The Spektrix Community exceeds 200 user organisations in the US and Canada and 400 in the UK and Ireland, as we remain the fastest-growing arts CRM solution in the regions we serve.
Client facing teams continue to grow their capacity, focussing on direct, expert support for Spektrix users. A new Support Analyst role is created to streamline responses to user queries, whilst specialist teams support fundraising, web integrations, training and support resources, consultancy and more. Our commitment to user success means this remains an inclusive part of our offer - there's never any additional charge for Spektrix users to access practical or strategic support, training or consultancy.
Having established a successful programme of online training, roundtables and webinars during the pandemic, we continue to support users through 80+ online events delivered throughout the year - along with our first in-person gathering since 2019.
We double the size of our engineering team for the second year running, ensuring we can continue to invest in the scale and security of our platform as well as adding new features. This capacity and expertise ensures our software continues to meet the needs of the sector - not just now, but in 10 and 20 years' time.
We move to a permanent hybrid working model with bases in London, New York and Manchester. Many team members choose to work from home, but our offices remain open and we continue creating regular opportunities to connect in person.
Measuring the Demographics of Audience Composition is a research project designed to help the sector understand how well arts audiences represent local communities. After various experiments, it proved unrealistic to reach a truly random and representative sample with the resource available at a typical live event - so we'll adapt this approach, instead focussing on how welcome or included different audience members feel at cultural venues.
Rethinking Recruitment captures our learning around the recruitment process, to help other arts organisations attract a wider, more diverse pool of candidates for ticketing, marketing and fundraising-related roles.
A multi-year project migrates our entire platform from our own physical infrastructure to the Microsoft Azure cloud. By passing the management of our servers onto expert providers, we gain almost infinite capacity to meet demand, and free up time for our engineering team to focus on what only they can do - developing Spektrix to meet users' needs.
The Covid-19 pandemic impacts the live events sector across the globe. It's soon clear it will be a tough time for our users and - since our revenue is largely based on ticket sales - for Spektrix as well. We hold our nerve and continue to build our system as planned, despite the challenges that face us.
The Spektrix Ticket Converter Tool is released to our users and the wider sector within days of the first lockdowns. The tool makes it easy for organisations to ask audiences to donate all or part of the value of cancelled tickets, and to manage those donations - saving more than £1m of lost income for the sector by late spring.
The Barbican Centre in London - Europe's largest arts centre - sells over one million tickets each year across a theatre, concert hall, cinemas and a gallery. Their decision to move from an in-house system to Spektrix demonstrates their trust in our platform and expertise, and in true-cloud based solutions as the most secure and reliable software choice for large and complex organisations.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, there are now 300 members of the Spektrix Community in the UK and Ireland and 100 in the US and Canada.
Many organisations take advantage of the enforced pause to switch systems, recognising Spektrix as the right solution to help them regroup and rebuild.
The UK and Ireland conference is our largest ever, gathering almost 600 users and partners. A day of discussion about technology, audiences and agile working ends with an inspiring keynote by Jess Thom, highlighting the importance of accessibility in widening and diversifying audiences.
Matt Scarisbrick decides to step aside from Spektrix to pursue his work as a software engineer, whilst co-founder Michael Nabarro remains as CEO to continue building their shared vision.
GDPR comes into effect across the UK and Europe. Realising the scale and challenge this presents, our toolkit for the sector leads the way in advocating for legitimate interest as the basis for data processing. Our resource and events support numerous professionals across the sector as they adapt their working practices to safeguard customer data.
The Opportunities interface introduces a whole new section of Spektrix, with powerful, integrated development tools added to existing marketing and ticketing features. This joined up approach becomes central to our offer, giving organisations a single, 360-degree view of all customer behaviours and removing the labour, cost and risk of running multiple CRM systems.
We open a second UK office in Manchester, making it easier to connect with users across Scotland and northern England.
100 organisations are now using Spektrix across the UK and Ireland - including ARC in Stockton-on-Tees, Clwyd Theatre Cymru in Wales, and Derry Playhouse in Northern Ireland. B: Music in Birmingham is our largest user organisation so far, selling half a million tickets each year across an exciting, multi-venue programme.
Within five years of its launch, Spektrix is increasingly recognised as an innovator and influencer in the ticketing market. New, user-friendly solutions for segmentation, offers, reporting and web integration, as well as extensions to our API, are transforming box office practices. This growing feature set attracts increasingly influential users including the Royal Court Theatre and Battersea Arts Centre in London.
Spektrix users assemble at the Bush Theatre in London to talk about best practice, technology and innovation in ticketing and marketing - the first of many in-person gatherings and conferences that continue in our thriving events programme today.
We complete our first live data migration for Sutton Theatres. This becomes a core element of our offer - rather than asking organisations to take on the cost and risk of migrating their data to Spektrix, we've developed our own set of tools to seamlessly migrate data from any previous system, with minimum downtime and no need to run both systems in parallel.
The first 'proper' Spektrix office opens in Highbury, London. It's just 200 sq ft - a tight squeeze, even for a team of five!
