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The San Diego Zoo recently upgraded to Gateway’s eGalaxy Reseller Web Store product, significantly reducing their costs and improving the efficiency of their consignment operations.
Gateway’s award-winning eGalaxy Reseller Web Store is a Web-based Point of Sale application designed to automate the process of consignment ticket sales. Major benefits include a reduction in personnel overhead and printing expenses. Thanks to print-on-demand functionality, providing resellers with pre-printed tickets is no longer necessary, reducing both costs and risk. Other features include an automated reconciliation process that reduces hours of labor previously spent collecting and manually counting unused tickets. Up-to-the-minute sales reporting collects sales data and invoices resellers at regular intervals so revenue can be realized immediately instead of at the end of the season.
Using the eGalaxy Reseller Web Store, the Zoo’s resellers can now log on to the Zoo’s reseller store and purchase the tickets for the client. This greatly reduces the labor and staff that the Zoo needs to have on hand and nearly eliminates reconciling ticket orders. The client always has sufficient tickets available and there is no need to redistribute tickets if there is a price adjustment. The Zoo also uses less ticket stock and fewer printer heads, and saves on shipping and reimbursement charges from Zoo employees who had to personally deliver the tickets to the client.
Thanks to the eGalaxy Reseller Web Store, the San Diego Zoo has been able to reduce the labor and staff requirements for creating and verifying orders as well as batch printing. The Zoo can mitigate the amount of ticket stock and printer heads that need to be purchased as well as a reduction in shipping charged from ticket orders and emergency ticket orders for when a reseller runs out of tickets. "Our call center staff now has more time to devote to sales-related calls, such as special experiences for customers and group reservations, " said Michael McSparran, Marketing Systems Analyst for the San Diego Zoo.
"After the configuration and setup was complete, moving a customer over to the Zoo’s eGalaxy Reseller Web Store took less than five minutes on the Galaxy side, " said McSparran. He further elaborated, "Things are working very well. Our biggest client has over 250 stores and 750 users, and we are currently training them on the eGalaxy Reseller Web Store."
Since implementing the solution, the Zoo has reported significant savings in costs and improved efficiencies. "We’ve estimated that the Zoo will have $70, 000 in savings from implementing the eGalaxy Reseller Web Store, " said McSparran. "That doesn’t even include our savings from finance in shredding unused tickets and hiring temporary employees to deal with the reconciliation process."
About Gateway Ticketing Systems, Inc.:
Gateway Ticketing Systems, Inc. is the world leader in high-speed, access control, admission control, and ticketing software for the attraction, amusement and transportation industries. Located in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, Gateway Ticketing Systems provides sales, service, and support for point of sale and ticketing systems throughout North America and worldwide.
For more information on Gateway Ticketing Systems, visit www.gatewayticketing.com or call +1 (610) 987-4000.
About the San Diego Zoo:
The 100-acre San Diego Zoo is dedicated to the conservation of endangered species and their habitats. The organization focuses on conservation and research work around the globe, educates millions of individuals a year about wildlife and maintains accredited horticultural, animal, library and photo collections. The Zoo also manages the 1, 800-acre San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park, which includes a 900-acre native species reserve, and the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research. The important conservation and science work of these entities is supported in part by The Foundation of the Zoological Society of San Diego.
