Kim Ludolph Koch, Group General Manager and Dennis Wietlief, Head of Controlling and Reporting, share with us how they are using Showtime Insights to gain a deeper understanding of day-to-day Operations.

Cineplex is a German cinema chain founded by a collective of 6 family businesses back in 1996. Since then, the group has grown to 26 family businesses with over 90 cinemas and a market share of 15%. 

Different from many other cinema chains, Cineplex is a cooperation, made up of economically independent businesses that work together in all fields where it makes sense.

One major benefit of the grouping is the exchange of information and this is where Showtime’s Insights tool comes in – it allows for comparison between cinemas with similar benchmarks. 

Kim Ludolph Koch, Group General Manager, has been involved with Cineplex from the beginning, he agreed to chat us through their experience of working with Showtime along with Dennis Wietlief, Head of Controlling and Reporting for the group, who has trained a number of members on how to use the Showtime Insights tool in their day-to-day reporting.

Cineplex first signed up with Showtime in 2018 as our first customer in the German market. After a complex integration, and continuous development to the system through collaboration with both teams, Cineplex now report an even higher usage and adoption rate since reopening their sites this year following the Covid-19 pandemic.

BUILDING OUR OWN BENCHMARKING GROUPS

Kim: I have worked with the group since its foundation in 1996 . In these 25 years the group has grown from 6 family businesses to 26 and we are now the biggest brand in Germany, with a market share of 15%. We’re completely different to other big companies like CinemaxX which belong to Vue or UCI which belong to Odeon and AMC. We are a cooperation of 26 family businesses and while they’re economically independent, we all work together in certain areas where it makes sense. Of course, it makes sense to come together when buying goods, programmes and technology and one very important part of the cooperation is the exchange of information. It is in the DNA of Cineplex to share information and ideas and help each other to improve. For that reason Showtime provides a very powerful tool with their Insights product because everybody has their own cinema, but is now able to compare the results of their own cinemas with others from the group. 

Everybody makes their own benchmark. We have 90 sites, the largest member has 7, so there are still a lot of cinemas who are able to compare their own performance against all the others in the group using all the analytics that Showtime provides.

“There are other levels like staff costs and marketing costs that are not tracked through our POS Compeso, but Showtime Insights of course has everything and I think it’s very helpful and fun to use!  I know that a lot of my members build their own benchmarking groups of similar cinemas, or cinemas in similar situations - same size, same cities or comparable cities and look at what the others do better than them, and learn from their effects and improve as a result.”

- KIM LUDOLPH KOCH, GROUP GENERAL MANAGER

GETTING COMFORTABLE WITH INSIGHTS

Kim: We still  have monthly reports that deal with tickets, concessions, advertising and so on, as well as an annual report where we put a lot of other elements together which combines our marketing activities, film rentals, marketing spend from distributors, Facebook accounts, and payment and online purchases. We still do that but on a real-time basis. Showtime is a popular, much better insight into what’s going on today and yesterday and who performed better. Of course, everybody uses Comscore but we think Showtime’s tool is a much more comfortable way to analyse this data.  It gives more insight.

MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU

Kim: For me, it’s very interesting to be able to make comparisons for certain sites, particularly when it comes to changes - for example, one of our cinemas recently changed to luxury seating. Obviously the price has now changed and we can see if more visitors come to the cinema now, or less, based on the rising price. To be able to see those kinds of effects and the changes year to date with the year before means I have a more general look at developing the admissions and concession figures. 

“If I want to check if a site has shown a specific movie in one week or another, I can go into Insights, click through the filters and I get the results really quickly.”

- DENNIS WIETLIEF, HEAD OF CONTROLLING AND REPORTING

COLLABORATION IS KEY WITH SHOWTIME

Kim: We were the first users in the German market and needed a lot of German specialties to be integrated - the Pfand system for example - so there was a lot of work to be done before we could roll it out seamlessly to our members. We worked together with Showtime for almost a year to get the programme that we wanted and the workflow was done in a very constructive and cooperative way.

Dennis: We can spitball here and there and just float some ideas. We always get the feedback. It’s always a pleasure talking to them. They understand my questions, they understand my problems, they come up with solutions. The team are all really nice. 

“Getting Insights integrated for the first time into the German market with the largest group in the country was a big project and everyone was very willing in getting the job done and always responsive when I needed to reach someone.”

DENNIS WIETLIEF, HEAD OF CONTROLLING AND REPORTING

MAKE THEM JEALOUS

Dennis: I talked to a friend about this programme about a year ago and he was working in his company trying to create something like this with some dashboards - he was really jealous.

“I always recommend Showtime Insights because I really like being able to use it across multiple devices. You have it in real-time and you can create your own reports. As someone who is data minded, this is a very powerful tool for me, and getting the dedicated Realtime Exhibitor app will be very beneficial for mobile use.”

- KIM LUDOLPH KOCH, GROUP GENERAL MANAGER

AND… SCENE.

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