When forced to postpone 95% of their events, re-seating customers quickly and safely was pivotal to the financial viability of each event – enter robotic process automation
The challenge
Live Nation Belgium, incorporating Sportpaleis Group, runs the largest venues in Belgium. Live Nation is one of the world’s largest entertainment groups annually promoting more than 20,000 shows for more than 2,000 artists worldwide. Sportpaleis Group is the concert and event promoter across Belgium.
In March 2020, as most of Europe went into lockdown, Sportpaleis Group was forced to postpone 95% of their planned events to be held later. Ticket refunds could only be claimed in exceptional situations due to Belgian legislation, introduced to protect venues. That summer, their staff faced working through re-allocations and refunds for 900,000 tickets to new dates.
Cancel and reschedule
As things opened back up, some venues were allowed to reopen as long as they followed specific rules, such as 1 or 2 empty seats between each group or bubble, called a Corona seat, which reduced capacity to around 75% or less and required moving some ticket holders to different dates.
The bars and restaurants at the venues had to remain closed, so in addition to the lower ticket sales, revenue from food and beverages was also lost. With finances tight, re-seating customers quickly and accommodating as many as safely possible was pivotal to the financial viability of each event.
Sportpaleis Group implemented Liberty RPA, our robotic process automation (RPA) solution, to process the events that needed re-seating.
“I honestly don’t know how we would have coped without Liberty RPA. We wouldn’t have been able to deal with the re-seating until the regulations were announced – now, with the robot, we can prepare for the future without spending a lot of money.”
Stefan Esselens
Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Sportpaleis Group
The solution
A music event seating orders were listed on paper and manually entered into the ticketing system. The event was for 30,000 customers. It took a team of 7 people, 10 12-hour days to complete the task. On average, it took a staff member 1 minute 40 seconds to perform a single seating.
Sportpaleis Group was facing a challenge of a much larger magnitude than the work needed for this event and they didn’t have 7 staff available that were trained for this type of work. Hiring staff was impossible at that time and this approach was too slow, inefficient, expensive and labour intensive.
Sportpaleis Group used Liberty RPA on a high capacity sports series, which had a total of 63,000 bookings for several events. This time, the team comprised 3 software robots, each working 24-hour days.
It took 3½ days to complete the task. On average, it took a robot 14 seconds to perform a single re-seat – that’s 7 times faster. There were only a handful of exceptions to correct.
Using Liberty RPA allowed staff to focus on the exceptions. For example, front row seats were held back from the bots, to allow staff to upgrade bookings if suitable ‘same seats’ weren’t possible.
The robots followed a procedure to take a reservation from the venue seating map and add a Corona seat to the booking, to meet physical distancing requirements. Robots then reallocated the best new seats available in the venue, and then moved on to the next booking.
If the implementation had not been so urgent and rapid, due to the immediate needs, the robot automation flow could have been optimised for even faster performance.
As lockdown rules evolved, many shows were postponed for a second time and the robots were used to re-seat for new dates, this time incorporating a number of different plans – anticipating the rules that may come into force. Due to the speed at which the bots work, they can prepare for each different scenario. Without Liberty RPA, they wouldn’t even be able to action any plan until the new rules were announced, due to the heavy workload and uncertainty.
“The original booking process required people to book the best available seats, rather than pick specific ones. In re-seating, some customers were re-booked to better seats, some to worse seats. Most customers were pleased to know that their event is rescheduled and that we have efficiently and quickly dealt with the process for them.”
Stefan Esselens
Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Sportpaleis Group
The result
Liberty RPA tackled a total of 63,000 bookings for several events
The robots were created to follow a procedure to take a reservation from the venue seating map and add a Corona seat to the booking, meeting physical distancing requirements
Robots then reallocated the best new seats available in the venue
Despite the complexity and enormity of the task, the robot did the vast majority of the work in just 3½ days
Sportpaleis Group was able to re-seat everybody for the events that could go ahead
Training the bots to take the strain from staff
Sportpaleis Group plans to continue to use robotic process automation alongside their staff. Having seen how the bots allow reduction in manual processes to free staff to deliver great experience and focus on more interesting tasks and can enable the organisation to react quickly to unforeseen events, other tasks were adapted for the bots to take the strain. The Sportpaleis Group Liberty RPA robots were used next to integrate old software with a new platform.
Impact
14 Seconds
to perform a single re-seat
7 x Faster
than manual process
Huge Savings
in resource costs
Automate smarter & free-up your talent
With intelligent robotic process automation, you can streamline your processes and boost efficiency. Liberate your people to use their talents better by releasing them from time-consuming, mundane, repetitive tasks.
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