Cashless: A project involving the whole organisation

In most organ­i­sa­tions, the var­i­ous com­po­nents of the event come togeth­er nat­u­ral­ly, like pieces of a puz­zle, thanks to the teams’ expe­ri­ence and habits. Every man­ag­er takes care of imple­ment­ing and organ­is­ing the assign­ments falling with­in their scope.

Imple­ment­ing a cash­less sys­tem is a dif­fer­ent project because it falls under the respon­si­bil­i­ty of every­one involved: com­mu­ni­ca­tion, tick­et­ing, bars, cater­ing, mer­chan­dis­ing, gen­er­al ser­vices, etc. Every ser­vice needs to ral­ly!

For many organ­i­sa­tions, this is the first time in a very long time that such a com­pre­hen­sive project is being car­ried out. When the deci­sion is made to inte­grate and roll-out a dema­te­ri­alised pay­ment solu­tion, it impacts the entire event. The deci­sion is tak­en ear­ly on and thus will fit into the var­i­ous stages of event plan­ning.

It often turns out that unit man­agers are not famil­iar with their col­leagues’ process­es and work­ing meth­ods. Inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems can sur­face when rolling-out the solu­tion.

There­fore, a cash­less project must be man­aged at the high­est lev­el of the organ­i­sa­tion, i.e. the gen­er­al man­ag­er and / or the CEO, because they will have to make deci­sions that can impact the whole event (set­ting up banks, impact on the num­ber of queues at entrances, pric­ing pol­i­cy for the ser­vice, etc.).

It is also impor­tant to hold reg­u­lar meet­ings with all key man­agers so that they all have access to the same lev­el of infor­ma­tion and can share their con­cerns.

How­ev­er, to ensure the cash­less sys­tem roll-out goes smooth­ly for every­one and is a com­plete suc­cess, it is essen­tial to appoint a Mr. or Mrs. Cash­less! This cash­less man­ag­er will be respon­si­ble for col­lect­ing queries from all the units of the organ­i­sa­tion and act as a point of con­tact with the cho­sen provider.

This point of con­tact can be a cur­rent employ­ee (gen­er­al ser­vices, tick­et man­ag­er, pro­duc­tion man­ag­er, trea­sur­er, etc.) or a new recruit ded­i­cat­ed to this project. Some major events even went so far as to cre­ate a role specif­i­cal­ly for this func­tion.