At a Glance
The UK’s creative industries have been growing at a steady pace, and to sustain this momentum, arts and entertainment organisations need flexible ERP tools. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central supports budgeting, asset management, ticketing, and compliance, while Brookland Solutions is here to help you implement these new tools in a tailored manner, offering training for long-term success.
Creative Industries in the UK
The art and entertainment sector contributes significantly to the UK’s GDP, with a GVA (gross value added to the economy) of £123.03 billion in 2024. Its growth of 6% since 2019 has been faster than the overall UK economy. This is positive news, but, as with any industry, the growth pace of the creative industries sector greatly depends on how quickly it adapts to the changes and challenges.
To keep up with this pace of growth, your creative business needs an ERP system that’s suitable for the demands and complexities of the arts and entertainment businesses. When used as a cloud-based system, Microsoft 365 Dynamics Business Central goes beyond being simply a project management tool for creative industries, with the potential to bring in flexibility and meet the accountability demands that art businesses face today.
In this guide, we’re exploring the features and best practices of Business Central for your art, entertainment, and creative business.
How Cloud ERP Systems are Transforming Arts and Entertainment Businesses
Creative businesses across the UK are increasingly turning to digital tools to run their operations. From production houses to theatres and museums, organisations are keen to adopt cloud-based ERP systems to improve the way they handle their budgets, funds, and daily operations.
What Are the Creative Industries in the UK?
The UK’s creative industries include film and television, music, design, gaming, digital media, and visual and performing arts. The UK government is in the process of implementing the Creative Industries Sector Plan, which is designed to increase investment, support the workforce, and open up new business opportunities. The overall aim is to keep the UK at the forefront of creativity and innovation.
With this in mind, here are the significant benefits that cloud ERP platforms like Dynamics 365 Business Central can bring to your arts and entertainment business.
Creative Access Anywhere
With a cloud-based ERP, your staff, volunteers, and trustees can access project and financial information anytime, from anywhere.
Scale When You Need To
Growing businesses need to scale quickly to meet rising demands. A cloud ERP can scale up with your needs, whether you’re managing a single domestic project or multiple international operations.
Lower IT Burden, More Creation
Using a cloud-ERP system means you won’t need to maintain on-premise servers. Dynamics 365 Business Central is supported by updates, security patches, and hosting from Microsoft.
As your BC implementation and support partner, the team at Brookland Solutions manages all these tasks, so your team can focus more on creative delivery.
Business Central Features Built for The Creative Industries Sector
Whether you’re an operational lead in a production house or a finance manager with a media and publishing house, Dynamics 365 Business Central can be customised to support the unique needs of your creative organisation. Here’s how:
Production Planning & Budgeting
Business Central makes it easy to break down your budgets, reports, and data for each individual show or production.
When you have a clear breakdown of a show or production project, you can quickly understand performance and profitability and make decisions accordingly. This is especially helpful for your finance teams, so they can confidently focus on the areas that need attention in your production portfolio.
Managing Venue, Equipment & Assets
Business Central has numerous features and functions for managing your venue, assets, and equipment, their usage and availability.
The Fixed Assets management features allow you to manage equipment and assets across your productions. You can also use the Project module to track and allocate resources and manage venue bookings. This makes it easy to see at a glance that everything from stage setups to technical equipment is ready for each show.
These features help you optimise resource allocation and reduce downtime, so you can deliver productions on schedule and within budget.
Ticketing Integration & Tracking Revenue
You can integrate ticketing and retail systems with BC to track, report, and analyse sales collections.
The Dynamics system automatically captures data to reduce manual effort and lower the risk of error. Along with managing ticket sales, retail products, and pricing in real-time, you’ll also get insights through analysing comprehensive data and reporting functions.
Supplier & Procurement Tracking
BC allows you to monitor your spending on suppliers, from contractors to merch vendors, within each production budget. You can make the most of the tool’s functionalities to track and manage purchase orders, approvals, and financial compliance with full audit trails.
If your art and entertainment business needs any support with native or third-party solutions, feel free to contact our team.
Best Practices and Pitfalls in ERP Adoption for the Arts Sector
Adopting a new or modified ERP system, whether on-premise or cloud-based, is as much about people and processes as it is about embracing new technologies. For creative industries, we recommend some best practices to follow and pitfalls to stay clear of:
Best Practices
- Conduct a needs analysis: Start by identifying the roadblocks you’re facing, such as manual reporting or budget tracking issues, before building a solution tailored to your business.
- Involve stakeholders early: Invite inputs from all stakeholders and staff early into the process.
- Invest in training: Assign time to train your staff on how the system works and how they can get more value from the ERP.
- Testing: Test with a small batch or team before a full-scale rollout.
Pitfalls to Avoid
- Skipping training: Assuming staff will “pick it up” often leads to frustration and underuse.
- Underestimating change management: ERP adoption changes workflows. Without communication and planning, your staff may resist.
- Ignoring data quality: Poor legacy data leads to inaccurate reporting. Make sure your data is free from redundancies before you migrate it.
Business Central for Your Creative Business with Support from Brookland Solutions
Brookland Solutions specialises in implementation, migration, support, and upgrades for Dynamics 365 Business Central. For more than two decades, we’ve helped SMEs across various industries, including the creative, arts, and entertainment sectors.
Beyond just implementing an ERP solution, we’ll look at your business and the challenges you’re facing, so we can provide a customised ERP solution that works best.
From theatres to event organisers, we’ve supported art and entertainment businesses in reducing admin pain points and dependency on manual entries and spreadsheets, centralising data conveniently in one system.
If you’re ready to maximise the functionalities of BC subscription or are looking for extensions or upgrades, book a consultation today.
