Event Management Software Contents

Eventdex TE GUIDE T PLE O M O C A Event Management Software contents

Introduction to event management technology 1 Benefits of event management software 2 Buy or build: Is that the question? 5 Things to consider while buying event management software 8 Conclusion 14 Introduction To Event Management Technology

Event organizer's job is stressful, with countless tasks to complete at an impossible pace. Event planners are blessed with a unique gift of being able to visualize both the larger picture as well as the minute details needed to execute their events. They are both a people person and a task master, a quality which is extremely rare to ﬁnd. However, human brain has its own limitations and chances of errors can always creep in. No wonder Forbes in 2017 called “event coordinator” the ﬁfth most stressful job. With an endless task list to complete in such a short span of time, event management software and systems have become a necessity for event pros around the world. Of course, in house systems can help you manage tasks, but these systems may not always help you achieve the level of sophistication your attendees expect today.

The pace at which the meetings and events industry's landscape is changing is very evident with the smartphone boom and the coming of event technology. If no two events are the same and one size doesn't ﬁt all, then how can your in-house systems support the different needs of your events? A crucial step for any event planner is to take a decision if he/she wants to use event technology to manage events. Microsoft Excel can help you manage simpler events like a small board meeting, but for complex events that involve a lot of stakeholders, online registrations, housing and travel and attendee engagement you may want to weigh your options. Let's see what event management software can do for your events and how it can make you look like a star of your events.

www.eventdex.com 1 Beneﬁts of Event Management Software

While many organizations rely heavily on event management software to run their events, others still depend on manual processes or disconnected systems. Event management technology can streamline your entire event planning process, right from budgeting, event registration and marketing to attendee engagement, post event feedback and event reporting. Here are the top beneﬁts of event management technology that we just cannot overlook:

Boost Event Registration

Event management technology can streamline the process of setting up and managing registrations. It can also increase your registration numbers by providing potential registrants a smoother and easier event registration experience. You can also boost attendance by spreading the word of your event with a little help from social media and email marketing tools. Event management software allows you to send personalized emails based on the actions that your registrants take.

www.eventdex.com 2 Quick Attendee Check-In

First impressions create an ever-lasting impression. On the event day, use event management technology to speed up the check-in process and eliminate long queues of attendees. Event technology can replace your printed attendee lists with portable devices like laptops and tables that can check in attendees just by a single click or swipe. It will also instantly sync registrant data with your contact database.

Engage Attendees

Boost attendee engagement with the help of various capabilities of event mobile apps. With mobile apps, you can host engaging games like scavenger hunt or even conduct live Q&A and polling sessions. Some apps also allow you to leverage social media feeds of your event posted by attendees. Display these posts live at your event and make your attendees feel important and valued.

Moderate Content For VIPs

Event management technology allows you to moderate content according to the attendee type. You can send special messages to important guests at your event and even alert your attendees when special guests arrive. Technology can help you send customized event fee as well as different offers or pricing for different types of attendees.

www.eventdex.com 3 Launch Post-Event Surveys

To improve future events, event technology allows you to gather post-event feedback from attendees. Technology simpliﬁes the method of sending these surveys and records results in an efﬁcient manner. It also gives you a deeper insight to measure and benchmark your events with past events.

Measure Event Success

Measuring event success is a crucial part to determine which events performed better. Whether your event aim is to boost sales by lead generation or provide memorable attendee experience, event technology simpliﬁes the way you track important event data. With the help of event technology, you can see event results and create customizable dashboards to show it to your c-suite and senior management. It also allows you to analyze results and highlight what worked and what did not.

Now that you've understood the key beneﬁts of event technology, the obvious thing that comes to the mind is whether you should buy it or build it in-house. The next chapter draws a comparison between the two to help you take a much better decision.

www.eventdex.com 4 Buy Or Build: Is That The Question?

The dilemma of buying or building an event management software is not new. Many planners struggle to ﬁnd the right business solution approach to implement it. Event planners need to take several factors into consideration, including strategic goals, required software support and external partners. Here are the top six reasons why you should buy an event management software instead of building it in-house.

Know Industry Standards Before your organization even begins to build an ? event management solution, you will have to do a thorough research to determine the industry standards. While knowing industry standards is critical to your events' success, the process of collecting data is time consuming and you already have so much on your plate. You just cannot afford to devote more time on this rather than spending it on planning your events. On the other hand, buying an event management software gives you features speciﬁcally designed keeping in mind industry standards and best practices.

www.eventdex.com 5 Integrated Event Management Platform

Creating an integrated event management software is time consuming and requires tons of expertise and resources. However, buying it can not only save your precious man hours but also give you a much higher ROI in the long run. An integrated event management platform not only helps you streamline and automate manual event planning tasks, it adds more time in your day to help you plan your next event. The platform covers the entire event lifecycle and provides an enhanced experience before, during and after the event.

Robust Reporting

Reporting with an in-house system can be time consuming if not inaccurate. Proper reporting requires years of right data to prove ROI and understand the performance of events. An integrated platform, on the other hand, can provide easy access to several customizable reports with key metrics. With the right metrics, get the necessary insights to understand your events better and improve them year after year. The platform saves all your events information to help you analyze your events year on year, quarter on quarter or even month on month!

Frequent Upgrades

A dedicated team of developers are always working on enhancing the user experience of an integrated event management platform so your events are always up to date with the advancements in the meetings and events industry. The team not only upgrades existing features, but also introduces new features and functionality alongside better user interface. In contrast, updating an inbuilt event management technology can incur substantial recurring costs of maintaining and adding new features to software and websites. www.eventdex.com 6 Integrations And Reliability

Against popular belief, an event management solution can integrate with several leading software solutions and CRM and marketing automation solutions. Moreover, in most cases a technical team of highly skilled people work closely to monitor the platform to ensure stability and security. In contrast, building a web-based system with a backend database can be quite expensive and tedious and you'd require more staff in the team to ensure a stable and reliable database backend.

Customer Support

An inbuilt event management system can develop a snag and hiring addition staff is an expensive and temporary solution to the problem. Having robust documentation and training as well support are imperative for the success of your software. On the ip side, most companies that provide an integrated event management software have a dedicated team of people always there to help you when you need them the most. Companies provide online, phone, chat and email support so that customers can reach out whenever required.

These were our top six points that you should consider while choosing to buy or build an event management software. If you consider buying the software then the next chapter will help you with the key things to consider while buying an event management software. With so many options available in the market, it is easy to get lost and end up with a solution that doesn't really work for you and your events. Read the next chapter to understand and know the common pitfalls event managers need to avoid before spending their money on a thing as important as an event management software.

www.eventdex.com 7 Things To Consider While Buying Event Management Software

Is Your Event Tech Provider User-Friendly?

While having a robust event technology is critical for your event success, the easy accessibility and user interface of the software is equally a must. The event management solution has to strike a balance between functionality and accessibility. There may be software solutions that are easy to use, but those often have limited functionality. In contrast, a highly sophisticated system may have all the functionalities you need, but might not be easy to use. Therefore, look for a solution that is easy to use and has all the features that you need to plan awless events.

www.eventdex.com 8 Does Your Tech Provider Have Essential Event Marketing And Promotion Tools?

The right event tech provider should have all the event marketing and promotion tools to support targeted marketing campaigns and increase visibility, attendance, and engagement. Your event marketing solution should be able to send automated personalized emails based on contact information. With the right tools, you can create a buzz around your events and deliver memorable events year after year.

Can Your Event Tech Help Track Your Budgets?

For event pros, budget management is absolutely necessary to prove the ROI of their events. However, tracking budget and meeting spend can be time consuming and inaccurate if done manually or with a makeshift technology. A comprehensible budget management solution can help you collect accurate budgetary information, manage savings, increase event ROI, and take informed business decisions.

Is Your Attendee Registration Process Customizable?

Your event management technology should be customizable to deliver personalized registration process for your attendees. It should be able to reect your brand and design across various channels like event websites, mobile apps, name badges, etc. Try to look for an event tech that can differentiate between clients, VIPs, prospective leads or a business development partner. A comprehensive event management technology creates different registration paths and pricing based on the attendee criteria.

www.eventdex.com 9 Key points to consider for onsite activities

How Do You Check In Your Attendees?

Attendee check in without proper technology can be very frustrating and result in long queues. During your event tech evaluation process, ensure you check how your future tech provider can check attendees at your events and collect registration fees. There are several tech providers that can allow attendees to self-check in, saving valuable man- hours for your event staff.

Can Your Event Tech Track Attendance?

Tracking attendees at sessions is important to measure the ROI of your events. This will help you analyze which sessions and speakers were a hit amongst attendees and give a detailed digital footprint of attendees' interests. When you know what your attendees are interested in, your sales team can follow up with them based on their interests, thereby closing more deals for your company. Can your event tech boost attendee engagement?

Attendee engagement should be one of the top considerations when looking for an event tech provider. To give your attendees a world-class experience, your event management technology should offer relevant, engaging and personalized experience. One such solution doing the rounds today is mobile apps. With mobile apps you can eliminate printed, and often misspelt, brochures and event schedules. With mobile apps, you can also provide engaging content to attendees with inbuilt features like gamiﬁcation, live polling and interactive Q&A sessions.

www.eventdex.com 10 Can Event Tech Provide Event Sponsors?

When evaluating event management software, see what event tech can do to highlight the sponsors at your event. This will increase sponsorship opportunities in different aspects of event planning, including emails, websites, name badges and mobile apps. The more channels you use to promote your sponsors, the more value they'll get from your event. The happier your sponsors are, the more they'll continue sponsoring your events for years to come.

Can Exhibitors Capture Lead Information?

If you hosts large conferences, consider an event tech that can help exhibitors capture and score leads, gather the right information, take notes against each lead and forward it to their sales team for follow up. The right event management technology will help you see exhibitor lead counts in real-time, the booths attendees are attending and the most visited booth on the oor (only in the cases of tradeshows). These insights will help you ensure exhibitors get the lead ow they want.

www.eventdex.com 11 Key points to consider for post event activities

How Robust Is The Reporting And Analytics Tools Of The Event Tech Solution?

Before you select any event management software, ensure that it provides you key metrics and trends to help your team take the right decisions on ways to improve your future events. The right event management platform can help you understand event ROI and give you standard reporting options. With standard reports, extract customized reports depending upon your organization's needs and goals.

Is Data Integration With Your Internal Systems Possible?

Check for event management software that integrates with your internal systems to have a complete, action-driven insights. This will save those precious man hours used in manually updating information from one system to another and also reduce any typos and data miscalculation. Due Diligence is equally important

Can The Event Technology Handle Your Complete Event Lifecycle?

A comprehensive event management solution should help you manage all aspects of your event, including managing budgets, ﬁnding venues, checking in attendees and collecting post-event feedback. An integrated platform that can handle the entire event lifecycle will increase your efﬁciency by streamlining and automating event planning.

www.eventdex.com 12 Does Your Technology Company Have Enough Staff To Meet Your Growing Needs?

Event technology has been evolving and so has your event needs. Choose an event tech partner that have enough resources to keep up with latest events industry trends. Make sure you understand how their staff can help you improve your events over time.

What's The Track Record Of Your Event Tech Partner?

Your event tech partner should not only provide software solution to streamline your events, they should have a clear long-term vision of where the events industry is headed. It's absolutely crucial to know the track record of the company and feedback of their products before making any investment. Doing this will safeguard your interest and ensure your continued success.

www.eventdex.com 13 Conclusion

Event management solution can help you become more efﬁcient and put more time back in your day to plan future events. Whether you plan to buy it or build one, it can streamline and automate your planning processes and increase attendance and turn your attendees into participants. Whether you are hosting one event or a series of events, a small gala dinner or a big conference, an integrated event management platform is your one stop solution to handle the event lifecycle. It is a magical potion that not only revitalizes you, but also your attendees, sponsors and even exhibitors!