SS Great Britain

See why Vennersys was chosen to work with Bristol’s largest attraction and how the VenposCloud system was implemented to help improve their operations.

Prior to our partnership, the team at the SS Great Britain were hindered by manual processes for payments, Gift Aid, and event management. Now, they can use a centralised system to help increase ticket sales, improve admin processes, and cater to their target audiences.

BRUNEL’S SS GREAT BRITAIN

First built in 1843 with her maiden voyage in 1845, the SS Great Britain was a masterpiece of engineering for the 19^th Century. Known as the “Grandmother of Ships”, it was the largest passenger vessel in the world until 1853 before later being converted into a cargo ship in 1882.

However, vicious storms in 1886 damaged the SS Great Britain so badly that the captain took it to the Falkland Islands for shelter, where it was left due to high repair costs. The Falkland Islands Company used it as a floating store for almost 50 years, but by 1933, it was deemed too unsafe for even that.

It was towed to Sparrow Cove and scuttled in the bay by drilling holes in one side and left to the tides.

It was repaired, recovered, and towed across the world in 1970 by Dr Ewan Corlett, a British naval architect, before being lovingly restored over several decades. Now, the SS Great Britain is Bristol’s largest tourist attraction, sits in the dry dock it was originally built in at Great Western Dockyard and selling more than 150,000 tickets every year!

WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES?

The site of the SS Great Britain includes the dockyard, two museums, a dry dock, and the ship itself, along with two cafés, one of which is seasonal.

For this site, the management of membership scheme payments, Gift Aid processing, data reporting, event management, and more, were all completed by hand.

As a result, museum employees were spending hours on admin to make sure that everything was correct and accurate before being able to focus on providing excellent customer service.

The team were left needing a cost-effective process that would streamline their existing processes and allow them to focus their attention on the customer experience.

HOW DID WE HELP?

The VenposCloud system, designed and developed by Vennersys, offered the perfect solution to the SS Great Britain team. They were looking to automate their office processes, find an easier way to manage their memberships and increase their revenue. The VenposCloud system provided them with the functionality they needed to do all this and more.

Once we were chosen, we got to work developing and delivering the perfect, tailored solution for the client with efficiency at its heart. The first module we helped set up was the membership management functionality, which allowed the SS Great Britain team to integrate an easy direct debit system for their customers, allowing them to sign up and renew online rather than coming to the site.

They also implemented the Gift Aid module to further reduce employee admin time, vastly simplifying the Gift Aid claiming process. They also chose to implement our specialist Power BI integration to help produce efficient, effective, and eye-catching reports for internal decision making.

The SS Great Britain also runs a huge number of events throughout the year, including music gigs and concerts, bespoke walking tours, Christmas weekends, and more. The events and facilities management module is key in helping them streamline the event management process, helping keep employees and visitors on the same page and preventing ticket overselling. We also helped develop a purpose-built template to assist with school bookings, as it is a crucial aspect of their business model.

Lastly, to help increase revenue, our client chose to adopt the Travel Trade and TXGB functionalities to partner with a variety of travel agents, hotels, and third party distributors to further promote their attraction both locally and internationally.

“Vennersys has been a valuable partner in helping us transition to their ticketing platform, realise new functionality and we look forward to growing our business alongside them. Their VenposCloud system has streamlined our processes for payments, memberships, and event management. The access to PowerBI is a real game changer in how we understand and visualise the data flowing through our systems.” – Noah, Digital Innovation Manager at SSGB.

“SS Great Britain required a complex solution that was cohesive across multiple elements of their operations. Their incumbent supplier was out-of-date and had not invested in the product and therefore had not kept up with modern day technologies therefore disabling SS Great Britain from being able to operate efficiently and effectively.” Says Lewis, Business Development Manager at Vennersys.

“By transitioning to Venpos Cloud, we were able to provide them with a unified EPoS and Ticketing solution that enabled them to integrate to OTAs, their marketing and finance tools and analyse their data more effectively within Power BI. All of this has allowed them to ultimately make better business decisions and to improve their interactions and experiences with their client base.”