Ten Top Tips for Choosing a Ticketing, Marketing CRM system

• Don’t assume all systems do the same things – they don’t

• Do specify very clearly all the ways you sell and relate to customers, especially discounts, sales promotions, membership and Friends schemes, subscriptions and packages, oh, and fees

• Don’t specify criteria which only your present system can do, and in a fixed way: think about outcomes and what you want a task to achieve, so that different solutions could meet your needs

• Do prioritise your criteria – is something Essential (you won’t buy without it) or Desirable (it would make a big difference if included) or Useful (not relevant to your current choice but could be helpful)

• Don’t believe what sales people say to you – make sure you see what you want: WYSIWYG

• Do check through carefully exactly how (the process) systems handle various tasks: count the clicks, check it is easy for operators, make sure the data you want is captured, repeat on-line

• Don’t accept work-arounds without seeing exactly what this involves; the devil is in the detail

• Do query promises of new features “in the next version” – can they describe exactly what they are going to deliver, and when?

• Don’t accept reporting and extractions without double checking exactly what is provided: reporting tools can be crucial in whether a system gives you the analysis and marketing outputs you want

• Do make clear your interfacing requirements to other systems – which systems do you want to interface with what, on what basis? Single Log-Ins? Website registration into the ticketing system? E-marketing? Vital Statistics?