ConCentRICs (Convention Center Resource Information and Control system) is the ultimate in facility management systems. Even though Convention Center is part of the name, ConCentRICs will perform well for anyone who schedules events in their facility. This could be Convention Centers, Arenas, Auditoriums, Stadiums, Performing Arts, Theaters, Conference Centers, Banquet Halls, Resorts, Hotels, etc. A water drop in a lake, as pictured above, is a good representation of ConCentRICs. The water drip is an event coming to your facility. each concentric circle around the drop represents each department in the facility that has to do something for that event. The further the event proceeds in time, the more there is to do for that event. The ConCentRICs system then tracks all the activity for each of the departments in the concentric circles. ConCentRICs can handle everything from the initial contact with the client, through to final billing. It can help manage your inventory, staff and even your web site. ConCentRICs can produce automatic floor plans for easier setups and can give you instant profit and loss statements on any event or for a specified period of time. The ConCentRICs product is constantly being updated as requested by the IACU. The purpose of ConCentRICs is to reduce the paperwork involved in operating a facility. It provides a separate application for each department or functional area.This is for security and ease of use. When a user logs into the system they only have access to the options they need to perform their job function. This will provide each person with the tools necessary to ensure a successful event. ConCentRICs - How it all Started
In 1982, the management of the Indiana Convention Center and Lucus Oil Stadium, (formerly the RCA Dome but at that time it was called the Hoosier Dome), contracted with RIC Corporation to design and develop a computerized event management system. ConCentRICs was not solely designed by RIC Corp, but by the very people who perform these functions on a day-to-day basis. RIC Corp system designers teamed up with facility staff to see what functions they performed. A prototype was developed and submitted to these staff people, who tested it for form, fit, and functionality. This first draft version of ConCentRICs was then changed based on their input and feedback, and a modified prototype developed and tested again. This development and test process was repeated until the staff approved a finalized version. Even as all ConCentRICs applications are tested, approved, and put into production, they are constantly subject to enhancements based on user feedback from other facilities that use them. After successfully developing and launching ConCentRICs in Indianapolis, the system was installed at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. There, the accounting applications were developed, and other applications fine-tuned. RIC Corp began marketing the software to other facilities after the accounting applications were completed in 1984. Since then, ConCentRICs has gone global and is currently installed in facilities all over the world. The sun never sets on ConCentRICs. ConCentRICs Applications
The ConCentRICs facility management system has an application for every department in your facility. Below is a summary of what each of the available applications can do. If you need other applications then you can just request them. Each application is sold or leased separately per user, that way you only pay for what you use. If you need more information call RIC Corp Sales at (260) 432-0799 Ext 302 or email Sales@riccorp.com Application | Description | | Sales and Marketing | This keeps track of all of your potential business. You create sales files for any client you want to do business with, anyone that you are currently working with or clients you do business with all the time. This application will keep track of every event that client is doing. There are Trace Items to record every contact you have with this client. You can set reminders of when you want to work with them next. There are a number of marketing tools included to do mass mailings, calendars of potential business, sales activity reports and goal tracking by Sales Person. This will also track the life cycle of each client from initial contact until they book. You can push just one button and move the event to Scheduling Administration automatically. | | Scheduling Administration | This is your bread and butter application. This keeps track of the events that you have in your facility. It calculates all of your rental rates automatically and keeps track of any adjustments that were made, so you will know what was charged vs what could have been charged. You can view your events in a Book, Calendar, Inquiry or Profile format. You can collect any statistical information you want along with details on locations, equipment, services, food and economic impacts. You can setup reminders of when things need to be done for the event, produce contracts or any other event correspondence, attach anything electronic to the event and add all sorts of comments from an event narrative to event critique. There is an entire sub system for double-bookings. The system will notify you immediately when there is a double-booking. When a double-booking is created or changes all Sales people involved are notified. Sales people can check the status of their double-bookings at any time. | | Event Reporting | These are the system defined reports for the Events such as Graphics Calendar, Available Locations, Booked Locations, Food and Beverage, Optimum Space Use, Event Schedule, Client Schedule, Event Information, Detailed Bookings, Adjusted Rates, Settlement Reports, Booking Status Conversion, Events Bulletin, Schedule of Events, Event Attendance List, Scheduled Activity, Event Status Report, Calendar of Events, Event Services Schedule and Location Type Schedule. There is a Sales Report that will show you your sales activity within any date range. Besides all of the system defined reports, there is also a Report Wizard that lets you define your own reports. If the system is collecting the information then this will allow you to create any report you want with that data. | | Booking Analysis | This reviews all of your events in a date range and gives you a summary analysis that can be graphed. This includes an Event Summary, Client Summary, Sales Summary, Events Not Rebooked, Lost Business, Economic Impacts, Location Summary, Event Occupancy, Percent of Occupancy, Space Utilization, Yield Management, PricewaterhouseCoopers Survey, Event Information Report and Budget Tracking which will compare where you stand with actual event bookings compared to where you want to be in event bookings for any date period. | | Checklist/Follow-ups | Almost every application in ConCentRICs generates Checklists, Follow-ups, Trace Items and Approvals. All of them are centralized in this application. That way the staff only has one place to go to see all the outstanding and/or completed items no matter where they came from in the system. This also allows management to see the status of each person's items so you will know who is on track, who is behind schedule and who is ahead of schedule. | | Event Administration | This is where the information the staff needs to put on the event is controlled including Event Schedule, Setup Instructions and Room Drawings. The main goal of this area is the Event Document or Resume. Once that data is entered into the system we can do so much more with it. We can give each department and itemized list of everything they need to do in chronological order regardless of the event and distribute that information electronically. You will be able to generate a Two Week Schedule, Location Schedule, Operations Report, House Notes, Staff Assignments and Equipment Reports. We can even feed Electronic Sign Systems automatically. | | Event Settlement | This is where all the charges and payments for an event come together. You can generate an Event Quote, a Client Bill and an Invoice. If everyone on the staff does what they are supposed to do in their area of the system, then this section works automatically. This area can access every application in the system and gather all event charges in real time, so everything will be included even if it was entered just minutes before. Taxes are calculated automatically. All of the accounting information is tied to the settlement activity and accounting transactions are generated for ConCentRICs Accounting or can be passed to other Accounting systems. | | Food Administration | This handles all aspects of Food for your facility. You can do menu planning and pricing as well as concession and bar management. Food could be charged to an event or billed independently. You can create custom menus or have predefined menus. Pricing can be inclusive or exclusive. You can charge by menu item, standard category, total price or price per person. There is an inventory control feature that can track everything from what is stored where to raw ingredients for meals. | | Operations Administration | This is for the building engineers. This generates Work Orders for the engineers so they know what needs to be done around the facility. It also tracks the completion of these work orders, so the system knows how long tasks took to complete, who was involved and the cost to complete the work order. You will know what work orders are still outstanding and why they are outstanding. Anyone on the staff that is authorized can enter a work order as the need arises. Periodic work orders can be setup. This is for anything that needs to be done on a recurring basis, such as preventive maintenance. A new work order will be created at the appropriate time. The recurring invoice would then be reset for the next interval. Work orders can also be tied to Fixed Assets so you will know everything you have done and spent to maintain your equipment. | | Equipment Services | This is for the facility's operation staff. It will allow them to access all of the Event information they need to do their jobs in real time. They will see the most up-to-date information even if the information was changed just moments before. They can get a custom list of exactly what they need to do at any point in time in chronological order regardless of the event. If they provide anything for an event that needs to be charged for, then they can enter that when they provide it so it will not be forgotten. The system wants everything entered at the source, so there is less likely hood for mistakes and the system has the most up-to-date information as soon as possible. | | Inventory Control | There are a number of inventories in ConCentRICs. There are the tables and chairs and other equipment that events use over and over. That is handled in Scheduling and Event Administration. There are the Fixed Assets that are owned by the facility, but that is handled in Accounting. This inventory are all of your consumables. These are the things you need to have on hand at all times to keep the facility operational, but get used up. These are such things as spare parts, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, etc. The system will keep track of how many you have, where they are located and a history of when they were used, how many were used and by whom. They can even be setup to notify you when you are running low or even reorder automatically. | | Labor Administration | This controls all of your part time labor. You enter the jobs that your staff does. You then enter your labor pool, what jobs they can do and when they are available. The system will take care of labor scheduling from then on. The system is very fair and unbiased when it schedules. It gives everyone an equal opportunity to work. If someone can do more than one job such as a Ticket Taker and an Usher, then the system will shuffle them so they alternate between a Ticket Taker and an User so they are not always doing the same job. The labor schedule can be overridden and specific requests can be made but on the most part it will be all automatic. Job requests can be added manually but they will primarily come from the events themselves. Based on the booking of the event, the system will know how many people are required and for what jobs. | | Security Administration | This handles everything required by the security department. This includes Incident Reports, Situation Reponses, Issue/Receive Equipment, Security Log, Task Tracking, Key Tracking, Parking Decals, Illegal Parking and Suspicious People. Incident Reports of specific types can be flagged and sent to management electronically when they occur. | | Box Office Administration | ConCentRICs not only handles on-line ticket sales, but everything else associated with tickets. The ultimate goal here is to create the Box Office Settlement. There is also a Ticket Ledger, Event Ledger, Bank Ledger and Daily Tickets. You can also keep track and get reports on Service Charges, Accounts Receivable and Event Refunds. | | Accounting | ConCentRICs has a full facility management accounting system. This includes General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Check Processing, Fixed Assets and Budget Information. Accounting is fully integrated with the rest of the system. If all of the accounting related applications are used, then there is very little data entry required by accounting. The applications will generate all the required transactions. Accounting turns into an auditing task over a data entry task. | | Exhibitor Work Orders | This handles everything to do with Exhibitors. The main component is the Online Exhibitor form. The Exhibitors can click on a link on your web site and place their orders themselves. The order forms are customized by you and can offer any equipment or service that you can provide to your client's exhibitors. Credit card payments can be accepted so the items are paid for at the time they are ordered. Exhibitor orders and payments can be entered manually by your staff if the exhibitors mail, fax or phone in their orders. The system can then provide the information your staff needs on the floor to fulfill the exhibitor orders. THis greatly reduces the work of the Service Desk on the show floor. At the end of the event an Event Settlement can be run to generate all the appropriate accounting activity for the exhibitors. | | Paperless Office | Paperless Office is a general application to be used by any staff member. It contains all of the data entry steps from the other applications in the system. This allows the staff to make requests directly without having full access to all the applications. They could enter and review the status of a Work Order sent to Operations. Create an Incident Report, look up a Vendor that does business with the facility. They could enter a Purchase Requisition, Receive a PO and check the status of any Purchase Order. They can make a request for an Inventory item, put in a Payment Request or make accounting Journal Entries. Event Charges, Event Payments and Ticket Sales can be recorded. The staff can get a list of their Labor Schedule and a customized Work Schedule. | | Names and Addresses | Most of the applications use Names and Addresses. The system consolidates all of the names in one place. This way names only appear in the system once. If anyone makes an address or phone number change to a name in the system, then everyone who uses that name will have that change immediately. In this application you can inquiry on any name and know everywhere in the system that name is used. You can generate mailing lists, create name and address reports as well as import and export name data. If you run any report in the system that contains a name on the report, there will be a Name List button on the Tool Bar. This will allow you to see any of the Name and Address information for the names on the report. | | System Administration | This allows you to set the system controls to customize it for your facility. You can add the people you want to access the system as users and set their security so you can limit what each person can do in the system. There are tools available to review and adjust people's security levels. You also set your departments and holidays here. You can control system wide pictures and Bulletin Board Messages. The system keeps a log of all people's use of the system, so you will know what options each person is using and when they used them. | | Additional Features | The system audits all maintenance activity. You will know what was changed, when it was changed and who changed it. This makes everyone accountable for their actions. The system ties to your email server which allows you to send any report as an email message with the push of a button. You can turn any list report into an Excel spread sheet or a mail merge file. There are built in report writers, so if the system is collecting the information you can create a report of your design. There are import/export wizards that allow you to output system data as a file and import data from other systems. You can add your own fields to the system so you can collect virtually any information you want to collect. There is a Current Events section on the Main Menu that will show all the upcoming events. For all of the operations staff they could work right from there. There is a Bulletin Board section that will allow each user to set the options they use the most to get to their tasks easer. There is a Bulletin Board section that the system uses to notify everyone of important information. The system will post such things as Double Booking notifications, published Event Documents, and each person can get a customized Task Schedule just of them. You can also post any information there that you want the staff to see or have easy access to such as the Employee Manual or Emergency Procedures. |
What Makes ConCentRICs stand out for the Rest
Above all else - ConCentRICs is NOT a software system developed one way and sold as a 'one version fits all' package! Each facility has their own specific way of performing its daily operations. When you purchase ConCentRICs you are getting a software package that will be tailor-made for YOU! YOUR version of ConCentRICs will conform to YOUR work flow, using YOUR operational data fields and YOUR terminology. Here's how: When a new user purchases ConCentRICs, they will be setup on a web server or cloud server with a completely functioning system with all the basic settings.Then the new user can go in and customize their system with their locations, equipment, rates and terminology. If you do not have time to customize it yourself then RIC Corp can do that for you for a modest fee. You can even customize the fields so you can collect any information you want to collect. Once a field is added it is immediately available for maintenance and reporting. As YOUR needs change - ConCentRICs can change without having to wait until a next major revision and with no additional expense. Here's how: When ConCentRICs users find an area that they feel can be enhanced or needs changing, they submit their recommendations to RIC Corp. These requests are turned into 'Wish List' items. This 'Wish List' is not merely 'pie in the sky' dreaming on suggestions that are simply noted and then filed away for possible future consideration. These 'Wish List' items are submitted to the IACU members for voting. The ConCentRICs user community votes on whether or not they would like to see the change made. Six Yes votes will pass an item, but any one member can stop the item with a No vote. If passed, the change is made and posted to RIC Corp's web site. All IACU members will receive the updated version as soon as it is completed. There are no additional charges for this 'Wish List' process, since it is a free service provided by RIC Corp. |
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