Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2013 - 57

Chances are your organization, school, or department has
already implemented some kind of BI system. Ticket services,
inventory systems, accounting programs are all examples of BI.
It can be as complex as an Oracle server or as simple as an
Excel spreadsheet. To begin to understand what Business Intelligence is, you first need to understand the difference between
data and information.
Data are known facts. For example, prop inventory number 124 is a 1905 period red wingback chair. You know this
because you keep an inventory of all your props.
Information is knowledge gained through the study of
data. If you study your prop inventory, you could answer questions such as: How many wingback chairs are in the inventory?;
How many props fall into the early twentieth-century period?;
How many red chairs do we have?
Being able to quickly gather up information can be very
useful. For instance, when a scenic designer calls and asks
if you possibly have an early 1900s red wingback chair in
stock, you can easily say, "Yes. The prop shop currently has
twenty wingback chairs in inventory, seven of which are from
the 1900-1920s period, three of which are red. Do you want
me to send you pictures?"
Business Intelligence is the science of turning data into
usable information. When properly implemented, a BI solution can save hours of work, even days, by quickly compiling
facts into useful reports and spreadsheets that can help you
analyze your operations and make informed decisions.
An inventory system is one type of BI system. Other
examples of business intelligence software include: Tessitura, which collects audience and donor data, so that
you can find information such as the average age of your
single ticket buyers vs. subscribers vs. donors, how many
shows individual patrons attended in the past year, and what
their show interests may be based on their past purchases;
Lightwright, which collects data on lighting instruments
and lighting design to easily create paperwork and help
the lighting department track changes; and QuickBooks,
which collects financial data to track what has been purchased, to assign it the proper account or budget, and to
track purchasing at vendors over time.

Selecting a BI Solution
Before you can select a Business Intelligence system for your
organization, you need to understand the problem you are trying to solve. What is your current process? Is it as efficient as it
can be? If you were to redesign your accounting form to make
it easier to fill out, how would you change it while still gathering

the required information?
Not every BI system is right for every organization. A 100seat auditorium that implements a rep lighting plot of twenty
instruments could probably find a better place to spend $1,000
than on a site license of Lightwright. And while several BI solutions may exist for one problem, not every solution will solve
the problem efficiently for every organization. A prop shop that
mostly pulls from stock should look for a solution that tracks
inventory rather than a system that manages construction costs
and building materials.
Finally, since the world of theatre is constantly changing, it is essential to make sure any solution is adaptable to
future changes. How useful is it to spend months creating a
financial system that efficiently manages your present needs
only to find out that next season an additional show is being
added, plus several presentations, and a new theatre is going
to be constructed?
Here is a quick list of tips on how to begin looking for BI
solutions.
1. Define the problem. What exactly are you trying to do? What
is the end goal? I need a budget for the construction of
the capes for the ensemble members on stage in Act 2,
Scene 3.
2. Understand the processes you currently use and get input
from everyone involved in those processes-analyze
their advantages and disadvantages. We enter budget
information into a standard Excel form. But when a
cast member is added to the scene, we have to reformat
that actor's information and paste it into the budget
and then update the summary tab.
3. Affirm or change your current system. If your handwritten
notes system works, maybe all you need to do is figure out
how to make it more efficient. If your current system is
a train wreck, think about why. Creating a BI solution to
work around a bad system will not create efficiencies but
rather will expand existing faults while creating new ones.
If we were to reformat how actors are listed in one tab,
then we could simply copy/paste information, which
would save time overall and make the spreadsheet look
cleaner and easier to read.
4. Look for a solution if one already exists, or begin to think
about the system you would create to solve this problem.
We need a budgeting database that can show the
relationship between the actors, their characters, and
the costume pieces they wear so we can analyze where
efficiencies can be found both in labor costs and
material costs.
s u m m e r 2013

theatre design

& technology

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