Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2013 - 58

5. Think about the future and be prepared to adapt.
Make sure the system can change as quickly as your
organization does.

Implementation
Analyzing your needs and selecting a BI solution is the first step.
Implementing the new solution and managing the changes it
requires is the next important step. It may not be easy to convince your staff members to adopt it because they may initially
be required to do extra work. BI is just as much about change
management as it is technology.
Will you dump the old process and begin using the new
system immediately? Will you use both at the same time until the
kinks of the new system are worked out? What time frame will
you follow for implementation? Who will be the main driving
force keeping everyone on board and on task with this system?
For example, implementing a new props inventory database will require someone to take the time to tag every item and
enter all the descriptive information into the system. Before that,
you need to have thought out exactly what descriptive information you want to keep and how it should be categorized. For
example, do you want separate categories for chairs, couches,
and settees, or do you just want a general furniture category?
Do you want categories by year, decade, or century? When taking pictures of the pieces, do you want someone to hold a ruler
next to the piece? Is the photo shot from dead on, or from the
side, or both? Even something as minor as whether to use decimals or fractions in measurements needs to be considered.
The general idea behind the process of change management
can be thought of like the process of changing the shape of an ice
cube. First you have to unfreeze the ice cube into water. Then you
have to pour the water into a newly shaped mold and refreeze
it. The same sort of process works with change management.
Once you have analyzed how your current process works, you
can create a plan-a mold-for the new process. Through communication and training, you unfreeze your current process and
mold it into the new process, continuing to adjust as problems or
efficiencies are found. Once the new process begins to work, you
slowly freeze the system into the new normal.
But remember that it's just ice! It can always be melted
and reshaped again.
Getting everyone who needs to use this new system on
board with the change will be much easier if you communicate
with your staff what the problem is that you are trying to solve,
seek their input on how to solve the problem, and demonstrate
to them the benefits this new system will bring to their work.
Then, follow up with an implementation plan, schedule of landmarks, and training.

Examples of BI Solutions Using Microsoft Access
Microsoft Access is a popular and cost-effective application for
creating BI solutions on Windows computer systems-it generally comes bundled with the Microsoft Office suite of applications. You should evaluate if Access is the best software for your
organization, but for the purpose of this article, I will use the
56

theatre design

& technology

s u m m e r 2013

BI solutions I created in Access for the Shakespeare Theatre
Company in Washington, DC, to demonstrate what can be done
in any theatre.
The first example is a financial system I created for our
production department. The second example is a project management system created for the costume shop to track actor
data, costume pieces, budgets, notes, and wardrobe information. After showing how these two systems work for us, I will
demonstrate how to plan a BI solution from scratch, using an
overhire tracking and ranking database.

A Materials and Labor Tracking Database
MatBud/PayBud (or Materials/Payroll Budget) is a financial system for tracking check requests, purchase orders,
bulk materials, petty cash, and credit card purchases.
When I began working at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, all financial data was tracked in two separate Excel
spreadsheets: one spreadsheet for materials purchases,
and one for payroll and designer fee payments. It wasn't a
very efficient system, and since STC's yearly operating budget is in the millions of dollars, reconciling all the data in
the spreadsheets, line by line, would take weeks. We were
unable to track spending by departments or purchases by
vendor. We also couldn't allocate spending, pre-paid or
post-paid, between different fiscal years. Setting up new
spreadsheets for each fiscal year, and linking them to an
overall budgeting spreadsheet was a task that took a full
month to complete.
With MatBud/Paybud, the process of keeping track of
project financial information is much easier. We can easily
set up new shows or projects to track and add account codes
on the fly (fig. 1). We can now generate reports that were not
readily available in the past, like tracking spending by vendor.
In addition, we can compare information spanning several fiscal seasons, for example, props spending on opening night
flowers, last season vs. current season, or truck maintenance
and gas purchasing expenses.
Payroll for full-time staff is processed bi-weekly, and
hourly employees still fill out a paper timesheet. Originally,
once these timesheets were processed, I would enter them into
an Excel spreadsheet and reconcile my results with Human Resources. Entering the timesheets into Excel took at least a day
and a half, and reconciliation would often happen after paychecks had already been issued.
With the new system, recording information on the paper timesheets takes thirty minutes to an hour, and the reconciliation is done in time to catch and correct any errors on the
timesheets before paychecks are cut.
In addition to tracking labor expenses, the Employee form
(fig. 2) tracks historical information, including changes in pay
rates, job promotions, department swaps, etc.
Implementing the MatBud/PayBud system was a breeze. I
was the one processing this information and entering all of the
data, so I knew the exact problem I was trying to solve and was
easily able to see how a new system would positively affect my

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