The GigPlaner makes it easier and faster to plan personnel for events – and actually, a complete brand relaunch of the event planner was supposed to take place during Prolight + Sound. Without the trade fair, the relaunch is now taking place online. In an interview, Managing Director Sven Schlotthauer reveals what significance Prolight + Sound still has for the company and how GigPlaner, in its own way, wants to help the sector in the crisis.
1. their software promises simple and efficient event planning What is special about your system?
The special feature of our system is the central overview of all relevant information in personnel planning. Many companies in the event industry still store this information in the form of Excel files, but these are unwieldy and not accessible to everyone – not to mention the fact that there are no authorization and access concepts. With “CrewBrain” we have created a software to which all parties involved have direct access, can view the information relevant and released for you and can give direct feedback. This gives the schedulers a quick overview and they also benefit from the fact that all data of internal colleagues is also available to you. This prevents, for example, duplicate requests by different MRP controllers for the same day.
In addition, we also offer many other useful functions that support you, for example, in the preparation (personnel costing, personnel reporting lists, task planning), during the execution (recording working times and travel distances), and in the follow-up (invoicing, travel expense accounting, statistics) of business events. In this way, we offer a comprehensive set of tools that can be used to map all aspects of personnel-related topics at events.
2. how has the industry changed since you started your production? What potential is still available in this area?
The industry has become much more digital. While this is clearly visible “outwardly” in productions, there is still a lot of potential for further digitalisation “inwardly”. The optimization of business processes is often still in its infancy, even in large companies, but is becoming increasingly important in the current economic environment. Wherever it is possible to automate and streamline processes, this should be done in order to free up time and capacities for the important things. And this is exactly where our software comes in, helping companies to become even more productive and to structure and plan their daily work more effectively.
In addition, there are the legal framework conditions, which are constantly changing and to which the industry has to adapt just as constantly. Examples of this are the obligation to record working hours issued by the European Court of Justice and the legally compliant use of freelancers. Both are points that will change the industry in the long term and require solutions that are as simple and clean as possible.
3. You have been taking part in Prolight + Sound as an exhibitor for several years now. Why?
With our product, we have explicitly specialised in personnel planning in the event sector. This sector requires special solutions for its individual challenges and Prolight + Sound offers us the ideal platform here for acquiring new customers and maintaining our existing customer relationships. For us, close contact with our customers is extremely important in order to be able to offer the best possible solutions at all times and, as the majority of our customers visit this fair, it is an excellent meeting place for us.
4 What significance does Prolight + Sound have for you as an event technology trade fair?
Prolight + Sound is one of the most important trade fairs for event technology and services in this sector, not only nationally but also internationally. Especially as a company with German roots, it is important for us to have such a fair in the local area and to be able to use it for the international presentation of our products.
5. unfortunately, Prolight + Sound 2020 did not take place. What could the visitors have expected? This year we wanted to use the trade fair for a complete relaunch of our brand presence. This also includes a completely revised version of our software under the new name “CrewBrain”. Since the trade fair unfortunately had to be cancelled, we will present the innovations exclusively online. At www.crewbrain.com we have compiled all relevant information about our relaunch and the new brand.
With this reorientation, we would like to make a clear statement for the future viability and consistent further development of our software and position ourselves even stronger for the future, especially on the international market. To mark the occasion, we also decided a few days ago to offer our software free of charge for two months to all customers and new customers – so that our customers can take advantage of the involuntary break to take time out to deal with our software and its introduction in the company.
A trial version of our software can also be registered and tested free of charge for 90 days via our website www.crewbrain.com.
Thank you very much for the interview and hopefully see you next year!