Momentus Elite Dress Rehearsal Best Practices

You and your team have now spent several weeks learning the ins and outs of Momentus Elite. The next step is to practice what you have learned! Most of us learn by doing, so this is an opportunity for you to run through workflows, practice hand-off points, and determine any gaps you have in your Elite knowledge. If you set aside the time to do this exercise, it will be incredibly powerful for your teams!

Preparation

• We recommend completing this exercise twice, as there will be a lot learned after the first dress rehearsal that you can apply into the second one, with the goal of reducing the total time for the exercise. Find two 2-hour sessions when most of your implementation team and individuals in key roles are available. Book meetings for these dress rehearsals to ensure everyone's calendars are blocked off.
• In advance of your dress rehearsal, determine an event to "rehearse” in Elite. This event could be upcoming or held recently. A good event to practice with should be a “middle of the road” event. Not your most complex meeting or event of the year, and not your weekly production meeting. Use a standard concert, training, conference, or performance.
• We recommend having everyone sit in a conference room together and project Elite onto a large, shared screen. As the event is handed off to different teams/roles, have the new team representative work on the computer that is being projected to the large screen.
• Dedicate one person to document decisions that are made, internal conversations you want to have offline after your Dress Rehearsal, and questions you may have for your Consultant. Be sure to identify and document any edits/additions to your System Admin settings (rooms, roles, drop-down list selections) as well as your Inventory and Pricing configuration that you will need to edit after the Dress Rehearsal.
• Dedicate another person to be the “Director” of your rehearsal. This person will help move the process along and prompt next steps. We find this is usually the person leading implementation for your team.
• Ensure everyone knows the meeting objective.
• If there are questions, we recommend writing them down in order to keep the dress rehearsal moving.
• Designate a few individuals to begin creating a Process Guide for your venue that includes unique and key areas of your workflow. These individuals should own the Process Guide moving forward and should document changes to the workflow as they are discussed.

Day of the Dress Rehearsal

• Remind everyone of the objective.
• Ensure your note-taker is ready to go.

Question

1. Does everyone on the team have Email Event Notifications turned on? Discuss as a team what the standard notifications should be for your venue.

Sales/Bookers

• Book the event on the calendar.
  • Put “Test” or “Model Event” in the Event Name so it can be easily found later.
• Add all details typically known at the time of booking the event. Common examples are:
  • Staff assignments
  • Additional contacts/contact roles
  • Estimated attendance
  • Price schedule
  • Rental rates
• Depending on your workflow Sales/Bookers may also:
  • Add an initial function schedule.
  • Add initial items and instructions.
  • Add a package. It does not need to be assigned to a function at this point!
  • Add a task template for sales and finance follow-up tasks.
  • Generate and send a proposal (work through contracting statuses).
  • Generate a deposit invoice.
  • Generate and send a contract.
  • Upload a signed contract.
  • Upload a certificate of insurance.
  • Allocate a payment for the deposit invoice.
  • Mark the event as confirmed.
  • If the event is a live entertainment event, add in Announce, On Sale, and Pre-Sale dates.

Question

1. How do we notify Event Managers that event is confirmed? Do we use a staff assignment, event notifications, an event announcement email, or something else?

Event/House/Production Managers

• Add a task template for your event action items.
• Begin adding relevant details to the function schedule, including updating times, rooms, attendance, room set-ups, and so on.
• Add items and instructions to your functions.
• Create a room diagram to match your set-ups, if applicable.
• Mark functions as Ready.
• Generate an event order.

Questions

1. Will we attach room diagrams to functions or to the ends of event orders?
   • Attaching to functions = visible on operations daily view
   • Attaching to event orders = convenient reference for distributed event orders
2. Do we have a second or third deposit invoice that needs to be sent during the planning process? If so, who is responsible for sending it and following up for payment?
3. Will we email event orders (distribution) or have operations and facilities teams retrieve them from Elite (access)?
4. Will we use Elite change notifications?

Operations/Facilities/Engineering/Guest Services

• Review event details via event order, operations daily view, and department requirements dashboard

Questions

1. What will be the preferred practice for sharing event details via Elite with our teams?
2. How will we document and note changes from the customer while the event is taking place?
3. How will we document and note excessive cleaning and damages that need to be billed back to the customer?
4. Will we use Elite notes, tasks, or something else?

Event/House/Production Managers

• If you will be using Elite post-show/post-event reports, add one to the Live Entertainment tab and have respective teams add in details for their section. You may not have had your Post Event Reports training yet. If not, skip this step.
• Update actuals for labor, equipment, damages, and so on on the Detailing tab.
• Mark the event as Finalized. You may not have had your Accounts Receivable training yet. If not, skip this step.
• If applicable for Event/House/Production Managers, generate and “send” the post-event final invoice, or have Sales or Finance complete this step.

Questions

1. If we are not using post-show/post-event reports in Elite, where will we document our notes about this customer, this event, and notes for their next booking?
2. What documents will we upload to the Documents tab after the event?

Finance

You may not have had your Accounts Receivable training yet. If not, skip this section and return to it during your second dress rehearsal after you've completed your Accounts Receivable training.

Questions

1. If a final payment is not received within 30 days of the event, who is responsible for following up? Who notes that no payment has been received yet?
2. Who records payments in Elite?
3. Do you have the reports in Elite needed to reconcile?
4. Will you need a GL export report to import into your finance system?

Next Steps

• Bring any Elite questions that are unresolved after your dress rehearsal to the Event Workflow Office Hours (if you are in a Elite cohort), or to the next meeting with your Consultant (if you are not in a Elite cohort).
• Plan a second dress rehearsal after Finance training in week seven. It is best to plan a full two hours again, with the goal of reducing the time it takes to complete the dress rehearsal to 90 minutes or less.
• Continue this process! Conduct your weekly Production/Events/Operations Meetings in a conference room with Elite as your guide, clicking into events from the calendar or the operations daily view. Update your process guide whenever needed as issues surface in these meetings.