MOST people, if asked the question, 'Who uses the Contemporary Music Centre?' would answer without hesitation, 'Composers and performers, of course'. These are indeed among our main clients, but they are by no means our only ones. CMC has a very broad national and international clientele which has been virtually doubling year on year, and we provide a wide range of services.
Market research is important for any organisation, but for a grant-aided service organisation like CMC it is essential to know who the clients are and whether or not their needs are being met. In 1995, CMC put in place a software programme to track the work of the Centre on a daily basis. The CMC Client Database, as it is known, is a software programme customised by ourselves and running on all the computers in our office network. The
programme enables us to input, very quickly, details of each visitor, fax, letter, phone call and so on. Not only does this provide a record of why each client contacted us, it also shows what needs to be done to help them and which staff member is responsible for doing it.
People from all over the world, for example, contact us looking for scores and parts for performances (usually at the last minute) and the Database keeps track of these orders from the time they come in until the music is copied and mailed out a few days later.
The Database really comes into its own in the case of clients who need assistance with a major project: planning a festival programme, for instance, or researching the music of a particular composer. These clients may need to contact CMC repeatedly over a period of weeks or months and several staff members may be involved in helping them with different aspects of their research. We can track these jobs as they progress, check what has been done and when, and see what is to be done next and by whom. Another advantage is that when a staff member has been out of the office for a day or two she can do a quick computer search when she comes back and see exactly what has been happening. The downside to this, of course, is that she also receives an instant list of the work waiting for her!
The market research aspect of all this comes into its own at the end of every month, when a series of simple 'find' requests produces all sorts of useful information. How many visitors have we had? What countries were they
from? How many people contacted CMC for the first time this month? How many people used the library? bought scores and CDs? used the sound archive? How many emails did we receive? (This figure has trebled just in the last few months.) Did we have more clients this month than last month, and is the month-by-month pattern consistent with previous years?
The statistics can readily be turned into charts and graphs, revealing trends and suggesting future courses of action. For instance, the realisation that students were not making as much use of CMC as we felt they could and should, led to a programme this year of visits to third-level music colleges and universities. Figures for students now show an increase of 53%. We also realised that 25% of our time is devoted to what can only be termed 'consultancy work'. This can be anything from advising students on study opportunities, to 'matchmaking' between
potential commissioners and composers, to giving information about funding opportunities, to work on behalf of the International Association of Music Information Centres: all things that are difficult to quantify but that take time and clearly satisfy a need.
