We recently partnered with Cam Petty, Founder & CEO of Render Events, on a 3-part series for her podcast about the event business industry.
In addition to leading her own, thriving event rental company, Cam runs one of the top education platforms for event professionals. She’s also a longtime Goodshuffle Pro user who recommends our software to event professionals at all stages of growth.
In Episode Two, she speaks with Colin Connor, a Customer Success Lead at Goodshuffle, about how our software optimizes event operations. Listen to the podcast below, or read on for five of the most important takeaways.
1. How you can book more business without more stress
Cam: One of the things that keeps us up at night as professionals is double bookings and not being able to complete the jobs that you’re promising to your clients. You might wake up at 2:00 a.m. thinking, “Oh crap, am I going to be able to fulfill this order?”
Goodshuffle Pro is incredible with features like set-asides and alerts to help you book the business if you want to, and then decide whether or not you want to move items around so you can fulfill the order yourself, if you want to purchase more inventory, if you want to subrent, and so on. There are so many options to fulfill an order.
With other softwares, you either can’t book the item because it’s already rented somewhere else, or you can book it, but you don’t know it’s double-booked until it’s too late. Goodshuffle Pro allows you to book the business and see where the conflicts exist.
Colin: Exactly. The things that keep you up at night are: “Do I have enough? Did I quote someone for this wedding arch or table that I actually don’t have in stock?” Those are the 2:00 a.m. surprises that you’re going to avoid with Goodshuffle Pro’s proactive notifications and alerts.
As you mentioned, nothing’s going to stop you from closing that deal or going out and buying more. We want to make sure you’re able to make more informed and smarter decisions based on what inventory you’ve got available and what you may need to get more of.
Cam: And here’s the best part. Even if you do wake up at 2:00 a.m., when you have Goodshuffle Pro, you can literally whip out your phone, check what you need real quick, and then rest easy knowing that you did your due diligence and no surprise conflicts are going to occur.
2. How you can empower your team to do their best work
Cam: I don’t think I’ve worked a weekend in three or four years. I don’t need to be on every single job, because I have a software that I can trust. Goodshuffle Pro takes care of all of those worries that would probably make some of my peers in the industry want to go on weekend jobs because they don’t think their team is going to be able to handle these jobs on their own.
Colin: With Goodshuffle Pro, you can see the progress that your team has made on certain orders, and also see the digital pull sheets or pick lists at a glance. With the dashboard, you’re getting that zoomed out, thousand foot view, to quickly take a step back, get that breath of fresh air, and ensure you’re not rushing head first into the week.
There’s no more guesswork, or hoping and praying that “Maybe this job is ready to go…” or “I think they said that everything in this job is set…?” All sides of your company work in harmony together. We see this especially when changes or revisions happen on quoted jobs. These changes made by your sales team are automatically pushed to the back-end for your crew on the order to see, so everyone is on the same page and nothing is missed.
3. How you can stop relying on outdated printed documents
Cam: Before Goodshuffle Pro, I have this picture of 25 clipboards from one event with all these things piled up: files, design boards, color palettes, pull sheets, and maps. Back in the day, we had to use printed Google Maps.
Success nowadays looks like, “I can get this all done, I can see it from a bird’s eye view in Goodshuffle Pro, I can see it from my phone, I can see it from my iPad, I can see it from my computer, and we’re good. I know where we’re going.”
Colin: When revisions happen, if you’ve printed out the pull sheet and take it on your way, and then there are changes, what good is that printed document doing for you? Printed documents have a nasty habit of just being left on a table after the team set up for an event.
There’s no delay between when your sales team adds an item to a contract, and when your warehouse team sees it on the pull sheet (as long as it’s marked as signed by the client). This means that when your crew is working on packing up the truck, they have the information that need to easily make last-minute changes. And as the warehouse team updates their progress on the pull sheet, the sales team is going to see that as well.
And, with our Google Maps routing, you know how you’re going to get between all your jobs, how long it’s going to take, and you’re able to see those updates in real time, versus having to write something on the back of a cocktail napkin or the back of a pick list with directions on how to get there.
There’s no more guesswork, no more gray matter. There’s no more need to think or remember sticky notes everywhere or a warboard. Everything is there in Goodshuffle Pro, and more importantly, updating in real time for ease and for clarity in terms of having access to all of that information.
4. How you can pull the reports that matter most to you
Cam: It’s crucial for us to see how our inventory is performing. With Goodshuffle Pro, we can see what items are set aside, a.k.a. what’s not generating us income right now because of damage. We can answer questions like, “What’s happening in my delivery department vs. my will call department?” and, “How often am I subrenting a certain item? Does it make sense for me to buy that piece that I keep subrenting over and over again (and passing on revenue that I could be collecting if I actually owned that piece)?” Those are all stats that you can find with Goodshuffle Pro that you can’t really find a lot of other places.
Understanding this data when it comes to how we run our operations department is so valuable. It helps us not only maintain our revenue and operations costs, but it helps level that up to where we’re getting a bigger return on investment and return on time spent on making everything happen at the end of the day.
Colin: Exactly. Something else I’ve seen vendors calculate in Goodshuffle Pro is the volume of refunds they’re issuing. Refunds can pile up if items are being left behind, if your operations team doesn’t know what’s going out, and if you allow double-bookings to move forward. This is when you start to see some contraction in your company. Making sure that you have all of that information and data to make those decisions is vital.
5. How you can use files to execute repeat events and protect your business
Cam: Now my team feels confident when doing repeat events because we have the loading dock information that we’ve added in the files of Goodshuffle Pro.
As a small business owner, I find myself saying, “I know this information, but does everybody else on my team know this information?” Now, I can put the information that lives in my head, based on the experiences and the many years I’ve had in this business, into Goodshuffle Pro. And with that, everybody else on my team has that information for those venues and clients, which makes their jobs so much easier on the backend.
Colin: Another way to use your files is for any damages or missing items. Have your crew take photos on site as soon as it happens then upload them to the project in Goodshuffle Pro so you have an instant snapshot in time. This eliminates any he-said she-said with your client or team, any exchange of dialogue, all those emails, all that time…you’ll simply have that main source of truth right at your fingertips to ensure you’re always making informed decisions. You’re able to take that sigh of relief, knowing that everything was done as it was supposed to be.
Click here to learn more about the Render Podcast, including recaps of all past episodes from Cam and the Render team.
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