Venue Operations (including stadiums, events venues, contract catering, business and industry (B&I), and education) are evolving at a rapid pace – and given recent inflation and cost increases, the challenges evolve commensurately!
Modern venues, regardless of size or sector, have evolved into complex ecosystems where technology underpins every aspect of the user experience. Browsing events to purchasing tickets, ordering food and beverages (ensuring automated alignment with Menu system and compliance with allergen law). Then into delivering laser-targeted customer promotions that resonate and encourage spend over and over, each touchpoint relies on seamless transactions powered by advanced technology systems.
At the core of this rich experience lies your EPOS platform, which has now evolved from simple sales processing via a till, to a central pillar of integrated operations which, certainly in stadia, make the most out of the limited time you have to delight your customers with speedy service – busting queues and enhancing the customer experience.
What’s the best way to deliver CCD (Connected Customer Data) to improve your Venue Operations?
“But are EPOS systems that important?” – are we getting ahead of ourselves?
Should EPOS serve as a supporting spoke or does it play an enhanced part as the operational hub at the centre of your venue operations?
Moreover, what’s the bast way to enable Operational and Senior Leaders in high-traffic, high transaction volume businesses ensure:
In integrated system design, the hub-and-spoke model centralises control at a core hub, with spokes representing functional areas like customer data (CRM), ticketing, concessions, loyalty programmes, menu systems, or operational management. Advocating for EPOS as the hub reframes its role from a mere transactional system to a central decision-making and data-management engine, creating that golden thread of customer journeys that flows through the organisation.
This author has a bias which you may guess now and will definitely read later, but I hope you find this useful, or even just to provoke you to stop, and think. If as a reader, it makes you question one thing in your organisation that you suspect is ripe for improvement, and go on to make a change for the better, my aim has been achieved.
When EPOS serves as the operational hub, it not only processes transactions but also provides actionable insights through the golden thread of data that connects all touchpoints, bringing the other spokes together.
Centralised Operations: EPOS systems provide real-time visibility into live sales across multiple locations – providing a heatmap of peaks and troughs of demand and allowing the past to help predict the future – that’s real-time responsiveness.
Your stock levels can be managed on the fly, ensuring that customers are surprised and delighted by your hospitality offering – and not surprised by having to queue to find their particular favourite is out of stock.
They can receive multiple inputs from disparate systems, creating a seamless end-to-end journey for the customer; from when they buy a ticket to your event, all the way through the spending behaviours, to when they leave your venue – ready to return again because they just can’t wait to experience your offering.
But most important when you need to really know your customer you get real time insights into customer behaviour, preferences and demand – useful for businesses with diverse customer bases across different event types.
Targeted Loyalty Programmes: By integrating loyalty features into EPOS, venues can capture valuable data, and trends – analysing purchasing patterns to tailor promotions and rewards – whether scheduled or dynamically.
Scalability Concerns: It could be argued, and certainly traditionally, that EPOS systems lack the flexibility to scale as operational hubs. Centrally administered Cloud-based solutions such as Kappture, with 99.99% uptime, hosted in World Class SaaS environments and with open APIs for data interchange and a single code base that is proven on Linux, Windows and Android kick that concern into touch.
System Reliability: A centralised EPOS raises concerns about single points of failure. General advancements in cloud-based EPOS solutions ensure redundancy and uptime, and with our unique always-on, always transacting by design philosophy in every single one of Kappture’s EPOS products, ensure your customers never miss a moment – and you don’t miss a single transacting opportunity.
Stadia: EPOS as the hub integrates ticketing with concessions, food and beverage with merchandise sales, and via a multitude of software platforms ensuring real-time inventory updates during high-traffic events. By leveraging data, venues can target promotions based on fan demographics and purchasing behaviour.
Contract Catering: For large and varied multi-site operations, EPOS as the hub centralises reporting and analytics across client venues of disparate types, enabling consistent customer experiences no matter the demographic and audience – and of course targeted offers.
B&I: In corporate environments, EPOS hubs streamline cafeteria services, integrate with employee subsidies, and allow data-driven menu planning to reduce waste.
Education: Schools and universities benefit from centralised EPOS hubs for managing meal plans, dietary needs, and student payments, along with modern ways to grab and go via Self Service and QR-code ordering, ensuring a cohesive view of usage and preferences.
Kathryn Morgan
Account Director, Sodexo Live!
transactions
reduction on power consumption
In many configurations, EPOS systems are positioned as spokes, feeding data into a central hub such as a CRM or ERP and being part of a set of data which is then aggregated into a data lake and reported on centrally via third party BI tools. While this model absolutely suits large-scale operations (such as contract catering or B&I), it could cause organisations to miss the opportunity to capitalise on the EPOS’s direct interaction with every user touchpoint. We certainly do not want to take away insights and the opportunities to make quick, reliable tactical decisions ad hoc.
That said (and that bias I mentioned in my opener has been revealed), for balance, my view on EPOS as a spoke is as follows:
Holistic Data Integration: EPOS systems feed valuable data into larger platforms, supporting advanced analytics and decision-making at a higher level. In larger Corporate organisations, there may be Operating models and cadence that call for this holistic view even if EPOS is a hub.
Specialisation: Keeping EPOS focused on transactions ensures high reliability in its primary function, allowing the heavy lifting of data aggregation and analysis to be performed across a disparate estate of solutions to normalise the data outputs.
Dependency on Central Hubs: This model creates dependency on larger systems for critical insights, often delaying real-time responses. What therefore happens when decisions need to be made on Matchday, or in B&I when end-of-month reporting is due and one or more components of a central hub or middleware experiences an issue?
Missed Potential: Treating EPOS as a spoke risks undermining its capability to manage cross-functional processes independently and provide a single view of the customer – to a group of stakeholders who may want, or need, information now!
Stadia: EPOS as a spoke connects to CRM hubs for loyalty programmes but may rely on external systems for real-time stock management. This limits your ability for an immediate responsiveness to customer behaviour, and addressing live supply and demand across your estate.
Contract Catering/B&I: While data flows into central platforms, real-time decisions risk getting delayed, impacting operational agility. In the midst of a live event, this quickly impacts the customer experience, your staff’s ability to be effective – and of course, your revenue.
Emerging as the most common method of connecting data across SaaS platforms; designed for free but controlled access to date across systems, their self-imposed (by each solution provider) rules ensure commonality across datasets and ensuring no duplication.
APIs enable EPOS systems to connect with other platforms seamlessly, regardless of their placement in the hub-and-spoke model.
Custom interfaces ensure that EPOS systems meet specific operational needs and integrate seamlessly into workflows, perhaps where APIs aren’t quit aligned or there are other more complex requirements.
After they’ve been scoped and developed (“relief – we’ve gone live!”) they come with challenges such as maintenance of code bases across disparate suppliers, and the need to align multiple systems from multiple providers across multiple systems which are, by design, constantly updated. The risk of breaking a bespoke interface is real – and painful.
That’s not an enabling technology you might be thinking…
But any EPOS system sitting within an ecosystem, managing the end-to-end customer journey is only as good as the process it’s designed to follow and the robust and precise interactions it has with other technologies and the people using it.
Streamlined workflows integrate EPOS systems with broader operational goals, minimising friction and maximising data utility – that’s it in simple terms.
I’ve overseen over a thousand complex Technology projects globally, and working with Multinationals and household names, down to startups and SMEs, some with very complex workflows and integrations – when it comes to system implementation and integration, success is underpinned primarily by those foundational business decisions for process and KPIs.
Regardless of the customer, their customers’ requirements, the scope and scale or the technology – it all works better when you know what good looks like for your Organisation and your customers – how do you ensure you follow your customers through their transactional processes and the customer experience?
Whether you think EPOS is at the hub of your customer journeys or simply a spoke in a bigger eco system, ensure that the holiday matches the brochure by having robust end to end processes for your ‘as is’ and your ‘to be’.
If you can’t articulate your processes, needs and wants in English using process flows, you’ve very little chance of fully exploiting your investments in technology.
While traditional thinking may position EPOS as a spoke, relegated to supporting functions, this limits the potential of a cutting edge, cloud-based solution. Ensuring EPOS is embedded at the hub acknowledges its critical role in managing customer data across a customer journey.
In managing transactions and the associated rich seam of data that end-to-end customer journey creates, no other single system touches as many operational points as EPOS, making it the logical central system for enabling customer delight, driving targeted loyalty programmes and enabling robust decision-making.
Our innovative solutions are designed to leverage the true importance of EPOS ecosystems at the centre of data, empowering organisations to transform their operations into cohesive, data-driven ecosystems which help fans experience more.
Whether being the hub or the spoke, a well-integrated solution that meets the needs of your business, and aligns with well documented internal processes so that the holiday matches the brochure for your Senior Stakeholders, Operatives and everyone in between
With Kappture at the helm, our experts will be delighted to consult with you on a hub, spoke or hybrid approach – hone in on that Connected Customer Data.
