Top 5 ticketing & POS solutions for museums, parks and zoos

by | Feb 4, 2019 | NP Entertainment

Choosing the best IT systems to run your museum, theme park or zoo is a daunting task. With so much going on across the site, you likely have to consider processes across point of sale, ticketing and admissions, financials, CRM, inventory and more.

You may imagine that you’ll need a selection of different systems to manage this range of functions. While you’d be correct that the majority of solutions don’t cover all that functionality, there are a few that combine processes on one platform. In this blog post, we’ll highlight some of the most popular IT solutions we’ve seen used in the Museums & Attractions industry, along with what makes them so successful. We hope that this will equip you to identify the solution most suited to your own business.

vTicket by Wilson Digital Media Ltd

vTicket is a ticketing and booking solution specifically for railway attractions. They create a bespoke website to sell tickets on or integrate with an existing website to offer ecommerce capability. Ticketing functionality is flexible and provides reports on sales performance. vTicket works well for small railway attractions, but is only really designed for this niche sector.

Key features

  • Omni-channel ticketing
  • Point of sale
  • Ecommerce
  • Event management
  • Business intelligence and reporting

LS Retail

LS One by LS Retail is a point of sale add-on originally designed for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, the predecessor to Business Central. While LS One only includes the lite POS functionality, LS Central adds Microsoft Dynamics ERP to manage accounting and inventory from the same platform. We’ve seen both solutions by used successfully by attractions such as English Heritage and The Foundling Museum. Having said that, because it’s key focus is retail POS rather than museums and attractions specifically, it lacks more complex functionality such as access control.LS Retail would be best suited to businesses with fairly simple business processes, or those looking to add POS and ERP functionality to a strong CRM system.

Key features

  • Omni-channel ticketing
  • Point of sale
  • Ecommerce
  • Customer Relationship Management
  • Member management
  • Event management
  • Financials and accounting
  • Inventory management
  • Business intelligence and reporting

Digitickets

Digitickets is a popular ticketing solution with several big-name attractions on their books, including Cadbury World and Dublin Zoo. The solution is comprehensive yet flexible and includes free updates for life. However, it again lacks ERP functionality, so a separate solution would need to be purchased and integrated to effectively manage financial and inventory processes.

Key features

  • Omni-channel ticketing
  • Point of sale
  • Customer Relationship Management
  • Member management
  • Inventory management
  • Business intelligence and reporting

Gateway Ticketing

Another popular solution is Gateway Ticketing. This modular solution covers most of the core capabilities sought after by museums, theme parks and zoos, including strong ticketing functionality, but lacks financials and inventory.  It is used by several museums in London such as the V&A Museum and The Natural History Museum. Gateway Ticketing is a great fit for businesses who may have already invested heavily in ERP and just want to add ticketing and lite CRM functionality. They should also have a budget set aside to integrate the systems to avoid an increase in manual workarounds.

Key features

  • Omni-channel ticketing
  • Point of sale
  • Ecommerce
  • Customer Relationship Management
  • Member management
  • Event management
  • Access control

NP Entertainment

NP Entertainment is designed specifically for businesses in the Museums & Attractions industry. Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, it uses the latest technology to get the most out of the huge amount of data you generates every day. By managing all your key business processes from one platform, you remove the need for rekeying and manual workarounds. Moreover, with modular pricing, you can start with just those functions you need and easily add more as you grow.

NP Entertainment has become particularly popular in the Scandinavian market, with big-name customers such as The Natural History Museum in Copenhagen, Aalborg Zoo and Tivoli Friheden.

Key features

  • Omni-channel ticketing
  • Point of sale
  • Ecommerce
  • Customer Relationship Management
  • Member management
  • Event management
  • Access control
  • Financials and accounting
  • Inventory management
  • Business intelligence and reporting

Click here for a more in-depth look at NP Entertainment.

 

We hope this blog post has helped you identify a ticketing & POS solution to suit the needs of your business. There is a lot of overlap in terms of functionality from the key players in the market, but the common theme is that the industry-specific functionality tends to be attached to either a base CRM or ERP system. The key is assessing what you already have an what you need to add. For example, if you have already invested in a strong CRM system, you may prefer to attach your industry-specific ticketing functionality to an ERP system. If you’ve identified NP Entertainment as a good fit for your museum, theme park or zoo, give us a call on 01908508080 or drop us an email at [email protected].

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