Simon Stewart runs food festivals in the UK – the touring Cheese and Chilli Festival being the highlight of his events business. He’s used OnePlan since the early days for his 4 events each year. His knowledge of OnePlan stretches back five years ago when our 1.0 product had an orange interface, through the existing studio product and he now shares his views with us on the brand new version of OnePlan.
As an experienced OnePlan user, Simon’s familiar with the features and benefits OnePlan provides event organizers. His first impressions of the new OnePlan didn’t disappoint. “It all looks brilliant. The range of functionality, the speed. Hats off to you, it’s fantastic,” he says.
For Simon, as with so many of the event planners that use OnePlan worldwide, saving time when planning is a key benefit the product provides. The new version of OnePlan boosts this further, with an 8x faster load time, and tests showing that new OnePlan is 2x faster than before to create a festival plan.
Simon adds, “It’s such a good product and offers so much in terms of time management.”
“Hats off to you, it’s fantastic! It’s such a good product and offers so much in terms of time management."
Easier usability for better planning
Helping our customers save time when planning their event has been a primary objective behind our re-build of the OnePlan product. New OnePlan is a completely new version, delivering a far easier user experience along with the speed improvements.
Simon has seen our journey over the years, constantly iterating based on the user feedback we receive. He says, “In terms of usability, there have been areas it could be easier to use and I see you’ve covered those in the new version of OnePlan.”
New OnePlan includes a simplified object menu, giving you the ability to style any object easily. This means the object menu is de-cluttered, making it easier to navigate and find the objects you need. New features are being added regularly in the weeks and months ahead, as we continue developing the product at speed.
The choice of maps in the new version of OnePlan provides a better choice for users, with dramatically faster load times worldwide. “The maps are really great,” adds Simon.
A confident way to plan events
When Simon first started using OnePlan, he needed a solution to streamline his process of planning the Cheese and Chilli Festival. With 9,000 attendees at his festivals across England, he needed an easier way to plan that gave him confidence on day one of the event. He had previously used a mix of spreadsheets, map screenshots, presentations, and email, all of which didn’t allow for a seamless way to plan or capture data.
He says, “With the software we were using before, the ability to scale wasn’t great. We couldn’t rely on it to be accurate and we would often get to site and have to make changes to layout due to plans not being at scale.”
That all changed when he switched to OnePlan for the first time. That was using our ‘1.0’ product, with its orange interface and a forerunner to the OnePlan Classic product that he’s used since. “In that 1.0 version, you could only move one block at a time and it was really time consuming. What you’ve built since, and the improvements of this new version, are a real benefit for sure,” says Simon.
Simon has been using our ‘2.0’ product, now known as OnePlan Classic, to plan his festivals. The key benefit he gets is confidence that what he plans in OnePlan will translate to the actual event site, acting as a ‘living plan’ for event set-up and operations.
“The main benefit I get by using OnePlan is confidence. Being able to walk on to the event site and having the confidence to know it all fits, that means a lot,” he says.
This comes from the accuracy of OnePlan’s web platform, along with the range of features and tools available. Simon adds, “All the functionality you’ve got is fantastic – in terms of barriers and fencing, as one example. I find it really helpful.”
He’s not alone! In 2024, 10,286 festivals were planning worldwide in OnePlan, and barriers were one of the most popular object types our users placed. Top of the list were tents and marquees, with a huge 395,651 plotted in OnePlan.
Now with the new version of OnePlan, it’s easier than ever to place objects. “It’s all really good,” says Simon. “It saves a lot of time planning the festival site from the office.”
More features coming soon
With this data and user feedback, we’ve designed and built the new version of OnePlan from the ground up. More features are coming soon including object coordinates, text-box labelling, multi-select objects, plus the ability to import your own files, and export your site plans.
And new OnePlan will continue to have efficiency as a key principle, helping event organizers worldwide save time when planning their event sites and venues. Simon says of new OnePlan, “The speed at which you’re able to use the system is massively improved. It’s great – you’re progressing all the time.”
We’re grateful to Simon and all our users for the input we receive to help us continually improve OnePlan. It’s a fundamental part of our mission to make event site and venue planning as easy as possible for the incredible events that happen every day around the world.
