There have now been over 35,000 events created in OnePlan worldwide. Always at the heart of what we do is our never-ending desire to solve our customers’ event and venue planning pain points. It’s why OnePlan was created and it drives forward our product development every day.
It’s heartening to hear our users share how OnePlan solves their pain points – from saving time, enabling better stakeholder management, to creating more profitable events, cutting carbon emissions, and so much more. Here’s Part 1 of the 17 OnePlan benefits that improve our users’ planning pain points. Click here for Part 2 and Part 3.
1: SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH
“One, all-encompassing plan for any stakeholder to view”
The most fundamental problem that OnePlan solves for event and venue planning is how time-consuming it was to have multiple, disjointed plans that created a version control nightmare. Through our team’s first-hand experience in the events and venues worlds, we know how inefficient that old way of planning was.
Just as other industries have benefited from moving to collaborative software, so our users are experiencing similar benefits with OnePlan.
Andras Palinkas, Production Manager at Rat Race, says: “Having one, all-encompassing event plan for any stakeholder to view, streamlines our process and saves us a lot of time.”
OnePlan enables multiple teams and business units to work together from one plan. This is a great benefit to Silverstone, the UK’s largest motor racing venue that uses OnePlan to stage over 50 events per year. Its Senior Events Manager, Jacalyn Morgan, says: “For us, OnePlan is that single source of truth – it’s always up-to-date and allows for instant collaboration, especially in our case with suppliers,”
This sentiment is shared by David Markham, Venue Operations Director at World Triathlon: “Very quickly, I saw the advantages of OnePlan over what we were using before. I’m now able to share an evolving document with my team and give a great picture to anyone working on or viewing the plan. It gives us a platform to discuss everything.”
2: INSTANT IMPROVEMENTS
“I can’t see myself going back to the old way of event planning”
Previously event organisers and venue managers had to use non-specialist planning tools that weren’t designed for their specific needs. OnePlan revolutionizes this. It’s professional software that’s easy for anyone to use, with a choice of maps, CAD and floor plan import, and thousands of event-specific objects to ‘click and drop’ in place.
Alan Govan, Events Manager at Mugstock (event plan below), says it better: “We had previously relied on Google Maps but found some severe limitations such as being able to draw a shape to represent a stage but not be able to rotate it. Within about 30 minutes of using OnePlan we already had a more convincing draft plan, and have subsequently been able to add lots more detail.”
For Stadium, a security company servicing some of the world’s largest venues, the ease-of-use of OnePlan provides immediate efficiencies. Its National Operations Manager, Sam Wilson, says: “In OnePlan, it’s just a case of click, drag, drop and it automatically brings the sign over. It cuts down so much time. In the last couple of months, we’ve already done 18-20 traffic management plans in OnePlan.”
This rings true for David Markham, Venue Operations Director at World Triathlon: “It’s not Microsoft Word or Excel, it’s so much more than that. Once it clicks, you really start seeing the advantages of the platform and I can’t see myself going back to the old way of event planning.”
Renna Muhieddin, Associate Producer at US music festival SoulFest, is another who found instant benefit in the professionalism of her plans: “I had almost every single element of our map on the OnePlan platform within two days. It was amazing.”
OnePlan provides a planning upgrade compared to the old way of doing things – something that’s true for events and venues of any size. Michael Cutait, Deputy Secretary General at World Obstacle, says: “OnePlan brings professionalism and high performance to our administration and our stakeholders.”
3: EASY TO USE
“The software is incredibly easy to use”
The OnePlan studio lets you place and move thousands of objects, choose different map types, add notes and information, rotate the map, share with others and so much more – all at the control of your mouse.
“It’s INCREDIBLY powerful for event layout. Thank you for what you provide. It’s a great tool, and especially as a new event it’s super helpful,” says Adam Davidson, Promoter at Grass Roots Gravel.
It’s a word used by others. Alex Lock, Events Manager at Guernsey Together Festival, says: “The software is incredibly easy to use – I picked up how to use it within an hour and continued to discover more and more features the more I used it.”
The objects you can place in OnePlan are all found in the left-hand ruler menu, which includes a search function to quickly find what you’re looking for. This proves useful for Festival Foods, whose Senior Director of Community Involvement, Brian Stenzel, says: “Two of us actively build and edit in OnePlan. I just pull up the menu and go right to the Search bar to find what I need. It’s easy.”
Steve Bishop, the Founder of Masters of Motoring, gets similar benefits: “OnePlan is easy-to-use and logical. It’s packed with different features and colour options for zones, icons and details that help make the event planning that bit easier.”
Ultimately why is having an easy-to-use interface important? To empower event and venue planners to find the best way of planning. Casey Hibbert, organizer of the Spearfish Festival in the Park event, says: “OnePlan has allowed me to experiment and be creative. It’s super user friendly.”
And that leads to tangible benefits for our users. Brett Knaus, Director of Event Operations at the National Cherry Festival, sums it up nicely: “The user-friendly software saves so much time in designing our layouts.”
4: TIME SAVING
“The time saving compared to the way I used to develop a site map is huge”
So how much time do our users save? It varies depending on the nature of their venues and events – a one-off festival is different to a national multi-stage road event, or major city venue, let alone the Olympic and Paralympic Games. In all cases however there’s an immediate and long-lasting time-saving benefit.
Ehrabi Nael, Race Director at the Beirut Marathon, gets the benefit: “Since using OnePlan I only need to do two site visits a year pre-event day. We saved around 20 site visits!”
Our users are universal in confirming the time saving benefit of switching to OnePlan. Phil Morgan, organiser of Taunton Pride, says “The time saving compared to the way I used to develop a site map is huge. I highly recommend it!”
While for SoulFest, Renna adds: “Planning the event used to take 2 weeks for 3-4 hours per day, plus many late nights. Since using OnePlan, it now takes just 1 hour per day for 1 week. That’s a huge 85% time saving!”
Part of the benefit comes from the fact that OnePlan allows for easy uploads and integrations with your existing CAD, architectural and floor plan files – simplifying how anyone in your team can plan on them.
Stadium saves times doing this for its many event plans at multiple international venues, as Sam in their team says: “It would take me a day to do eight maps in CAD. In OnePlan, it’s just 2 hours, meaning I have more time to make changes.”
The efficiencies that OnePlan creates scale up for major venues. James Loveridge, Senior Event Manager at Silverstone, says: “OnePlan gives us efficiencies. Using it to manage our venue delivers a 10% reduction in days because of a reduced need for site visits, and a further 5% time saving now that all our venue plans are controlled this way.”
And for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, it’s led to an 80% time saving. Marion Gauffridy, Technological Innovation and Legacy Manager at Paris 2024, says: “Thanks to OnePlan, we’ve found that some departments now take just over an hour to do their planning work, whereas with their previous tools, it used to take them 5 hours to do the same job.”
5: GREAT COLLABORATION
“The collaborative elements of OnePlan mean we have better communication with our partners”
Some of the time saving examples above refer to the benefit of collaboration with key stakeholders. It’s a fundamental element at the heart of OnePlan: making it easy to plan together in teams.
USA Triathlon hosts competitions across the country and Events Manager Cody Crowther takes advantage of OnePlan’s advanced collaboration features: “OnePlan is an incredible tool that helps us streamline the venue planning process for our largest events. It allows us to coordinate the most intimate of details in our venue so we can efficiently plan safe and memorable events.
“Having the ability to edit maps concurrently amongst our team, sharing maps externally, and downloading reports of all the equipment in the map has become crucial to our planning process,” he continues.
The same benefit rings true in Sydney, Australia where Simon Bryan, Operations Director of Pont3, an agency that produces the Sydney Harbour 10k, appreciates the greater communication with partners: “The collaborative element of OnePlan is great. It means we have better communication with our partners by easily sharing digestible plans at scale.”
For Tom Beever, Events Manager at the Meadows Festival in Scotland, there’s a benefit in being able to incorporate feedback from his stakeholders and make quick updates to the plan. “OnePlan makes our process really easy. I could immediately update or adjust plans based on suggestions or modifications required. And when we got on site everything fits perfectly and the refinements proved worth it!”
The Tour of Britain is a multi-stage event covering the whole of the UK. The planning requires a high degree of collaboration, sharing and input from partners. Finish Director Rob Kennison says: “OnePlan is a really good tool for keeping everyone updated with race developments. Using OnePlan certainly helps our partners, particularly venues, as they can take a look at the plans in real time.”
6: MANAGING VENDORS
“OnePlan makes managing vendors so much easier”
Many event organisers, especially for festivals, fairs, shows and markets need to collaborate effectively with vendors who sell products at their events. Kristen Hudgens of TRC Events runs a Christmas market. She says: “My vendors very much appreciate how I’m able to involve them in the process. OnePlan makes managing vendors so much easier, having it all in one system.”
For Casey Hibbert, organizer of the Spearfish Festival in the Park, it’s a “game changer”. He says: “OnePlan has allowed me to experiment and be creative, and it’s super user friendly. My vendors like being able to see their tent in the actual park and any changes I make in real time.”
Local government organizations that plan multiple events in their city or state get a similar benefit. Toby Russell, Events Manager of Banbury Council in the UK, says: “Having such an accurate site plan has also improved our communications with our contractors and vendors, resulting in a really smooth pre-event setup.”
Click here to read Part 2 and Part 3 of this blog series about OnePlan benefits “in our users’ words”.
To speak to one of our team and see how OnePlan can benefit your organization, Book a Demo here.
