Goodwood Estate

Goodwood Estate, spanning 11,000 acres in the South Downs of West Sussex, has been the seat of the Dukes of Richmond for over three centuries. Renowned for its world-class reputation, the estate hosts three major sporting events annually: the Goodwood Festival of Speed, the Goodwood Revival, and the Qatar Goodwood Festival.

The estate offers over a dozen versatile venues, including the grand Ballroom for large celebrations and the intimate Cedars Hall for smaller gatherings. Each space seamlessly blends historic charm with modern amenities, catering to a wide range of events from weddings and corporate functions to private parties. Supported by a dedicated events team, Goodwood Estate ensures every event is executed flawlessly, making it a premier destination for memorable occasions.

Background

Before integrating iVvy, Goodwood Estate had difficulty with an overly complicated and time-consuming sales process for both their team and clients. Coordinating between various venues was cumbersome, leading to inefficiencies and delays in the sales cycle.

The complexity of Goodwood’s operations also made it difficult for the team to keep track of different events across multiple venue locations. The lack of streamlined communication between sales, planning, and operational teams often resulted in confusion and inefficiencies. Additionally, handling vendor coordination and service supplier details manually added another layer of difficulty, often causing delays and miscommunication about responsibilities on event days.

Dealing with the different needs of Goodwood’s clients, especially international visitors who use various payment methods and have different VAT requirements, posed challenges in making sure everything was financially compliant.

As the number of venues and the size of events grew, it became clear that a more efficient, centralised solution was needed to handle the increasing complexity and volume of Goodwood’s event operations.

iVvy Solution

iVvy’s platform offers a centralised system for managing bookings and event schedules across Goodwood’s various venues. This feature allows Goodwood to have a clear overview of all events taking place throughout the estate. The ability to view and manage the estate’s diverse event spaces from one interface has significantly streamlined the planning process and improved operational efficiency for the team.

iVvy’s fast quote generation and centralised lead management tools have given Goodwood a competitive edge by increasing the speed at which they can respond to enquiries. This responsiveness has improved client satisfaction and helped secure more bookings, making the sales process more agile and effective.

With iVvy’s CRM and vendor management features, Goodwood can oversee all vendor interactions and logistics from a single platform. This includes tracking which vendors are providing services, such as catering and vehicle logistics, for each event. This centralised information reduces the risk of errors and delays on event days.

The software’s integrated financial tools support various payment systems and compliance standards, helping Goodwood manage financial transactions smoothly and ensuring adherence to different international regulations. This has simplified accounting processes and minimised compliance risks.

Inventory management capabilities allow the estate to keep track of available resources and allocations for each event. This feature ensures all venue spaces are properly equipped for their respective events, avoiding double-booking and ensuring the availability of necessary assets for each event.

Results

Using iVvy venue management software, Goodwood Estate has been able to significantly improve internal operations, making it easier for the entire team to stay updated, informed, and prepared for their full event schedule.

Rosie King, IT Project Coordinator at Goodwood Estate explains;

“iVvy has helped us tackle some of the big challenges in our business this year, such as with financial compliance with our international clientele who use different payment and VAT systems to us. It’s also helped with the increase in venues that we have at some of our headline events, such as Festival of Speed.

iVvy has increased the speed at which we can respond to quotes and therefore giving us a competitive edge. iVvy has really helped with our coordination between vendors and service suppliers, because we can see in one simple system who we’ve got coming that day. We can also control via the CRM different kinds of vendors, such as who’s going to be providing the food and what kind of vehicles we can expect to show up that day.

What I love most about iVvy is its versatility. I love the fact that we can plan events on our motor circuit on it, as well as also being able to host weddings using its functionality. I love the diary management, and I also love the ability to see other events across all of our venues. Goodwood is a very big estate, so it’s useful to know what’s going on at the house and motor circuit, respectively.

I would recommend iVvy software to other businesses, as it has allowed us to expand what we do as a company, whether that’s from weddings to planning events to venue hire for corporate businesses or to our headline events such as Festival of Speed.”

• Faster contract and quote creation using document templates
• Smoother task management with information in one system
• Greater team collaboration through multiple user capabilities
• More streamlined processes using task and process automation