Trafalgar Marquees: Fewer Mistakes, Less Time Wasted
Trafalgar Marquees replaced a process-heavy legacy system with GoodEvent Business. New staff now come on board in a fraction of the time, sales and operations share the same information, and expensive mistakes have dropped.
Before & After GoodEvent at Trafalgar Marquees
Before
- Previous system was vast, process-heavy and clunky - cloud-based but slow and inefficient
- Training new team members took a long time - a bottleneck when trying to grow and scale
- Too many steps between the sales team and the operations team - information did not flow cleanly
- Sharing load lists required back-and-forth - no quick way to get the right information to the right people
- Stock management was slower and more complicated than it needed to be
After
- New staff come on board quickly - training time has dropped significantly
- Sales and operations share the same live information - fewer steps, less friction
- Load lists are created and shared with a link - the team has what they need immediately
- Stock management is faster and simpler - easier to manage across the business
- Calendar view gives management and the team a clear picture of jobs and the week ahead
Trafalgar Marquees: When a Clunky System Is Holding the Business Back
Trafalgar Marquees is a leading clear-span marquee supplier based in the south of England, with one of the widest ranges of equipment in their region. The team already worked remotely before most businesses had thought about it. They had the right habits - they just did not have the right tools.
Before GoodEvent Business, Trafalgar Marquees were running on a system that James describes plainly: "vast, very process-heavy, very clunky." Cloud-based, yes - but slow, difficult to learn, and full of unnecessary steps. When you are managing a sales team and an operations team, and neither is working from exactly the same information at exactly the same time, mistakes happen. And in marquee hire, mistakes are expensive.
The Problem: Too Many Steps, Too Much Friction
The previous system had not been built for this industry. It had been adapted to fit, and the joins showed. Every action required more clicks, more process, more time than it needed to. Getting a load list from the office to the team in the field was not instant - it required back-and-forth. Onboarding a new team member meant weeks of learning before they could operate independently.
"[Our previous system was] vast, very too process heavy, very clunky. Our team already always worked remotely anyway, so everything was cloud-based, but it was clunky and took longer."
For a business running sales and operations as separate functions, every unnecessary step between those two teams is a risk. A change made in a quote that does not reach the operations team in time. A load list based on an older version of the job. A detail missed because it lived in one system and not the other. James had seen the cost of that friction and wanted it gone.
What Changed: GoodEvent Business
New Staff Up and Running Faster
For James, the single biggest practical win was not a feature - it was the speed at which new team members became useful.
"I think for us one of the biggest actual wins is the training time - it has been super quick for the new members of our team to come on board with it. Before, that kind of training pipeline had taken much longer. That significantly reduced, which made a big difference in rolling out the business."
Training time is a hidden cost that most businesses do not measure precisely but feel constantly. Every week a new hire needs before they can work independently is a week of management overhead, supervision, and risk. When a system is intuitive enough that people learn it quickly, that overhead compresses. Hiring becomes less of a bottleneck. Scaling becomes easier.
GoodEvent Business is built around how marquee hire businesses actually work - the logic of the system matches the logic of the job. That is why new staff find it fast to learn. There is no translation layer between what the software does and what the business needs it to do.
Closing the Gap Between Sales and Operations
The distance between a sales team and an operations team is one of the most common sources of expensive mistakes in hire businesses. A sale is agreed with one set of details. The operations team work from a slightly different version. A load goes out wrong. A client is disappointed. Someone has to fix it on the day.
GoodEvent Business puts both teams on the same live information. A change made by the sales team updates immediately in the system the operations team is working from. There is no version gap. No information gets lost between handover.
The specific example James points to is load list sharing. Previously, getting a load list to the team required steps - creating it, formatting it, sending it, waiting for confirmation it had been received. Now it is a link. Create it, share it, done.
"It has really helped us reduce those kind of steps in the bucket, especially when you are dealing with a sales team and operations team. It is like a load list - I just create a link and share with the team, and that is super quick and easy."
The crew scheduling and job sheets sit alongside this - every person on the team can see their jobs for the day, what each job requires, and any relevant notes. Not because someone emailed it to them, but because it is live in the system they already use.
A Calendar View That Actually Helps
For management, visibility across the whole business - what is happening this week, what is coming up, where the pressure points are - matters as much as the detail of any individual job.
GoodEvent Business includes a calendar view that gives James exactly that. Not a reporting tool to extract data from, but a live view of what is on and when.
"Just a really nice calendar view of what is going on - I find that really useful from my point of view, and it just helps the team plan out their week as well."
The same view that helps management plan helps the team prepare. Everyone knows what is coming. Jobs do not arrive as a surprise.
Stock Management: Simpler and Faster
With the volume of equipment Trafalgar Marquees runs across their region, stock management needs to be fast and reliable. The previous system made it slow and complicated. GoodEvent Business made it simpler.
James does not elaborate on the detail - he does not need to. When stock management goes from being a source of friction to something that just works, the whole operation runs more smoothly. Jobs are loaded correctly. Availability is checked at the point of quoting. The system does the checking rather than the person.
The Result: Fewer Mistakes, Better Margins
James is direct about the outcome. Expensive mistakes have dropped. The team is connected. And the margin impact - while hard to pin to a precise number - is real.
"Good Event has enabled our entire team - office to onsite - to connect digitally. Everyone knows their daily jobs and management can easily share event info, load lists, schedules and so on to their team. We have seen a huge decrease of expensive mistakes and an increase of time saved."
He also makes a point that matters for any hire business evaluating whether a system is worth the change: GoodEvent Business is not just something Trafalgar Marquees are using now. It is something they are building on.
"We have only started using it maybe a year and it has already eaten its way quite happily into the business. I think it will be a big central part of our setup going forward as we grow, that is for sure."
A couple of percentage points of margin improvement across the volume of work a business like Trafalgar Marquees handles adds up fast. The training time saved on every new hire adds up. The mistakes that no longer happen add up. That is what a system built for the industry looks like when it works.
Start a free trial of GoodEvent Business and see what changes when your sales team and operations team are working from exactly the same information.