Case Studies
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Active Data Calendar Drives Tourism
for the City of Bethlehem
“Without Active Data Exchange, I
would still be working with varied staff, and adding content for my internal
clients would be painful, slow, and expensive. They have proven to be a game changer for us.”
Kathy Vossough, Deputy Director,
Economic Development with the City of Bethlehem
The
Challenge
How does a thriving and culturally rich city in a region
of more than 800,000 residents extend the reach of its events, activities, and
programs in a cost effective and meaningful way to help promote its community,
attract visitors, help stimulate commerce, and provide greater access to its
government?
This was exactly the challenge faced by the government
and commerce leaders of Bethlehem, PA – The Christmas City.
The core challenges were to:
·
Generate relevant and dynamic content for
visitors to the site.
·
Illustrate Bethlehem as a vibrant city with lots
of great things happening all of the time.
·
Centralize event content and extend the reach of
it as far and wide as possible.
Additionally, another challenge was also making this
vision come to fruition with tight budget constraints and few technical staff.
The
Approach
Relying on overburdened staff to manually update pages was not only
cost and time prohibitive, it also would not allow Bethlehem to keep up with
the constant stream of event updates. Given the objectives for both government
and tourism, a new centralized and unified platform approach would work best in
order to:
· Promote tourism in the City of Bethlehem for
building awareness.
· Attract and engage visitors.
· Drive revenue for local businesses.
· Take government transparency and accountability
to a new level.
“Because of the importance of the calendar, it had to be accessed by
different groups throughout Bethlehem, and we wanted to have everyone to use it
to add or schedule events” said Lynn Logue, Vice President of Bethlehem
Initiatives for the Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce. “Also, we knew we needed to work with a
vendor over time that truly understood our needs and objectives, so it was
important that what we were looking to accomplish wouldn’t just be an
afterthought.”
The solution had to:
·
Solve the ‘empty content problem’ of having
little to no information to provide to visitors.
· Provide robust ease of use to allow a diverse
staff with little technical knowledge to manage event and meeting information.
· Import event information from multiple sources
including other organizations, departments, websites, calendars, and systems.
·
Be easy to manage and allow for the seamless
integration of future content and functionality.
·
Enable distributed control of content with
centralized final approval.
·
Drive down traditional costs of print and mail.
Enter
Active Data Exchange
Through an in-depth selection process that included
several excellent web-design firms, technology and software vendors, Active
Data Exchange’s products suite was ultimately chosen because of its focus and
expertise in web based calendaring, and for the following criteria:
· Ability to auto populate events from other
Active Data Calendar clients like Lehigh University, Northampton Community
College, Pennsylvania Youth Theater, First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem,
and ArtsQuest.
· ‘Create once, publish everywhere’ functionality
enables maximum distribution without having to enter the same data multiple
times.
· Ease of use for a wide variety of event content
contributors.
· Import of data from multiple locations creating
one centralized repository of date information.
· Enhanced syndication capabilities for extending
the reach of events, meetings and activities far and wide through a variety of
channels including social media and mobile.
· State-of-the-art Technology - Active Data
Exchange continuously invests in research and development of new features and
functionality for regular updates to its product suite.
Active Data Exchange offered superior products and
services, as well as superior project management that had been honed over the
course of 12 years working successfully with client partners.
The
Results
Since the successful implementation was delivered on-time
and on-budget, submissions to the City of Bethlehem’s web calendar site have
grown dramatically. Active Data Exchange’s event administration and management
platform has provided the City with the ultimate benefit from a unified
calendar solution – leverage to:
· Continue to organically grow their community
calendar effort.
· Add, modify, and update hundreds of events and
supporting content safely and easily with no loss of continuity or consistency.
· Extend the reach and value of its web strategy
in new and compelling ways.
The City of Bethlehem now has the power to create, grow,
and manage a world-class feature without taking on significant staff or budget
burdens all while meeting the needs of citizens and tourists regionally and
beyond. Active Data Exchange’s ability to aggregate and pull events from
existing Active Data Calendar clients, and its ‘create once, publish
everywhere’ functionality proved to be a major benefit and success factor to
the project.
“Active Data Exchange’s product suite was on target with
what we were looking for, they were already two steps ahead of where we wanted
to go,” said Kathy Vossough, Deputy Director, Economic Development with the
City of Bethlehem. “During our entire relationship, they have proved my
confidence in them was well placed.
About the City of Bethlehem
Since 1741, Bethlehem has beckoned travelers to experience the warmth and hospitality of this delightful community. From its humble beginnings as a Moravian settlement to its modern status as the heart of the thriving Lehigh Valley, Bethlehem has carefully preserved its past. It is a city of 71,000 that shines as brightly as its huge electrical star atop South Mountain. The Moravian influence remains strong, but many more traditions from many lands have joined in making the city a "melting pot" of cultures, blending one into the other.
About Active Data Exchange
Active Data Exchange is a leading provider of web-based master calendar management products and services that align and create value for organizations of any size by delivering a combined view of date information that can be drawn from multiple sources. The company was founded in 1999 and is located in Bethlehem, PA.