Coastal Productions handles numerous meetings and events in a world renowned luxury hotel in the San Diego, California area.

Coastal discovered IntelliEvent at an industry association trade show. At the time, they were using multiple systems for different functions, resulting in wasted time and resources. Coastal was actively looking for a solution that would improve operational effectiveness and resource utilization associated with inventory management and scheduling. All inventory and equipment maintenance checks were being done manually, resulting in inefficient use of resources.

Coastal Productions assessed several potential solutions, using carefully selected key criteria:

• The structure of the system must be user friendly and reliable

• The system must be flexible and readily adaptable to accommodate changing and growing needs

• System pricing must be reasonable

• The system vendor must be dependable and know the event industry

• The system must be reasonably priced

Based on an analysis using these criteria, along with the commitment and drive shown by IntelliEvent during the sales process, Coastal Productions chose IntelliEvent Express as the solution that best fit their needs.

"Implementation was pretty seamless", noted Kirk Haaland, Director of A/V, "even though we had to migrate the functionality of different systems into one. IntelliEvent had also committed to tweak the system to accommodate some special needs we had. Taking all of this into consideration, I was surprised how smooth the migration to IntelliEvent Express turned out to be".

There was an immediate positive impact resulting from the implementation of IntelliEvent Express. Coastal can now check inventory and equipment at any given moment and know exactly what is committed and what is available. Before IntelliEvent Express was implemented, all checks had to be performed manually. The resources in checking inventory availability are greatly minimized, and customer response time is greatly enhanced.

Coastal also uses IntelliEvent Express to look forward to a much more accurate and clear picture of booked and planned events. The faster access to an accurate forecast of booked projects allows Coastal to more efficiently plan for projects. In addition, Coastal can review on a real-time basis available timeframes and inventory, which helps them to more effectively focus resources in selling open times and services.

Consolidating all the information Coastal needs to run its operations into one system, rather than multiple systems, has greatly increased the effectiveness of its overall performance. Having immediate access to inventory and project status information has enhanced the timeliness and quality of quote and proposal development and the equipment maintenance process, along with other functions critically dependent on this information.

"Coastal A/V Productions has definitely benefited from implementing IntelliEvent Express", Bronzwaig said. "We made the right decision".