How are cash, covid and multi-tenancy connected? As many businesses come back on line, multi-tenant ticketing software that can manage your end-to-end processes, be set up quickly with low employee and consultant resource effort, all at lower capital expense, can be a strategic opportunity.
First, while covid dynamics evolve and re-opening approach debates continue, we see with our own customers relaunch Q&A, demo requests, and use of support articles, that the momentum for a return to something towards normal has begun.
So if you are an intercity, commuter or airport Bus & Coach company planning a relaunch, your current financial condition may be some mix of government or individual loans, as well as personal savings utilized to keep afloat. Yet, getting back to business with new regulations and requirements will take more financial and human capital, from employee rehiring to supporting new policies.
For ticket selling and inventory management, the lifeblood of your business, this is where multi-tenancy can help. Why and How?
How: a true multi-tenant ticketing platform will continuously deploy all available features, to all customers. Thus, after years of building, the base feature set can be used to sell and operate any scheduled bus line, of any size. As the ‘out-of-the-box’ functionality is implemented over and over again, the multi-tenant software provider can continue to make it more and more user friendly for quick, easy set-up of the basics such as routes, schedules, products, pricing and to start selling.
Why: Faster, better, cheaper – enough said! But, to elaborate, set up and selling processes that are repeated across multiple operators become more efficient and document-able. And infrastructure, security and development costs can be spread across multiple operators lowering the cost for all, a benefit in our highly competitive, thin margin Bus & Coach industry. You will optimize ‘Price to Value’ in multi-tenancy ticketing.
And no, you don’t have to give up your brand: as Bus & Coach operators, we want to differentiate, and we should. But differentiation can come in the form of your culture, customer service, marketing strategies, then with your ticketing system such as products, pricing, customer facing features, and more can still be configured to your liking. Want to take it a step further; if your multi-tenant partner has also invested in API First architecture and documentation you can extend your brand through user experience apps and integrations such as CRM, BI and Finance.
A word about localizations: you might be thinking, “I cannot use multi-tenant ticketing, I have geo-driven requirements.” Well, in the last 2-3 years, from our HQ office in Toronto to Morocco to New Zealand to Peru we’ve traveled and worked with Bus & Coach operators around the world. And we would agree, there are important localizations. But the fundamentals and value of multi-tenancy still apply globally. So, bring your friends, invest in those localizations once with a strategic partner, and you will harvest the return on that investment for many years.
In summary, your covid relaunch or re-scale is a strategic opportunity to take advantage of true Bus & Coach ticketing multi-tenancy; we hope this blog encourages you to do so.
Betterez has consulting resources available to help you design and execute your relaunch/re-scale ticketing strategy. Please drop us a note if we can help.
Wishing all travel, transportation, tour and activity operators a safe, healthy and prosperous return to business!