iXpole

Throwback Thursday... On 14-11-2024 we organised our User Forum. At this occasion we had the pleasure to meet these 2 champs: Dylan A. Magagnin and Hugo Lesne. These 2 gentlemen are part of the commercial team at RAAL La Louvière. In an interview-style presentation (with Nicolas Claquin) Dylan shared his experiences with iXpole at the club. La RAAL is known in Belgium as a visionary club with sky high ambitions. From what we learned it looks like they are on a straight path to achieve these ambitions. As part of their vision they decided to deploy iXpole very early, even before they were playing in the professional league. This allows them to not only get acquainted with the software but also to use it to their benefit to significantly increase their partners in the running up to 2 ilmportant milestones: 1️⃣ The planned inauguration of their new Stadium. +/- 8,000 seats and +/- 2,000 business seats!! 2️⃣ The (desired) promotion to 1A. How things are looking at this moment: a very realistic goal Make sure to follow these two gentlemen on linkedin as they share their experiences during their commercial journey from the lower regions of the ranking to (hopefully) the highest competition in Belgium

😲 You couldn't join us in Dublin for SVB LIVE? As well as Gordon Kaye's closing joke, you also missed a great testimonial on how clubs and arenas can transform premium seating to generate more revenue. 🎤 We are very thankful for Innes Cuyt, Lara Spaan, and Sem Franssen testimonial on stage and all the knowledge they dropped during this panel session. 📅 With preparations for the next season already underway, we invite you to watch the replay of this session. Inspiration, sharing and uncompromising testimony are on the menu for this panel. Find out more here: https://lnkd.in/eD-KPpkc

Throwback Thursday Throwback to the iXpole User Forum of last week Innes Cuyt of be•at played a crucial role in the organisation of this year's edition. 👩🎓 She coordinates the VIP hospitality at Sportpaleis and as such was our "Supplier" for this event. ☯️ She helped us plan an excellent event in the be•at Hospitality Center with all the necessary logistics: screen, AV, seats, catering, drinks, ... the works... And on top of that she took the time to share her iXpole experience with the audience. Her main focus was on the VIP Booker which is being extensively used be•at. They use it to create different online sales channels, each with a different target group and potentially different products. 1️⃣ The first one is the regular VIP Booker. When somebody looks up an event on the website of be•at and they indicate they want to buy a premium experience, they will be redirected to this VIP Booker. On that VIP Booker be•at will sell the total experience: ticket + premium services 2️⃣ The second VIP Booker is the "Upgrade" VIP Booker. Every customer who buys only a ticket (via the promotor of the event) will receive an email from be•at inviting them to upgrade their ticket to the premium experience. If they are interested, they click on a link that routes them to a VIP Booker where premium experiences are offered, but WITHOUT the ticket; only the experience itself. 3️⃣ be•at have a partner who manages some sort of experience app for its members. Within the app they want to offer be•at experiences, so be•at created a special VIP Booker for them. It is fully in line with the house style/branding guidelines of this partner. Any member will be routed to this specific VIP Booker. It will look like he is dealing with the partner, but in reality he is dealing with be•at but via a different channel. 4️⃣ Another partner has rented an entire hospitality space and wants to charge a nominal fee to its members for the use of this lounge. be•at has created a specific VIP Booker to put these services up for sale, fully branded in line with the house style of this partner The use of different online sales channels doesn't only allow be•at to target different segments with different products, different prices and even different stylings. It also allows them to easily measure and report on the success of each individual channel and thus analyse the success of the partnership or of the upgrade strategy. Additionally Innes also spent some time explaining her peers how be•at has started promoting and selling coupons, a product that is hoped to show some results in the period leading up to the holidays... Many thanks Innes Cuyt for your dedication and help in turning the iXpole User Forum into a big success!!

2 events in one day for iXpole! Yesterday, Nicolas Claquin attended WeezDays Sport at the Weezevent HQ near Paris. A day full of insights from experts in their field: 🦺 how to ensure crowd management and safety during big events, with a focus on the Paris Olympics, by Pascal Viot. 🇫🇷 Nathalie Péchalat explained us what made the Club France during the Olympics such a success. ⚽️ Pierre-Henri Deballon detailled how the vision he has for Weezevent could be applied to the Dijon FCO (DFCO). 🎮 in the afternoon, we turned to e-sports when Arthur Perticoz gave us some insights about how the Karmine Corp work and ambitions for the future. 👨🏻💻 Sébastien Tonglet showed the differents products that are part of the Weezevent galaxy. (We even recognised some few slides from David De Wever’s presentation at our forum last week 😉) 🤾🏼 it was then the turn for Guillaume CHARPENTIER to tell us more about the fan experience at the HBC Nantes. 🇺🇸 and finally, a sneak preview at the US fan experience with Benjamin Roumegoux. It was a great opportunity for us to meet with clubs, network and see our friends from Weezevent and Bundeling, Benjamin and Karl Lefranc! Thank you again to the Weez team, as well as Pierre-Henri and Benjamin for having us!

Here he is.... Frederik De Vuyst from Cercle Brugge KSV assuming his role of iXpole ambassador at the FBIN summit. After a short introduction by Luc Vanhecke, Frederik took the audience along in a story about their adventure deploying iXpole. His focus was mainly on 💚 🖤 The VIP Portal - the self-service tool for business partners, where they manage their tickets. It is also the tool they use to order additional tickets or to order catering 💚 🖤 On-demand - a system of 'credits' giving the business partner the option to decide per game whether he wants to redeem his 'seat credit' or his 'meal credit'. The customer can spend these credits online and can follow up the balance of his credit at all times On Demand is an ideal tool for clubs looking to increase their sales in a time when it becomes more and more difficult to get commitments for an entire season from business partners. Many thanks, Frederik, for your time and efforts!! 🙏 🙏 🙏

While one part of the company is attending the WeezDays Sport at the Weezevent offices, another part is headed for a more sunny ☀ destination... ⚽ ⚽ With Frederik De Vuyst of Cercle Brugge KSV we are attending the FBIN summit at the Estadí Son Moix of RCD Mallorca. ⚽ ⚽ Together we'll be sharing Cercle's experiences with the automation and optimisation of their VIP operations. 🍾 🥂 🤝🤝 Yesterday evening was already a very productive night thanks to a nicely organised networking event. 🤝🤝 Let's hope today will be at least as productive! 👊👊

On our way to the FBIN summit in Palma de Mallorca! Accompanied by Frederik De Vuyst who will be speaking there tomorrow about the Business Operations @ Cercle Brugge KSV and -of course- how the iXpole platform has helped them save time, increase productivity and increase customer satisfaction. Or at least…. That is what we hope he will explain there 🤣😇

📣📣 Tomorrow Frederik De Vuyst of Cercle Brugge KSV and our own Luc Vanhecke will be entertaining the attendees of the FBIN summit in Mallorca with a -hopefully- interesting pitch about automating B2B operations at Cercle Brugge KSV. 📣📣 Main focus will be on the online self-service channels for premium customers and how the club digitally manages a system of 'credits'. 💵 💵 💵 With these credits, partners buy a certain number of seats, parking spots or hospitality services at the start of the season. Throughout the season they then get to pick how much they want to spend on each game. This system allows for a lot of flexibility and thus customer loyalty on the one hand but would be unmanageable if you have to manually keep track of all spending... Come find out more about this and lots of other things

🥇 The winners are known!! 🥇 We are not so into all work no play. After 7 jam-packed hours of interesting sessions (new features, new insights, customer testimonials, partner product presentations) everybody's brain was full. 🧠💣 We had to do something to let the attendees of the iXpole User Forum unwind... 🎯 So we organised a small darts tournament. 🎯 First off a poule stage where teams of 2 challenged each other to a game of around the clock. Based on the results in this stage, we created 2 knock-off rounds. One for the top ranked people and one for the bottom ranked people. This resulted in two finals and thus 1 'WInner' and 1 'winner' 😉 The Winner (of the big league) was Yoni Verbelen of YR KV Mechelen, who beat a more than worthy competitor, Pieter Moons of RSC Anderlecht in a neck to neck competition The winner (of the second league) was Bart Colémont from be•at who faced Lara Spaan of RSC Anderlecht. LAra, who had outperformed herself in the knock-out competition unfortunately experienced a little dip in the final, causing het to miss out on the main prize.... RSC Anderlecht in both finals of the darts competition.... 😇 Many thanks to be•at for letting us use their Hospitality Center for this event. It was the perfect setting and the perfect hospitality service....

🎬 It is a wrap for the 2024 edition of the iXpole User Forum 🎬 How interesting it is to see how spontaneous actions can unexpectedly give rise to new traditions. Two years ago, one of our customers, Bruno Van Gysel -jokingly- suggested using his venue for the next edition, so he wouldn't have to travel too far. As a result, last year's edition took place in the OH Leuven stadium. Before we realised it, be•at followed his example and suggested hosting the 2024 edition. This concept seems to have caught on, as the venue for our next edition has also been fixed in the meantime. This year's edition's focus was mainly on ‘Inspiring each other' 💡🤔 4️⃣ customers were found willing to share their experiences with the group: ⚽️ In an interesting interview, Dylan A. Magagnin from RAAL La Louvière shared with us the club's success story. Of course with a focus on how they will deal with business customers and VIP Hospitality in the new stadium (under construction 🧱) 🎤 Innes Cuyt of be•at focused her story on the versatile use of the VIP Booker to create multiple online sales channels. She also shared be•at's initial findings on the use of coupons for their premium segment. ⚽️ Although KRC Genk only recently became an iXpole customer, Tom Lauwens - already had a very interesting story to tell about the way they have automated all their hospitality processes. In their implementation iXpole replaced made 3 other tools redundant, thus significantly reducing the complexity of their matchday operations. ⚽️ Unfortunately, Mathieu Lootens of FCV Dender EH was unable to share his insights due to unforeseen circumstances. We would have loved however to hear him talk about how they have launched their B2B operations from scratch over the past two years. We received a lot of positive feedback about the way our customer shared their stories and how other customers went home with a lot of ideas. 🍷🍾 Last year, we came up with the idea of scheduling some time for a networking/fun activity in addition to the academic part. Because of its success, we had to do something similar this year. It looks like another tradition is in the making. For this edition we considered several options. In the end we decided to host a mini darts tournament for the attendees. 🎯 The winners will be lauded in a separate post.... Finally -an annual tradition since 2022- our customers were kindly invited to a nice dinner. This year 16 of us wrapped up the busy day in a Brazilian Rodizio restaurant. The ideal formula for a large group to socialise, reminisce and spout ideas for next year's edition. The food, drinks and inspiration were plentiful. ❤️❤️ We keep on repeating it: we have the nicest customers! ❤️❤️