6 Year-End Data Insights for Your FEC

While we are counting down the end of 2020 so we can move into the new year, use these tools to prepare for a profitable 2021.

Throughout this year, we have all had to continuously adapt to navigate each new challenge, and it’s likely that we’ll have to continue to do so in the days to come. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make a solid plan for the future. It’s time to reflect on everything you’ve learned in 2020 so that you can use those insights to set new goals and initiatives to help your business recover and thrive.

As you begin your year-end review, be sure to check out these key data points from your CenterEdge Business Intelligence dashboard to help you understand your business’ health in some new ways.

1. Overall facility sales

On the Overview tab of CenterEdge Business Intelligence, you’ll find at-a-glance graphs for key data compared to previous periods of time.

A great starting point after the Overview tab is the Sales tab. There, check out the Sales Over Time graph, which will show you performance month over month comparisons. You’ll want to compare several years’ worth of data, as well as month to month trends to help you determine achievable sales targets for the future. As always, look for any downward trends or outliers using the category sales by division or product sales by category scatter charts, and then drill down into the graphs to get more information about what has been happening in your park.

2. Web sales

In the Sales Dashboard, charts like Web Receipts Amounts and Web Receipts can give you a glimpse into how much revenue comes in from your online store as well as the percentage against on-premise sales. With capacity management practices, this can help you see if your guests are pre-reserving their experience with you, or if you want to change the way you market to drive more sales ahead of time. Or maybe you implement sales targets and marketing initiatives that drive web sales for season passes or memberships to help you bring in advanced or recurring revenue.

3. What’s hot (and what’s not)

As you had to do earlier in the year, it makes sense to revisit Category and Product Sales chart to decide which packages, food combos, and product offerings will take you into the new year – and which should drop off (or be added back to) your menu.

Just like when you move around games in your arcade, something as simple as repackaging your attraction and food combos can result in increased engagement and sales. Take time to also review which merchandise offerings are key sellers and come up with innovative ways to package them and boost per capita spending.

4. Admissions

Moving over to the Admissions tab, if your facility tracks admissions, analyze your facility headcounts for data on when you’re most profitable. Information like what days and times the majority of your guests come to your facility can help you forecast staffing requirements, understand when to conduct promotions and targeted sales efforts, or even when to adjust your operating hours.

If you offer different types of admissions passes, you can also review Pass Utilization to see which are being used and how often, to help you boost per capita spending with additional pass member marketing or changes to the pass program. These data points can be viewed on a daily or even time of day basis to give you information about what’s happening in your park.

If you’ve been trying to boost return visits to your facility, you can analyze customer visits, demographic information, and trends in the graphs on the Customers tab to determine how effective targeted marketing, loyalty, and membership programs have been in getting repeat visits, and where you might need additional efforts in the future.

5. Events

Events historically have been a huge part of your business, and the data on the Events tab should be an important part of your year-end analysis and goal setting exercises for next year.

Use the Events Booked by Amount and Type to compare this year’s events to last year’s as well as identify your most popular (and profitable) packages so you can streamline your offerings where necessary.

The Event Sales Per Attendee by Event Type chart offers a glimpse into how profitable your events are broken down per attendee. For example, a $199 birthday party might seem like a decent purchase price, but if you’ve reduced capacity and are allowing non-playing guests to come in for free, you could be leaving money on the table.

When you start getting into this level of detail, it’s easy to see where you can make a few small changes – such as an upselling game card promotion for every party child – and immediately make a real impact.

6. Labor

As you begin looking at profitability around things like inventory and costs of goods sold, labor profitability will likely be part of that analysis. CenterEdge’s Business Intelligence Labor Dashboard gives you a glimpse into your labor percentages and trends and allows you to compare data per day of the week. This is especially helpful when trying to determine opening hours, special events, and in which departments you wish to develop cost savings efforts.

Want to know how productive your frontline team members are? The Sales Earned for Every Labor Dollar Spent chart has the answer that you can use to develop upselling competitions or guest service touchpoints to move that needle in a more profitable direction.

In just a few minutes, you’ll be well on your way to assessing 2020 so you can start 2021 off strong.

Don’t have CenterEdge Business Intelligence for your business yet? Contact support@centeredgesoftware to sign up for your free dashboard.

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