Posted on Mon, Mar 12, 2012
We are all about empowering attendees to co-create their event experience, and part of that is giving them the tools to manage their own diaries while at your event. It can seem really appealing to manage as much as possible for your delegates, but if there's extra time built into your event, let them derive extra value from planning their own experience.
Why?
1. It's their time and money, let them control how they make the most out of your event.
2. You don't know their objectives for attending, unless you ask, so you don't know how they should spend their time to achieve them.
3. You probably don't know who they want to meet, if anyone. Encourage them to arrange personal meetings with other attendees in the registration with a meeting manager facility.
4. Unless you're managing arrival and departure times, meals, sessions, the whole lot, you may not fully appreciate just how much time your delegates have free and could over book them.
5. You have too much to do to before and during the event, yourself, to worry about managing the dozens or hundreds of diaries of attendees, successfully.
6. If you make a change to their diary, it may not update immediately onto your delegates' mobile device until it is too late.
Posted on Mon, Mar 05, 2012
There's been a real shift in how businesses look at technology to enhance their business functions. Gone are the days of clunky, inflexible installed systems that seem archaic almost immediately upon "going live". Now, businesses are increasingly finding real benefits in working online, or "The Cloud" and licensing Software as a Service (SaaS) systems to manage their businesses.
Online event software means there is no need to install software onto a physical device. You can access cloud-based software from anywhere in the world, at any time - so long as you have access to the internet (who doesn't nowadays?!)
There are several benefits of working online, here are some of the top reasons we hear from event managers who switch from installed software to going online:
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Increased team collaboration because they all can login to work on their respective projects or tasks at the same time, from anywhere in the world. And, because so many systems are online, event software can now integrate with other online business systems (such as Salesforce, SagePay, Aggresso, PayPal, etc.) to increase the collaboration and effectiveness of different organisational departments.
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Not only can users login online to work and access live data, software can be updated with new features and enhancements in an instant to ensure it is as innovative, helpful and secure as possible. This can be done with no disruption in the way you work or your attendees access your event. And, if you travel to events, you don't need to remember your laptop - as long as you can access the internet, your data is stored.
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Because there is no need for physical hardware or servers (ie. space), no time required to implement and integrate software within entire companies and rarely a need for an IT person to get involved, working on the cloud is a much more cost-effective, and scalable, business solution.
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And, your data is always safe. So, you don't need to worry about crashing laptops, calling your IT guy at midnight, a tragic fire breaking destroying your computer, a hacker accessing your corporate network, or an intern potentially deleting valuable data. Because online software is, well, online, it is backed up in multiple places and goes through rigorous security testing.
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Finally, the processes involved with working online aren't actually any different than working with installed software, except that it is a more reliable means to successfully managing events.
Have you gone to working on the cloud yet? We completely believe in working online and love spreading the gospel of software as a service for events. If you'd like to learn more about how working on the cloud can benefit your events management and increase value to your entire organisation, let's have a chat.