Facility and event scheduling challenges
In 2019, Verona Area School District created a new staff position to help the district get a better handle on facility booking, usage and cleaning. When Jeanene Ennis was hired as the Facility and Event Scheduling Manager, she realized immediately that the district “needed a software upgrade,” she says. “With the product we were using, visibility was very difficult. We needed something that was easier to use and that allowed us to easily see what was going on with each facility.”
As the number of events held at school facilities continued to increase, Ennis needed a solution that would let her quickly see setup needs, tear-down needs, custodial tasks and usage reports, all at a glance. As a one-person department creating and managing the schedules for more than 50 facilities, Ennis needed an intuitive software solution to make her job manageable.
Transitioning to Event Manager
Because Verona had previously used software from Brightly (which was later acquired by Siemens), the district chose to upgrade its facility management with Event Manager. The software was similar to the program with which district staff was accustomed, so it offered an easy adjustment to the upgraded product.
In addition to the seamless transition from the old software, Ennis says she was most attracted by the ability to build the categories she needed — such as setup, teardown, occupied and available — and color code each one. “With all the different colors, it’s easy to see what’s going on or what needs to happen at each facility,” she says. “It’s a huge time saver.”
Better facility management with Event Manager
Verona Area School District now uses Event Manager to handle all facility management tasks, including event scheduling, custodial staff scheduling, client billing and client information reporting.
After two and a half years of using Event Manager, Verona has experienced several benefits, including:
- Immediate visibility. With color coding and an easy-to-use dashboard, Event Manager allows Ennis to see immediately which facilities are available on certain dates and which custodial tasks are needed at each facility. She doesn’t have to spend time digging for this information; it’s always available at her fingertips.
- Increased revenue. Before using Event Manager, the school district was mainly using its facilities for school-related activities and was not maximizing the opportunities to rent facilities to community groups and local citizens. However, because Event Manager has simplified the visibility and process of scheduling and managing facilities, Ennis has been able to work on increasing the number of facility rentals. Last year, the school district’s first year to return full-time after the COVID pandemic, it earned about $140,000 in gross revenue from facility rentals.
- Integrated billing. One of the reasons Verona has been able to seamlessly increase its facility rentals is that Event Manager offers the ability to invoice clients directly through the software. Event Manager also allows clients to pay invoices online, which is “a huge benefit, for me and for the accounting staff,” Ennis says.