The Australian Ballet has deployed a platform to coordinate all the teams and behind-the-scenes work needed to bring a production to life.
The not-for-profit implemented monday.com’s work management platform to boost its operational coordination and efficiency, leading to a reduction of administrative burden.
Head of digital Mark Keevers-Hall told a monday.com Elevate 2024 conference that the platform allows The Australian Ballet to focus on executing tasks, projects, and processes efficiently, while avoiding costs.
The marketing and production teams were initially onboarded to monday.com, followed by a broader expansion to other parts of the organisation.
“Before the ballet even reaches the stage, there’s an enormous amount of work to be done, stretching across teams like wardrobe, logistics, contracts, marketing, stage management partnerships and front of house,” Keevers-Hall said.
“The list goes on and on, but one thing remains true: every team needs to be totally aligned with a clear line of sight to who’s doing what and when and what adjustments need to be made along the way.
“We needed a solution that could bring the same level of grace to our operations that our dancers bring to the stage.”
Keevers-Hall noted that tracking approvals is a key use case for the platform.
“In our business, there are a lot of approvals,” he said.
“The marketing team, contracts team, and creatives all need the okay to be sure the brand is positioned correctly.
“We’ve automated status changes when artwork is ready for approval, with multiple [dash]boards feeding into a single approval dashboard, allowing upper management to understand what they needed to approve and when, and one consolidated list that was easy for them to use and understand.
“And you can do something as simple as change a status, which enacts an automation in the background to … alert the right person.”
Keevers-Hall said the implementation work has led to cost avoidance and greater team satisfaction.
“This has saved us approximately eight hours per week, per person, giving us more bandwidth creativity and allowing our team’s true talent to shine,” he said.
The platform had also “improved clarity” around responsibilities: it forces “us to think about processes and documenting those and following them, so all the automation work in the background and our leaders get what they need in agreed type and format,” Keevers-Hall said.
“Given the demanding nature of ballet, there’s absolutely no room for wasted effort.
“Each step we’ve taken, bringing in monday work management, facing our challenges head-on, embracing new ways of working has been part of our ongoing effort to improve how we operate.”