Business View Magazine | June 2019

57 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JUNE 2019 are back-to-back, where you’ll see an ad on TV that actually promotes both markets and we jointly advertise.” BVM: Can you talk about the Centre’s technological amenities? Kowaluk: “We recently had a large investment into the Wi-Fi throughout the entire complex - within the last four months. So, that was a tremendous improvement that was necessary for a lot of the shows throughout the facility; one of the main ones being Manitoba Ag Days, which is the largest indoor agricultural event in Canada. We are constantly working on things like lighting and sound. We’ve been working on a couple of different lighting projects in some of the rooms, making them more energy-efficient and improving the facility’s bottom line as well, with Manitoba Hydro upgrades, particularly, because there are some programs that are closing, so, we’re taking advantage of those.” Schumacher: “We actually have a lot of the core things you need here, so time has been spent running fiber everywhere, so that’s improvements to our telecommunications. We’re adding a new center hung scoreboard which will be state-of- the-art, and again, because we have a lot of the infrastructure already in, this would have been a much more difficult and more expensive project. So we’ll be up to date with the technology there: a six-meter board and everything that goes with that for a little more interactive, better game presentation.” “We’ve added a point-of-sale throughout the building for our food and beverage operations. We now have the credit/debit capability, point-of-sale, so that people aren’t using cash everywhere. And like most venues, all the events we’re managing are on an interactive booking system. We use EventPro currently, and it’s got much better reporting and better communication. We have an outside food and beverage company, Centerplate, so we’re now in the next phase of how do we get more detail into our budgets and combine the two companies’ budgeting with our sales efforts and have it all wrapped together so that we’re THE KEYSTONE CENTRE