Staying ahead of the curve is essential for operators of family entertainment centres, trampoline parks, museums, wildlife parks, climbing centres and more. Understanding customer behaviour, tracking revenue trends, and optimising operations can mean the difference between success and stagnation. Recognising this need for comprehensive insights, ROLLER, a leading ticketing and booking solutions provider, has launched a new analytics product aimed at empowering businesses to thrive in the competitive market.
The company has teamed up with Google BigQuery to include cutting-edge business insights into its comprehensive venue management system.
This cutting-edge dashboarding and data visualisation system gives operators valuable insights into their venue’s success, marking a significant advancement in how organisations analyse their data. The ROLLER platform can now perform dynamic data comparisons, eliminating the need to export data to other platforms for additional analysis.
Lily Young, director of marketing at ROLLER, speaks to blooloop about the genesis of this innovative offering and its potential impact on the industry.
Customer-driven innovation
From the outset, ROLLER’s decision to develop an analytics product was rooted in customer feedback and market demand.
“This is one of those products that we worked closely with our customers to develop, and it was very much led by their feedback,” says Young.
ROLLER’s customers told the firm they needed deeper insights beyond traditional transactional data. They desired a comprehensive understanding of their business performance to drive growth effectively. Armed with this invaluable feedback, ROLLER embarked on a journey to create a solution that would meet the evolving needs of its clientele.
“In the process of developing the new product, we did some additional research with users, and there were a couple of key themes that came out,” she adds. “The first one was they wanted insights presented in a super visual and simple way. We know operators are time-poor; they don’t have time to spend trawling through their reporting line by line or manually exporting their data. So, it must be super easy to glance at all those important metrics.”
The other issue that emerged was that operators were tired of relying on different tools to do their analysis for them:
“They didn’t necessarily want to interface ROLLER with another third-party business intelligence (BI) tool. Having everything built directly into the platform is super valuable.
“Then, we knew that there were three key areas they were looking for in terms of analytics: a better understanding of revenue data to help with forecasting and looking at where they could make changes to improve revenue; a better understanding of memberships; and the ability to take a deep dive into the guest data to see purchase and visitation patterns.”
Unlocking actionable insights
The hallmark of ROLLER Analytics lies in its ability to translate data into actionable insights. Young emphasises: “One of the most important things we set out to achieve with this tool was making the insights actionable.
“We wanted to make it easy for them to look at this data, digest it, and then understand the most important trends that they need to be aware of, what is working well, and where there may be opportunities to invest more time or resources to grow and boost particular metrics. Ultimately, it’s designed to help them analyse all of that and then easily apply those insights to make changes to their business.”
By presenting data in a visually intuitive manner, the analytics product empowers operators to identify trends, capitalise on opportunities, and address areas for improvement promptly. Whether optimising revenue streams, enhancing membership programs, or understanding guest behaviour, ROLLER’s solution equips businesses with the tools to make informed decisions that drive tangible results.
“A good example would be spend per guest, which was one of the metrics we knew customers wanted to see,” adds Young. “And that’s included with Analytics. Operators can use the dashboards to see if their month-on-month average spend is either flat or dipping so they can make decisions about how to boost that spend per head, for instance by providing a new add-on in the online checkout to upsell guests or get staff to promote upsells at the point of sale, or by improving the food and beverage menu to compel people to buy more in the venue.
“They can trial things and see clearly if that helps to move the needle.”
A comprehensive suite of features with ROLLER Analytics
Central to ROLLER Analytics is its user-friendly interface and comprehensive feature set. Powered by Google BigQuery, the platform offers a range of dashboards and reports covering key areas such as revenue trends, membership insights, and guest behaviour.
Customers gain access to a wealth of data, from revenue breakdowns by channel to detailed membership analytics and guest purchase patterns. Moreover, Premium and Enteprise subscribers unlock advanced analytics capabilities tailored to their needs, including deeper insights into parties and group bookings.
“Basically, we’ve created a built-in business intelligence tool, and we partnered with Google BigQuery to build all of these powerful dashboards and visual reports right from within the platform. With Analytics, all customers get access to a set of visual dashboards and metrics around revenue, memberships and guest insights.”
“The revenue dashboard helps them analyse revenue trends, looking at revenue by channel, day, and week, really drilling into the granular detail. Meanwhile, the membership dashboard gives an overview of the health of their membership programme, looking at things like the number of active members, the number of members added and lost over a certain period, and the amount memberships contribute to their overall revenue.
The final core dashboard is guest insight.
“This helps them to understand guest purchase and visitation behaviour, with things like spend per guest. Then, some additional reports drill into specific metrics. For example, one shows the usage of discount codes, which we knew was a gap for customers.”
A premium offering
Those customers on ROLLER’s Premium or Enterprise subscription will get access to the Advanced Analytics product:
“This gives an even more sophisticated view into revenue and membership insights and unlocks some additional insights around parties and group bookings, which we know are essential to many of our customers and make up a considerable percentage of their revenue. There’s also a great venue performance dashboard that gives a real aerial view of year-over-year key metrics for managers looking at planning and forecasting.”
“Plus, they’ll have a broader range of reports available that help them drill into things like revenue down to the hour, the age distribution of guests, top-performing staff, and more.”
Tangible outcomes from ROLLER Analytics
When it comes to some of the outcomes that ROLLER hopes its customers will see after adopting the Analytics, Young says:
“Having that super visual, easy-to-consume view of their top metrics will be a big time saver for our customers. They will no longer rely on external tools to analyse their ROLLER data or manually do it themselves by pulling that data out of ROLLER’s platform and working in Excel. We know that that is going to eliminate a lot of manual effort.
“From our research on the impact of business intelligence tools, we have seen some compelling stats showing that businesses using BI tools save up to 125 hours per year, compared to that manual analysis.”
“Plus, in terms of revenue and return on investment, making impactful changes to your business and seeing how those are moving the needle will give our customers better returns because they can make more data-driven decisions. According to industry data, companies that use BI tools see up to a 2.5% increase in operating income and over 300% increase in ROI.
“There’s compelling information in the market that suggests that when our customers start to use this tool, they’ll see great payoff.”
Elevating the guest experience
Beyond enhancing operational efficiency and driving revenue growth, the ROLLER Analytics product promises to transform the guest experience. By leveraging data insights, operators can better understand their audience, personalise offerings, and exceed guest expectations.
By aligning offerings with guest preferences, venues can foster loyalty and maximise customer satisfaction, ultimately driving long-term success.
“Overall, it comes back to that idea of being able to make impactful and informed decisions.
“For example, if we talk about memberships again, and we know that is a hot topic with our customers, they could see if their monthly repeat visitation has increased, showing that many guests are coming back. That could be a great indicator to say, ‘These are guests that are interested and coming back for more. Could I upsell them to a membership and lock them in for 12 months?”
Knowing what guests want is crucial:
“Something we really focus on regarding the value ROLLER delivers is how we can help customers improve the guest experience. That comes back to better understanding what guests are looking for and meeting them where they are.
“For instance, our customers can use the data to understand who their guests are so that they can better cater the experience to those guests and ensure they keep coming back time after time as well. Of course, the better the guest experience, the better the returns to your business. But it’s all about really understanding your guests at a deeper level and making sure what you’re delivering exceeds their expectations.
“If you can see it all on a page, it’s just a game changer.”
Support for ROLLER Analytics: empowering customers every step of the way
In addition to the robust analytics platform, ROLLER is committed to providing comprehensive training and support resources to ensure customers maximise the product’s value. From self-guided documentation to personalised onboarding, ROLLER’s holistic approach empowers operators to harness the full potential of the analytics tool.
“We already have a wealth of training and support resources on offer for our customers,” says Young. We have a fantastic help centre that provides many self-guided resources on all of our products and features, and there’s already documentation in there that takes customers through all of the new dashboards and reports and shows them how to use them.”
“There are in-app resources, too. We know some operators might be new to a few of these metrics we’re introducing, so we have a glossary that helps them understand what each metric means. As always, our customers can access our 24/7 support team, which is available worldwide.”
In addition, new customers who use ROLLER’s onboarding service to set up the ROLLER suite will have access to one-to-one training covering the entire platform, including Analytics.
“We’re also working on a range of additional resources for the blog to provide thought leadership and inspiration for using the tools effectively.”
Analytics featured in a recent ROLLER product spotlight webinar, which is now available on-demand.
More innovations to come
Looking ahead, ROLLER remains dedicated to continuous innovation, with plans to expand Analytics’ capabilities and address emerging industry needs. Whether streamlining online checkout processes or enhancing venue operations, ROLLER’s vision is clear: to empower businesses to thrive in an ever-changing landscape.
“Two key areas that we’re investing in are our online checkout and the time it takes to check in guests,” says Young. “The team is doing a lot of work to implement features in the online checkout that help operators increase average spend. So, they’re looking at making it easier to upsell guests with additional items and encouraging guests to upgrade items in their cart. Some changes have already been rolled out, and the impacts on online revenue have been impressive.
“We also want to help operators reduce check-in time and eliminate bottlenecks at the front counter. That means ensuring that guests arrive prepared with things like a signed waiver so that they don’t have to spend time doing that on the day and draw out that check-in process.”
In terms of Analytics, this is just the start, she adds:
“We have a whole roadmap of features that we want to introduce to the product; the first and highest priority is HQ analytics. That will be for operators who manage multiple venues within ROLLER, and it will help give them that aggregate view of their venues’ performance, which we know is critical. They don’t want to spend time having to look at each venue one by one; they need to be able to see an aggregate level and then compare and contrast so that they can make strategic decisions across the business.”
ROLLER Analytics offers operators unparalleled insights and actionable intelligence to drive growth and elevate the guest experience, thus empowering businesses to chart a course towards success.
