Update Once. Everyone Sees It. No Reprints. No Confusion.

How CMC Marquees Ended the Reprint Cycle and Freed Up the Team

CMC Marquees specialises in A-frame clear-span structures for corporate events, TV and film productions, private parties, and weddings. As Office Manager, Annabel handles incoming enquiries, bookings, crewing, staffing, and a fair amount of everything else besides. She has been with CMC for around seven years. For the first few of those years, the business ran on a server-based system that required everyone to be in the office.

Then COVID hit. And everything that was already a friction point became a breaking point.

"Before that, we were not set up for remote work at all. We were in the office Monday to Friday, and our system was server-based, so we could not work from home."

When they found GoodEvent Business, CMC had been with the tool for four to five years by the time Annabel talked about what changed. The answer, in her words, is simple: the real-time updates.

The Problem: Two People, One Bottleneck

Before GoodEvent Business, only Stuart and Annabel had access to CMC's system. Every enquiry, every quote change, every load list update had to go through one of them. There was no way around it - the system lived on a server, and the server lived in the office.

When a job changed - a client added a section, moved a date, swapped a floor - Annabel would update the quote, create a new site pack, print a new load list, and get it to the yard. If the job changed again, the whole process started over.

"Previously, I had to create a site pack, print a load list, and if something changed, I had to redo it manually. There was a lot of back and forth, which was time-consuming."

For a business working on corporate events, TV productions, and large-scale private events - where last-minute changes are not the exception but the expectation - this was a significant operational drain. Every change cost time. Every reprint created a risk that someone in the yard was still working off the old version.

What GoodEvent Business Did for CMC

Real-Time Updates: One Change, Everyone Knows

The feature Annabel calls out first, and with the most emphasis, is real-time updates. With GoodEvent Business load lists, the yard team no longer gets a printed sheet. They access job details and load lists directly, on their tablets, live.

When Annabel updates a quote, the yard team sees the change immediately. No call required. No reprint. No risk of the team loading for yesterday's version of the job.

"The real-time updates are a game-changer. If I update a quote, the team in the yard sees that change immediately."

For large-scale corporate and production jobs - where the kit list can be substantial and a missing item means a costly return trip - this is not a minor operational improvement. It is the difference between a crew that loads with confidence and one that is always second-guessing whether the list in their hand is current.

Everything Linked: Update Once, the Rest Follows

The second shift at CMC was the move away from managing quotes, stock, load lists, and invoices as separate tasks. With GoodEvent Business, they are all connected. Update a quote and the system updates the load list, the stock availability, and the invoice automatically.

"Instead of manually checking everything, it is all linked and automated, which has made things so much easier."

For Annabel, managing incoming enquiries, bookings, crewing, and staffing simultaneously, that automation is the difference between an admin workload that is manageable and one that is not. Every task she does not have to do manually is time she can spend on the work that actually grows the business.

"The less time I spend on admin, the more time I have to focus on growing the business and bringing in new work."

Stock Availability: Spot Issues Before They Become Problems

CMC works across a range of event types - corporate, TV, weddings, private parties. Managing stock availability across jobs with different kit requirements, different dates, and different turnaround times used to mean manual cross-checking at the quote stage. Miss something and the error would surface later - usually at the worst possible moment.

With GoodEvent Business, stock issues are visible as soon as a quote is being built. If something is already booked out for those dates, the system flags it. The problem is caught early, not at the load.

Fewer Picking and Packing Mistakes

The shift from paper to tablets in the yard had a measurable effect on how accurately jobs were loaded. With digital picking lists that update in real time, the yard team is always working from accurate, current information. The kind of mistake that happens when someone is working off a printed list that is two revisions out of date becomes much harder to make.

Quotes That Work for Every Client

Not every CMC client wants the same thing from a quote. Corporate agencies and event management companies often need a PDF they can file in their own systems. Other clients prefer the interactive online version. With GoodEvent Business, CMC can offer both - the same quote, in whatever format the client needs.

That flexibility matters when you are working across the corporate, TV, and private event markets where client expectations vary considerably.

The Result: A Business That Can Actually Flex

The transition to GoodEvent Business gave CMC Marquees something that is easy to underestimate: the ability to flex. When a job changes at 7am on the morning of a load, Annabel can update it from wherever she is. The yard team sees it on their tablets. The load goes out right.

"Our transition to using GoodEvent was such a good move. It has allowed us to take review of all our stock and make sure everything is correct on the system. Whilst also allowing quotes to be put together much more easily. There are developments constantly to the system and the team always consider any ideas of changes we might find helpful."

A server-based system that required two specific people to be in one specific place was replaced by a cloud tool the whole team uses, from anywhere, in real time.

Try It Yourself

If your business is still running load lists off printed sheets - or if quote changes mean a phone call, a reprint, and a dash to the yard - GoodEvent Business was built to fix exactly that.

You can be set up and running the same day. No server required. No office needed.

Start a free trial of GoodEvent Business

Related Resources

For more on how hire companies are moving operations into the cloud, read the North Down Marquees case study - a 40-year-old business that went fully paperless and started winning contracts from a client's driveway.

If keeping office and field teams on the same page is the problem you are solving, see the paperless events solution and delivery planning solution for how GoodEvent tools connect every part of the operation.