 hour vs. 1 week
Booking/Account Creation: 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes
Processing Checks & Applying Payments: 10 minutes vs. 4 hours
Everything we do across every department at EventBooking is ultimately tied to that mission and upheld by our core values—and as we continue to hear that we are indeed giving back precious time in our clients’ day-to-day lives, we continue to be inspired in our work. It’s what makes us “tick.”
Steve Mackenzie is President at EventBooking, an innovative, cloud-based venue management solution that has over 1,000 clients around the globe. Based on regular polling of their client-base, EventBooking retains a 99% customer satisfaction level.
“There’s a quality of performance that is impossible to achieve without this tool—unless you are willing to work twice the hours for the same results. No exaggeration.”
– Pam DeVille, the CAJUNDOME (New Orleans)