The transformative power of cloud computing

Your business is already benefitting from the cloud and the SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings it enables. It could probably be benefitting more

Much like the meteorological phenomenon, it’s named after, there’s something fuzzy about the cloud. Many people don’t differentiate between ‘the Internet’ and ‘the cloud’. Even more tech-savvy individuals – who are aware it’s the cloud that allows them to check their emails, take part in video conferences, and access the file with last quarter’s sales figures at any time, in (almost) any location and on whatever device that’s to hand – usually have little idea of how cloud computing works.

In the interest of helping you select the right (cloud-based) SaaS providers for your business, let me cover the basics.  

A brief history of the cloud

If you’re over 30, you may remember what life was like in an ‘on-premises software’ world where the delivery mechanism for software was a cartridge, disk or CD-ROM.

Want to play Frogger, Wizball, Call of Duty or Gran Turismo? You better be sitting in front of your Atari, Commodore 64, Xbox, or PlayStation console.

At home waiting for the plumber when you realise you need to review a PowerPoint presentation before a customer call? You’ll need to cancel the plumber and head into the office to pull up the presentation on your desktop computer.

Circa 2006, cloud computing started taking off. Software, data, and processing power progressively floated off into the cyber-ether, allowing it to be accessed far more conveniently and cheaply.

The cloud represented a step change, as detailed in countless online articles (see here, here, and here for some of my favourites). The game-changing selling points of the cloud for business owners and C-suiters are its ability to facilitate:  

*Frictionless, real-time data exchange, and collaboration: You’re based in Sydney and need a colleague, customer, or supplier based in Singapore, Chicago or Guangzhou to sign off on some product blurbs you’ve written? Just cut and paste the blurbs into a Google Doc.

*Scalable capacity and resources: Cloud computing’s existence owes a lot to the entrepreneurial genius of Jeff Bezos. Bezos needed massive computer power at certain times, particularly Christmas, to keep Amazon ticking along but also found himself with a lot of unused capacity when business was quiet. Bezos created Amazon Web Services (AWS) and started renting out his spare computing capacity, the same way some people rent out their holiday home on Airbnb when they aren’t using it. Pretty soon, Google and Microsoft did something similar, and the ‘public cloud’ came into being. Thanks to Bezos and his imitators, businesses in general and SaaS providers, in particular, can rent an appropriate amount of computing power when they need it, which makes things cheaper and more efficient.     

*Greater productivity: The cloud means your staff can work at any time and in any location. This is handy in the event of a global pandemic.

*Better cybersecurity: This seems counterintuitive but Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, and the SaaS businesses reliant on the clouds they provide, have both the incentive and resources to provide cutting-edge cybersecurity.

*Access to the latest and greatest tech: Those of a certain age may remember buying (Microsoft) Office 95, Office 97, Office 2003 or Office 2007 and being stuck with the version of Office that came out in 1995, 1997, 2003 or 2007 until choosing to, or being forced to, upgrade. The cloud encouraged software providers to switch to subscription-based models, which means:

i) Subscribers get software that is continually improving. If you started using MYOB in 2015, you’re not stuck using the 2015 version of MYOB; you have access to all the features and tools developed since then.

ii) The IT side of things is someone else’s problem. The SaaS provider handles any technical issues, not you or your IT department. Even better, the software provider is highly incentivised to get any issues fixed ASAP, which may not be the case with your IT team, especially if it is underresourced.

iii) You can try before you buy. Most SaaS companies offer free trials. Even if they don’t, you can take MYOB (or Xero, or Intuit QuickBooks, or Sage) for a test drive for the cost of a month-long subscription, rather than having to shell out big money upfront then hope for the best. (Because the SaaS provider is selling the same software to thousands, or in some cases millions, of other businesses, it won’t cost your business much to access it. And whatever subscription fee you do have to pay, it’s almost certainly far less than the cost of trying to do things in-house and embarking on an IT project that might not succeed.)   

SaaS 1.0 vs SaaS 2.0

You can find the cloud’s origin story here. To cut a long story short, the cloud initially led to the creation of large ‘SaaS 1.0’ businesses. More recently, it facilitated the flowering of many niche ‘SaaS 2.0’ businesses. I’ve got a dog in this fight, so I’ll confine myself to quoting the origin story article:

‘First-generation’, or ‘SaaS 1.0’, businesses such as Salesforce, Workday, and Netsuite achieved great success targeting massive end markets like customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and human capital management… Over the last ten years, however, we have seen the emergence of a different, SaaS 2.0 profile… Most of these businesses provide highly tailored software for a specific set of vertical market customers rather than generic horizontal solutions for broad functional needs… SaaS 2.0 solutions generally deliver industry-specific data benchmarks, pre-defined metrics and KPIs, customised workflow, and industry-specific compliance capabilities. Software that embeds these capabilities tends to fit like a glove for a set of customers with invariably similar requirements.

Cloud-natives vs lifters-and-shifters

Many tech companies have been around for several decades. Yet the cloud and SaaS 1.0 businesses only began emerging a decade and a half ago, and SaaS 2.0 businesses a decade ago. That meant older tech businesses had to ‘lift and shift’ applications developed for on-premises software onto the cloud. In contrast, SaaS providers launched around 2010 are ‘cloud native’. That means their applications were designed with the cloud in mind from the get-go.  

Identifying the best SaaS provider for your needs

There’s nothing wrong with being a SaaS 1.0 business that targets a broad market. Likewise, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with older SaaS providers ‘lifting and shifting’.

But there are trade-offs.

The software provided by SaaS 1.0 businesses is necessarily generic. That isn’t always an issue, but sometimes it can be. 

The lifters and shifters are in roughly the same position as established car companies attempting to go electric. Toyota, Volkswagen, and Ford have all now released at least one electric vehicle. All those electric vehicles are perfectly serviceable, but are any of them in the same class as a Tesla? Have the engineers at Toyota, Volkswagen, and Ford been able to seamlessly shift from designing cars built around petrol engines to ones built around electric engines? When you’re starting with a blank piece of paper, rather than trying to adapt legacy applications, many more things are possible. As is the case with a Tesla, this typically results in superior UX (user experience).    

What Eventhub offers

If you’re in the business of organising events or running a venue or team, you may like to check out Event Hub, a cloud-native, SaaS 2.0 business that hit its stride in 2018 and is now outperforming its competitors.

Event Hub uses cloud computing to connect hirers, agents, venues, guests and sponsors with a minimum of friction. Event Hub has partnered with the following sporting bodies, venues and companies: The NRL, the Sydney Kings, the Melbourne Renegades, Melbourne United, Cricket Victoria, the Parramatta Eels, the Canberra Raiders, the Canberra Brumbies, the Waratahs, the Western Sydney Warriors, the SCG, Alliance Stadium, Accor Stadium, Qudos Bank Arena, CommBank Stadium, McDonald Jones Stadium, ICC Sydney, Optus Stadium, GIO Stadium Canberra, Telstra, DHL, CUB, Coke, Accor and Venues NSW. 

Book here now to experience what Event Hub has to offer. 

True SAAS software means real commitment, long term, to an outstanding fit-for-purpose product built from the ground up.

You don’t need a computer science degree to work out if your SaaS provider is overcharging and underdelivering 

While I can’t pretend to be a disinterested party, this article is a sincere attempt to educate non-techie venue and event managers. In the long run, my industry doesn’t benefit from customers wasting lots of time and money on software that isn’t a good fit for their organisation’s needs. So, while avoiding the temptation to plug my wares for as long as possible, I’ll provide some metrics below on which to judge any venue-and-event-management platform-software combo..

If you’re pressed for time, the TL; DR version of this article is that most venue-and-event-management software providers take the quick and relatively cheap option of ‘bolting on’ their software to a platform provided by a big tech company such as Microsoft.

This arrangement may seem logical enough at first glance, but it leads to problems. Such as an inability to combine then analyse data from different sources, or difficulties in automating manual processes. 

I explain why that is below. But, if you don’t make it any further than this sentence, please just be aware that if you sign a contract with a conventional provider of venue-and-event-management software that relies on a generic platform – and, in particular, a generic Content Management System (CMS) – created by the likes of Microsoft, you’re signing up to have some expensive and time-consuming problems.       

Price

You should focus on value not price. But when considering price, it’s essential to distinguish between the price stated in the SaaS provider’s marketing materials and the price you’ll actually pay. The SaaS provider will quote the price for supplying their cookie-cutter software. They won’t mention the price you will almost certainly end up paying to get a consultant and software developer in to modify that software.  

Features   

Here’s where things get complicated, so allow me to use a car analogy.

If you are a caravanner, cyclist or surfer, you will typically have to modify any vehicle you purchase by bolting on a tow bar, or a hitch-mount car rack, or roof racks. It’s a lot simpler and cheaper to manufacture a tow bar than build a vehicle, so this is what almost all SaaS providers do. They rely on one of the tech-industry heavy hitters – Microsoft, Salesforce, Magento – to supply the vehicle and just build the thing that gets bolted onto it.

In this analogy, the car is a ‘platform’, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, that combines a CMS (Content Management System), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system and also chucks in some business applications and AI tools. The tow bar or rack is the industry-specific software, developed by your SaaS provider, that sits on top of the platform.   

In the same way a tow bar sourced from almost any tow-bar manufacturer can be used to pull a conventional caravan in unchallenging road conditions, just about any venue-and-event-management SaaS provider will deliver software capable of handling the venue-and-event-management basics.     

However, if you want to do more than just the basics, or if what constitutes ‘the basics’ changes frequently, you’ll soon run into trouble. 

Flexibility

Imagine you are thinking about buying a Toyota Corolla and modifying it so you can tow your caravan around. Or transport your kids’ bikes to the park. Or lug your surfboard to the beach. If you’re sure neither your interests nor external circumstances are going to change, you can drop $25,000 on a Corolla and then spend $1000 more on a tow bar, hitch mount rack or roof rack without worrying too much. 

But what happens if anything does change?

Imagine that your family loses interest in caravanning, cycling or surfing. Alternatively, imagine some external change, such as increased air or ocean pollution, that makes those activities unattractive. Now imagine that you decide you want to get into off-roading.

At this juncture, the business that’s been providing you with tow bars or racks won’t be able to provide much assistance. They can’t transform your two-wheel-drive Corolla into an all-wheel-drive one.  

So, you’ll need to ask your neighbourhood mechanic how you can make your Corolla more like a RAV4. Your mechanic will probably refer you to a car-modification specialist. At significant cost, this specialist just might be able to rip out the existing drive train and install a new one that provides better traction on unsealed roads.

At the risk of stretching the analogy to breaking point, consider the platform and software your organisation is using. Is it allowing you to access the destinations you want to reach and participate in the activities you want to engage in? Or are you experiencing issues with siloed data, disconnected systems and unautomated processes?

If so, you’ve got two choices. You can shell out on a consultant, who will advise you to hire a software developer capable of adjusting your existing technology stack. Or you can try to find a business that provides a holistic venue-and-event-management tech stack.

A silver-bullet solution 

Tech businesses work with code rather than tangible objects such as engines, drivetrains and tow bars. That means innovative tech businesses can do things that would be unfeasible in other industries.

No tow-bar manufacturer ever has become, or is likely to become, a car maker. Yet it is possible for a SaaS provider to create their own CRM-CMS-ERP-AI tools platform, as well as the industry-specific software that sits on top of that platform. This involves a considerable amount of ingenuity, perseverance and time, but it is possible.

I know it’s possible because it’s what my partners and I did with Event Hub.

The upside of controlling the (generic) platform as well as the (niche) software is that Event Hub can, to use the automotive analogy one last time, provide any vehicle – a four-wheel drive, minivan or bulldozer – its customers require whenever they require it. In a fast-changing world, that is more important than many people realise. (If I had a dollar for every complaint I’d heard about the limitations of conventional venue-and-event-management software, I’d be kicking back on my Caribbean island rather than writing this article.)    

A growing number of teams, codes and venues – The Parramatta Eels, The Western Sydney Wanderers, the new Alliance Stadium, McDonalds Stadium, the T20 World Cup, the NRL, the Sydney Kings, the Melbourne Renegades, Melbourne United, Cricket Victoria, Qudos Bank Arena, the SCG, ICC Sydney, Optus Stadium and GIO Stadium Canberra – all now use Event Hub’s SaaS solution. They do so because it delivers exactly what they need when they need it from the get-go and removes the need to bring in pricey consultants and software developers to retrofit inadequate technology.

Event Hub guarantees we can provide a cheaper and better venue-and-event-management solution both short-term and long-term.
If you’d like to have a confidential, no-strings-attached chat about what Event Hub can offer your organisation, please make an appointment here.

Scott Hyde, Event Hub co-founder

If your event-management SaaS contains inadequate tech, you’re paying the price

Most people in the venue-and-event-management industry don’t have the expertise or bandwidth to get into the weeds when examining the tech stack of their software provider. That’s understandable but unfortunate because software that’s reliant on legacy or generic technology (as opposed to a cutting-edge tech stack built from the ground up) is inefficient, difficult to update and expensive.

The perils of kicking the can down the road 

When the cloud started taking off around a decade ago, industry incumbents – in all industries – faced a difficult choice. One option was to retire their existing tech stack and embrace the cloud with all the expense and disruption that would entail. Another option was to kick the digital transformation can down the road for the next CEO to deal with and graft a bit of modern tech onto the legacy tech stack where necessary then hope for the best. 

Guess which option CEOs with an eye on the next set of quarterly results (and their yearly bonus) were most inclined to choose? 

There isn’t space to detail all the drawbacks of attempting to soldier on with a mishmash of legacy tech overlaid with a patina of cloud-computing technology, so let me just explore three of the big ones. 

1. A lack of continuous innovation and continuous development (CI/CD)

Not so long ago, even cutting-edge business technology moved at a leisurely pace. For example, business owners would buy Microsoft 2010 – on a set of disks! – then use that software until they went out and bought Microsoft 2013 three years later. Likewise, a mid-sized or large business might only update its internal systems once every six months.            

Once organisations moved from having technology on their premises to having it in the cloud, it was much easier for software providers to offer constant updates. Long story short, CI/CD – continuous integration, continuous development – became best practice. 

Rather than making improvements to software once or twice a year, the more forward-thinking software development teams began updating it once or twice a day. This had a raft of upsides, one of the most obvious being that it made life more difficult for cybercriminals.  companies like Stripe/Slack are known to update their “stack” up to 15 times per day.

The CI/CD future is here but unevenly distributed. Companies like Microsoft long ago moved to a SaaS model that facilitated continuous improvements to its software. (Microsoft 365, then known as Office 365, was introduced over a decade ago.) 

Microsoft is an enthusiastic proponent of CI/CD, both for its software development teams and those of its customers. That’s one of the reasons Microsoft’s customers are satisfied. Or at least satisfied enough not to want to switch to competitors such as Google Workspace Essentials, LibreOffice, or Apache OpenOffice.

If your venue-and-event-management SaaS provider isn’t yet in the CI/CD camp, that should be a big red flag.   

CI/CD is directly related to competitive advantage and “consumer delight” Saas companies listen and learn from their customers and change – quickly as required.

2. High overheads (that flow into high prices)

In the ‘cloud era’ it’s possible, indeed common, for a handful of developers working in a garage to create game-changing software that ends up being used by billions of people. A classic example is WhatsApp, created by two former Yahoo employees in 2009. It only had around 50 employees when it was acquired in 2014 by Microsoft (now Meta) for US$19 billion. Despite most of its users not paying a cent to use it (the business does charge for its Business API product and takes a small cut of WhatsApp Pay transactions), WhatsApp reportedly generated almost $9 billion in revenue for Meta in 2021.  

The moral of the story is that if a business is cloud-native, it can keep headcount and other costs to a minimum and pass the savings on to its customers.  

Ask your current software provider what their headcount is and how many are involved in actual value creation as opposed to “overhead”.

Event Hub remains a small team of approximately ten and there is only one (highly technical) overhead. Scott Hyde.

3. B-grade tech, B-grade talent   

Imagine you’re a top-notch automotive engineer who can work for any car company that takes your fancy. Are you going to want to join the team responsible for designing Tesla’s Cybertruck, or are you going to take a job at the Honda Accord factory?

The top talent in any industry gravitates to companies creating, or at least leveraging the latest and greatest technology. If your venue-and-event-management SaaS provider is an old-fashioned ‘lifter and shifter’, it’s unlikely to have any truly innovative developers on staff.   

Further – think about Modals like AWS where truly best in planet thinking is available – by leveraging SAAS you leverage that thinking – fractionally.

What’s all this got to do with my venue-and-event management software choices? 

When it comes to the venue-and-event-management industry, both the long-in-the-tooth incumbents and the fresh-faced new entrants have their drawbacks. 

The industry’s biggest player, Ungerboeck, was founded 35 years ago. It still functions much in the way you would expect a 20th-century company to. It employs hundreds of staff and maintains a network of bricks-and-mortar offices in pricey locations across the globe. I’ve got no doubt Ungerboeck spends a lot of money on its technology stack. I have no doubt it’s done a great job supporting many venues for many years. Recently, however,  Its strategy seems to be to pay top dollar to acquire cloud-native startups. I don’t understand whether these are helping or not. I wonder if they are fully integrated? Nonetheless, its headcount and pricing suggest it’s yet to adapt to the cloud-native way of doing things. 

Even though it was founded almost two decades ago, Engage RM can be placed in the ‘disruptor’ category, at least in relation to Ungerboeck. I expect that Engage RM’s tech stack is considerably more modern and its overheads likely lower than Ungerboeck’s. 

Engage RM, has taken the CMS approach and has bolted its software onto Microsoft’s Dynamics365 platform, which places constraints on what its solution can do and leads to a pricey user-based model.
Event Hub sees a lot of clients who invested in a CMS like salesforce.com and ask what is the next best step for them,

All I can suggest is – “Don’t let your business be  held back by sunk cost.”

**You know I never bother to look that hard at EH’s competitors – our obsessive focus is on our own product – and how good it can be.

How Event Hub ticks the boxes
Event Hub was born cloud native. The Event Hub team did the hard work of building a CRM-CMS-ERP platform from the ground up as well as developing software specifically designed for the venue-and-events industry. As a result, the solution provided by Event Hub ticks all the boxes – a legacy-tech-free and bespoke technology stack, a small but talented workforce, low overheads and prices, constant innovation, all the tools needed to cover all mission-critical processes – rather than only some of them.      

Event Hub connects hirers, agents, venues, guests, sponsors and now members with a minimum of friction. Event Hub has partnered with the following forward-thinking sporting bodies, venues and companies: The NRL, the Sydney Kings, the Melbourne Renegades, Melbourne United, Cricket Victoria, the Parramatta Eels, the Canberra Raiders, the Canberra Brumbies, the Waratahs, the Western Sydney Warriors, the SCG, Alliance Stadium, Accor Stadium, Qudos Bank Arena, CommBank Stadium, McDonald Jones Stadium, ICC Sydney, Optus Stadium, GIO Stadium Canberra, Telstra, DHL, CUB, Coke, Accor and Venues NSW. 

Book here now to experience what Event Hub has to offer. 

What is SAAS 2.0?

I often discuss the Vision of Event Hub to be like “Cloud version 2.0”. I was sent the article below recently which describes this proposition very well.

From a company that invests in SAAS technologies. A post-“Salesforce.com” approach.

SAAS 2.0 is the development of cloud software from tools like salesforce.com or large CRMs – also known as Horizontal software. to Vertical software. “Horizontal” Software tries to be the standard platform across industries. Vertical software specializes in industries. By specializing in an industry you can focus on features that are needed to do a better job for that industry and the tasks and processes needed to be successful in your industry.

The Event Hub vision is to build an outstanding Vertical for the Venue and Events industry – with native cloud computing as its primary infrastructure. Read more – written by those with the vision to invest more in this space.

https://www.alpineinvestors.com/story/mind-the-gap-software-investing-between-venture-and-traditional-buyout/

APIs or WEBHOOK?

APIs vs. Webhooks: Which Is Better for Your Business?

In today’s hyperconnected market, application programming interfaces (APIs) are considered a best practice for businesses who want to achieve data visibility and quickly scale their tech stacks. That’s because APIs offer multiple benefits for companies and IT teams of all sizes. Not only are they pre-packaged, pre-built, and highly scalable, but they also allow for rapid collaboration between third-party applications, programs, and platforms, which means faster innovation and better business results.

But as third-party integrations diversify, developers have found a new way to transport and sync lightweight packets of data: webhooks. Compared to APIs, webhooks are considered to be more efficient and streamlined, which explains their fast-growing popularity amongst the API development community.

To help you gain a better understanding of webhooks, this article answers two key questions: What’s the main difference between APIs and webhooks, and more importantly, how does each affect your business and operations?

API vs. webhook: A non-technical explanation

“Ask, and you shall receive” is the basic premise underlying APIs. Think of an API as a piece of software or code that establishes a two-way, direct connection between different applications, allowing them to share and sync data.

For example, imagine you’re using communication APIs to connect your communications platform to your customer relationship management (CRM) system, such as Zendesk or Salesforce. Or perhaps you want to sync to a chat app, such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, so that you can send messages to customers directly from your CRM interface.

In order to retrieve new customer messages, the API will first need to ask the chat app, “Is there any new data?” From a user experience point of view, this is usually initiated via an “Update” or “Retrieve New Messages” button or similar function. If there is new data, the chat spp will send it over via the API to your CRM platform. Simply put, APIs operate on a request basis—all forms of data exchange are only triggered when a request is made.

Webhooks, on the other hand, automatically push new data without the need for an explicit request. This is why webhooks are often recommended for removing unneeded complexity and optimizing workflows. Consider the example above. Using a webhook instead of an API will allow the chat app to periodically scan for new messages, and then proactively send them over to your CRM platform.

What triggers the data exchange is defined as an “event,” and what an event looks like must be clearly defined when setting up a webhook. This ensures that only the desired updates are being pushed to your system. Otherwise, you run the risk of receiving any and all new data, which may end up being counter-productive.

APIs	Webhooks
Two-way communication between applications	One-way communication from the source application
Request-driven: data is only exchanged if there is a request	Event-driven: data is automatically sent when an event occurs
More complex in code structure and more resource-intensive	Simpler in code structure and more lightweight

When to use APIs and webhooks for your business?

Here’s the not-so-secret secret: APIs and webhooks work best when used together.

At first glance, it may seem that webhooks are the superior option because they automatically push data to you without having to request it. But imagine you’re shopping at a store, and the sales person keeps coming over to ask if you need any assistance every time you pick up a product off the shelf. It could get overwhelming—not to mention annoying—pretty fast.

In truth, the API versus webhook debate is not a debate at all. The two are not in competition with each other, but are rather meant to complement each other to solve different problems.

Webhooks are great for situations when your event trigger can be clearly defined. But because webhooks are unidirectional and don’t allow for flow control, you’ll have to accept whatever data the provider app sends. Only using webhooks could therefore end up in disaster if the system is overwhelmed with too much information, or if the provider app encounters an error and stops sending data. Worst still is if you don’t have an avenue to send a request.

APIs, on the other hand, are bidirectional, allowing you to both send and receive data. That’s why APIs are invaluable in online payments or travel booking apps, or any system that requires a client response.

APIs and webhooks make the perfect team

To create a system that communicates and receives the right data at the right time, it is essential to use both webhooks and APIs. Webhooks complement API-based integration to deliver more feature-rich applications, resulting in better user experiences and workflow optimization.

When choosing between using an API or a webhook in a specific scenario, it all boils down to what sort of data you’re exchanging. If you’re looking for something as simple as a status update, webhooks are a great solution, but if you need response-based functionality, then APIs are still the way to go.

Article found here

https://www.8x8.com/blog/apis-webhooks-which-is-best

Yes, it’s hard to move mission-critical-systems.

Event Hub completely understands it's a big decision and hard work to change an in-use mission-critical system.

Maybe as hard as it’s taken us to build one 🙂

The major issue may be one of Risk – the risk to move from a working system can be large. That’s undoubted. 

Event Hub has can provide the following support resources in order to help Minimize this risk. The following support options are available – and subject to the Terms & conditions mentioned at the end of this article.

Event Hub will provide;

1. 3-6 months of Event Hub – full platform at no cost
2. Dedicated “transition” analyst managed by our Product Manager
3. Transition Map – for rollout Parallel/pilot use.
4. Weekly meetings on rollout and data updates
5. Templates for Data transfer
6. Data cleanse by the same analyst for pilot Build.

Your company will need to supply;

1. Landscape image or chart of your current systems – prior to commencement for our assessment.
2. Brand /content designs /mock-ups as required for customer facing content.
3. Weekly input to Pilot-rollout meetings.
4. You may need to post master – Event-Data from an originating data source – to enable “best practice”.
5. You may need to consider a new financial system – like XERO or Cloud MYOB. This is the only module Event Hub has not already completed by Event Hub or not on our roadmap. It doesn’t make sense for EH to “re–invent these wheels”

Terms and conditions 

You are currently a user of a major system like Ungerboaek or Salesforce.com

At the end of the agreed term months if you wish to continue to use Event Hub – you commit to a further 2 years, or we shake hands and move on.

You sign our NDAs regarding our ideas and system.

Book here now to experience what Event Hub has to offer.

How Event Hub can – and can’t – assist you in your new tech Journey.

If your business uses legacy tech, there’s only so much we can do

The Event Hub team is happy to assist its customers. But, be warned, trying to integrate 2022 technology with a system created in 2012 will probably end in tears 

Scott Hyde, Event Hub co-founder 

What I’m about to convey might come across as contentious, so let me start with an analogy. 

Imagine that one day the engine in your 1980 Holden Torana blows up. Rather than replace it with another (primitive, polluting and petrol-guzzling) Torana engine, you put a Tesla engine in your car. 

Unsurprisingly, the Tesla engine doesn’t integrate well with the rest of the vehicle. Perhaps you can now accelerate to 300km/h in a matter of seconds, but the old-fashioned brakes in your Torana mean that if you do reach that speed, stopping quickly is out of the question. That means you need to rip out the existing braking system and install a new one. 

If you’re a rational person, you accept the problem is of your own making. After all, you’ve dropped a cutting-edge engine with a vehicle that rolled off the production line back when Malcolm Fraser was Prime Minister. Furthermore, you understand that you can’t reasonably expect Holden or Tesla to accept responsibility for fixing your problem.  

That all probably sounds reasonable enough. But I can assure you many people see things differently when you swap ‘Holden chassis’ and ‘Tesla engine’ for ‘my business’s legacy tech stack’ and ‘Event Hub’s software’.

Legacy systems + state-of-the-art tech = big trouble    

As I’ve explained in previous posts (see here and here ), Event Hub’s solution was built from the ground up by boundary-pushing developers used to working in a SaaS 2.0 world. Even if I do say so myself, Event Hub provides the Tesla engine of venue-and-event-management software.

If the rest of your business’s tech stack is Tesla quality, there are unlikely to be any problems integrating Event Hub’s SaaS solution with it. If there are any problems, the Event Hub team will be happy to help you resolve them. What the Event Hub team can’t do is not only supply a new engine but also then go on to replace the equivalent of the brakes, steering and suspension on your existing vehicle. 

If Event Hub did do this – and I’ve come across plenty of potential clients who expect us to – it would be impossible to provide a premium product at a reasonable price. My team and I would end up being the digital equivalent of those specialist car mechanics who spend their days retrofitting modern braking, steering and suspension systems into vintage cars. 

(Rest assured, finding a developer who can get your business’s existing tech stack to play nicely with our solution isn’t difficult. However, your business will need to organise and pay for this.)      

A brief note on APIs
You might have heard of APIs – Application Programming Interfaces. You can find a good explanation of how APIs work here. But, for the purposes of this post, all you need to understand is that an API (or webhook) facilitates the integration of a SaaS solution, such as Event Hub’s, with a tech stack. The API allows data to be shared and synced within the different components of a tech stack, which results in everything running smoothly.  * No more spreadsheet sharing or expenive highly coupled integrations. 

For instance, your business may operate a football stadium with a parking-management SaaS solution. In a best-case scenario, it will be straightforward to get a readily available API – such as those that can be sourced from API platforms such as Postman – then integrate Event Hub’s venue-and-event-management SaaS with the parking SaaS. But if it’s not a best-case scenario, your business may have to pay a developer to make sure the two SaaS solutions work well together. 

Teams, codes and venues that have integrated Event Hub’s solution 

You may be wondering if it’s worth investing in Event Hub’s solution at this point. So, let me stress that (a) if your business isn’t using creaky old tech this will be a complete non-issue (b) if your business is using lots of creaky old tech, it’s either going to have to get used to paying developers to graft on sophisticated SaaS solutions or invest in a root-and-branch upgrade. 

A growing number of teams, codes and venues – The Parramatta Eels, The Western Sydney Wanderers, the new Allianz Stadium, McDonald’s Stadium, the T20 World Cup, the NRL, the Sydney Kings, the Melbourne Renegades, Melbourne United, Cricket Victoria, Qudos Bank Arena, the SCG, ICC Sydney, Optus Stadium and GIO Stadium Canberra – now use Event Hub’s SaaS solution. They do so because Event Hub guarantees it can provide a cheaper and better venue-and-event-management solution both short-term and long-term.

If you’d like to have a confidential, no-strings-attached chat about what Event Hub can offer your organisation, please make an appointment here.

SaaS and the sunk cost fallacy

Don’t throw good money after bad on suboptimal software

Reversing a suboptimal business decision is rarely cost or pain free. But not rethinking a bad call is likely to be more expensive and unpleasant in the long term  

Scott Hyde, Event Hub co-founder

Imagine that, in early 2007, you bought a Blackberry Pearl 8100. Chances are you would have felt pretty pleased with yourself and taken every opportunity to show off the phone’s cutting-edge technology to friends and colleagues. You might even have pointed out that guy running to be the first African-American US president was also a huge Blackberry fan.   

Now imagine what you would have felt like in the second half of 2007 when the newly released iPhone was taking the world by storm. 

Chances are you would have spent a lot of time trying to convince yourself that your Blackberry was just as good as the iPhone. Even after resigning yourself to the fact that the iPhone was far superior to any other mobile phone on the market, you probably would have told yourself you couldn’t possibly buy one. After all, you’d recently spent hundreds of dollars on a perfectly functional phone. Also, wouldn’t it be a hassle learning how to use an iPhone after years of doing everything on a Blackberry?

The sunk cost fallacy   
Humans are stubborn creatures who are notoriously reluctant to abandon a course of action after making an (emotional and/or financial) investment in it. This is such a common phenomenon that economists have a term for it – the sunk cost fallacy. A good read if your company is in this position.

The reason it’s called a fallacy is because those who fall prey to it fallaciously believe they will be better off persisting in their folly rather than writing off their sunk costs and starting afresh. 

To continue with the phone analogy, rather than swallow their pride and allow themselves to enjoy the superior user experience offered by a smartphone, they insist on continuing to use a dumb one.

The iPhone of venue-and-event-management Software 

I’ve detailed why Event Hub’s solution is superior to that of its competitors here and here and here. I won’t belabour the point here, other than to note the Event Hub’s software was created from the ground up and specifically designed with Australia’s venue-and-event-management industry in mind. 

However, in the same way Blackberry soldiered on for another decade after the release of the iPhone (it transformed into a software company in 2017), I suspect Event Hub’s competitors will continue to find a market for their unimpressive Software for years to come. Like the ever-dwindling band of Blackberry users between 2007-2017, my competitors’ customers will be tempted to keep telling themselves it makes no sense to jump off the sinking dinghy and swim to the luxury yacht moored a couple of metres away. 

Try taking emotion out of the equation 

We all fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy in our personal lives. In most cases, no great harm is done. Those who held onto their old Blackberry, Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia phones for years after Apple and Samsung began manufacturing smartphones didn’t suffer terribly as a result. 

But the consequences of a business remaining committed to a deficient technology after its competitors have adopted a superior one can be severe. If you fear you may have backed the wrong System horse, it’s always wise to see what other options are now on the market then make a rational business decision that’s unclouded by ego or emotion.   

Event Hub can only help you so far with your Sunk cost issues. Read More here.

Teams, codes and venues that have already made the switch

A growing number of teams, codes and venues – The Parramatta Eels, The Western Sydney Wanderers, the new Alliance Stadium, McDonald’s Stadium, the T20 World Cup, the NRL, the Sydney Kings, the Melbourne Renegades, Melbourne United, Cricket Victoria, Qudos Bank Arena, the SCG, ICC Sydney, Optus Stadium and GIO Stadium Canberra – now use Event Hub’s SaaS solution. 

They do so because it delivers exactly what they need when they need it from the get-go and removes the need to bring in pricey consultants and software developers to retrofit inadequate technology. Event Hub guarantees it can provide a cheaper and better venue-and-event-management solution both short-term and long-term.

If you’d like to have a confidential, no-strings-attached chat about what Event Hub can offer your organisation, please make an appointment here.