B:Music

Background

B:Music runs Symphony Hall and Town Hall in the centre of Birmingham — two of the city’s landmark venues, selling over half a million tickets a year across more than 900 events. A ticketing and CRM setup at that scale is core infrastructure, not a back-office detail.

After a decade with the same supplier, B:Music wanted to go to market for a new ticketing and CRM system — and to do it properly: testing whether that long-standing partnership still matched the organisation’s commercial objectives and values, rather than renewing by default.

The challenge

Any new system had to keep working with Artifax, which underpins existing business functions, so integration couldn’t be an afterthought. The team also carried a number of day-to-day pain points they wanted the procurement to resolve, not repeat. The task was to translate all of that into clear, testable requirements that suppliers could actually respond to.

Our approach

Op-Tix was engaged through Indigo (Katy Raines) to lead the ticketing and technical side of the procurement. Drawing on experience building connected technology ecosystems, the work focused on identifying the critical infrastructure needs and communicating them unambiguously to potential suppliers.

What we delivered

• PQQ response refinement and scoring
• Requirements clarification for the invited organisations
• Pitch evaluation and assessment
• Attendance at supplier presentations
• Strategic guidance through system selection

The outcome

B:Music went to market with sharp, well-scored requirements and evaluated suppliers on merit — with the technical realities of integration understood up front rather than discovered later. The result is a selection process grounded in the organisation’s commercial objectives and values, not habit.