How much does a platform save an enterprise business versus a product stack?
One thing we often see amongst enterprise venues in the leisure and entertainment space is a pretty big technology stack. This presents a few problems:
1. Significantly more expensive
2. A disconnected eco-system
3. Time consuming to manage
Let’s look at these three areas in more depth, using a multi-activity business with 8 venues as an example of a business with a traditional technology stack.
Significantly more expensive
Looking at a standard multi-activity venue, we know there are absolutely four core areas they will need.
- Booking System
- POS
- CRM
- Waiver Solution
Now, let’s take a look at four vendors in this space that solve each of these needs, with pricing taken from their website:
| Solution | Cost |
| Xola (Booking System) | 1.90% + £0.30 per transaction |
| Square (POS) | 1.4% + 25p for cards per transaction |
| Hubspot (CRM) | £126 per month just for starter pack (7 Lics) |
| Smart Waiver | £155 / 2.5k waivers per month |
Using averages from data available online, let’s say each of our multi-activity venue is in the UK and recording the following averages:
- 75,000 annual bookings
- £937,500 @ average price of £12.50 per booking
- £350,000 revenue in POS sales
- 50,000 transactions per year
Booking System Charges per venue:
Percentage Fee: 1.9% × £937,500 = £17,812.50
Flat Fee: 75,000 × £0.30 = £22,500
Total for XOLA per venue: £40,312.50
Square POS costs:
Percentage Fee: 1.4% × £350,000 = £4,900
Flat Fee: 50,000 × £0.25 = £12,500
Total POS System Cost per venue: £17,400
So let’s revisit the table above for a monthly cost of using this common technology stack configuration across all 8 venues:
| Solution | Monthly cost for 8 multi-activity venues |
| Xola (Booking System) | £26,875 |
| Square (POS) | £11,600 |
| Hubspot (CRM) | £126 |
| Smart Waiver | £1,240 / 2.5k waivers per month per venue |
| Total | £39,841 / £4,980.12 per venue |
Compare this to BookNow Software, which gives you everything in the above stack on one platform, at one cost.
Our pricing is £500 per location / 1.2% and £0.12 per transaction
Using the above figures and calculations, the transaction fees work out at £30,450 per venue.
So we can use the table above for BookNow:
| Solution | Monthly cost for 8 multi-activity venues |
| Booking System | Included |
| POS Built For Leisure & Entertainment industry | Included |
| Salesforce CRM | Included |
| Waivers – No cap on uses per month | Included |
| Total | £24,300 / £3,037.5 per venue |
This is a saving of over £15,500 (or £1,943 per single venue) per month and over £185,000 annually, not to mention the added benefit of now having all of your key solutions on one platform – which we cover with our next two points.
A disconnected eco-system
A major challenge of managing a disparate technology stack—where your booking system, POS, CRM, and waiver solutions operate independently—is the lack of integration. Connecting these systems often requires significant development work, which can mean additional expenses, time, and reliance on technical staff. And even then, integration may not be feasible depending on the limitations of your vendors.
This separation of systems results in customer data being scattered across multiple platforms, limiting your ability to make informed marketing decisions. Without a unified view, marketing efforts can feel like shooting in the dark, as teams lack comprehensive insights into customer behaviours and preferences.
For example, booking data might be locked in a platform like Xola, forcing marketing teams to pull trends manually to see when customers last visited, their visit frequency, and peak times. To track your best-selling secondary items or manage inventory, you’d need to switch over to your POS system. For insights into campaign performance, you’d log in to a CRM like HubSpot, and waiver information would be in yet another application.
This segregation of data not only makes it difficult to gain a full picture of customer behaviour and preferences but also hinders high-level business decision-making. At the executive level, you lose the ability to view consolidated metrics, a problem that only grows with additional venues.
With BookNow Software, you have a single source of truth. From revenue and profit reports, key customer data (which we call customer 360) and stock control, nothing is off limits thanks to the power of BookNow and Salesforce. This leaves no doubt to how your business is performing.
Time consuming to manage
Managing a technology stack with separate booking, POS, CRM, and waiver systems can be incredibly time-consuming. Each platform requires individual management, which means your team has to constantly toggle between systems just to piece together essential business insights. This involves repetitive data extraction, cross-referencing, and manual report generation—tasks that drain valuable hours each week.
Additionally, every system demands ongoing maintenance, such as updating software, troubleshooting issues, and handling vendor support. Without seamless integration, even small changes or updates in one system may require duplicative work in others to keep data consistent and accurate across the board. This ongoing juggling act diverts time and focus from customer service, marketing, and operational improvements that could drive your business forward.
Not only does this fragmented approach limit efficiency, but it also amplifies the risk of data errors, as manual processes are inherently more prone to mistakes. Over time, this inefficiency scales, especially as your business grows, resulting in a substantial time commitment just to maintain basic functionality across venues.
As you can see, choosing a platform solution like BookNow Software offers tremendous savings on cost, admin time as well as providing your business with a fully connected technology stack, giving you the most detailed view of your business performance in the industry.
Discover how BookNow Software can serve as a single source of truth for your enterprise, streamlining and centralising your business operations. Take a product tour by completing the form below to see it in action.
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