Innovation agency Golant Media Ventures has worked with contemporary arts support organisation Artsadmin to create a ‘culture edition’ of an open source CRM solution.
Our starting point was to look at what kinds of data are important to cultural organisations. We created a model that reflects the diverse array of people beyond ticket-buying audiences – and the wide range of ‘stuff’ that a cultural organisation can connect them to.
We then looked at how to turn these diverse kinds of data into ‘assets’ – capable of generating future value. Obviously, in the arts, the value is often a mixture of public benefits and social value together with earned revenue or other funding.
It’s all about people
In the current economic and funding climate, there has never been a more urgent need for cultural organisations to derive additional value from all their assets.
But this isn’t just about efficiency or enterprise, however important they are. Insight into people and two-way conversations are also the way to build relationships and to enhance people’s experiences of your creative work and other services.
The challenge is to create a unified view that encompasses casual visitors to your building, ardent supporters of your work, ticket buyers at your ‘home’ venue as well as all the audiences you didn’t sell a ticket to. And to recognise that each individual may be in several categories.
Open source technologies put sophisticated data solutions within reach for the cultural sector
We identified an open-source solution, SuiteCRM, which allowed us to use existing functionality license-free whilst offering us flexibility to configure new features specific to the needs of cultural organisations.
For example, relationships with professionals develop over a long period of time and can span their roles within many different organisations and networks. Again, over time, casual visitors become audiences, become donors, become supporters… perhaps all at once. And the development of creative projects is not like selling a ‘widget’ – creative concepts and teams are developed in parallel to funding, touring and other public engagement.
The resulting solution is tailored to support each team and their core functions.
Features and integrations
Combines data from your relationships with the public and with other professionals to create a richer view of your networks
Development support aligned to the lifecycle of your artistic projects
- Insights and data tracking to support your fundraising needs
- Consistent view of development across all projects
Integrated marketing for a unified view of your customers
- Mailchimp plug-in – synchronises lists and individual preferences
- Open API to support integration with other data solutions
Reporting made simple and relevant
- Take the pain out of reporting by creating data-rich templates
- Import and export reports or data as required
Designed to deliver what you need, and to grow with your organisation
- A scalable cloud-based solution
- Support packages available
Partner with us to build value across the cultural sector!
We are looking for:
- Individual cultural organisations to begin their data journey using our approach
- A cohort of cultural organisations to work with us to further develop the platform
- Funders or other strategic partners to support the development of the platform and its adoption by the sector
