The corporate event planning process can feel long and arduous, especially if your team relies exclusively on manual event logistics management. By streamlining the event planning and management process, your team will speed up the process to deliver a better event and reap the benefits of a stronger ROI.
When you’re ready to level up your corporate event planning game, take a look at some proven industry tips and tools to help you do it.
Elevate your event management process with automation
While a lot of factors impact the success of a corporate event, we cannot stress enough the importance of engagement before, during, and even after the whole thing is wrapped.
You might be limited to manual processes that are time-consuming, costly, and well… clunky. When you level up and ditch the manual processes for automation, you will drive engagement with greater speed and accuracy, and in less time.
How can you access automation and streamline your workflows?
By investing in event technology that is specifically created to make your life as a corporate event planner that much easier.
Now, event technology offers corporate event planners cutting-edge corporate solutions to simplify and power events with careful attention to every detail, between session management and credit claiming.
When evaluating the corporate event management platforms out there — and there are quite a few to consider — we advise targeting those that offer features like:
- A flexible platform — As event planners we all know that flexibility is key to surviving in this industry, especially after the last few years, and that being able to adjust and pivot your plan is critical to managing a successful event. Whether yours is a small user group event or a colossal educational conference, you need an event management solution that provides optimal flexibility.
- Robust customization — Similar to flexibility, the ability to do more with less can be truly game-changing… event changing, more to the point. Ideally, your team should secure an event management solution that provides a single, dynamic space to manage speakers, collect and store important documents, and streamline communication based on the event type.
- Dynamic experiences — Your event management solution is really only as strong as its ability to inspire engagement, create meaningful networks, and expedite all event and conference education initiatives.
Streamline really means simplify. Take it step by step.
For faster and more efficient workflows, single out each step of your process
When you imagine the entire corporate event planning process, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. There are so many moving parts involved in managing a successful event that trying to address them all at once will only lead to error and frustration.
We’ve found that streamlining really means simplifying.
So, look at ways to break each process into smaller pieces, ideally on a timeline. You’ll find it more manageable from start to finish.
Identify Pre-Event needs. Regarding sessions, for example, you should identify types of sessions, whether abstracts needed, and how to handle equipment, layouts, and vendors. You’ll then do the same for needs during and after the event.
Use event tech to navigate your way forward
Once you have identified all your steps, find an event management solution to empower your efforts with specific tools, which put you firmly in control of every detail of the corporate event planning process, including the often-daunting speaker management process.
For instance, you’ll want to ensure that you have access to tools like:
- Abstract Submission & Review: Gone are the days of waiting for paper submissions or email attachments that required downloading and took up valuable space on your system. Now, you keep all data in a single location, and even set rules according to submission type. Additional perks that might seem small but are real time-savers include the ability to comment on and approve proposals, as well as receive personalized notifications, keeping you on track and aware of where each submission is in the review and approval process.
- Speaker & Session Management: This is huge. Between building sessions, managing the corresponding session materials, accessing actionable reports, and personalizing each speaker portal, your team is empowered to streamline and speed up the overall corporate event planning process.
- Continuing Education Management: Gone are the days of confusion over credits, certifications, and accreditation. This tool supports user credit claiming, along with certificate statement capabilities, and board or license issuance reporting. Accreditation management has never been easier, too.
- Event Management: The physical details of an event — no matter how it’s hosted, in-person, virtual or hybrid — can quickly become overwhelming when managed strictly on spreadsheets or shared docs. With a dedicated platform, your team can manage the room layout, including controlling capacity, access a vendor dashboard, manage your staff, and closely monitor your budget, including tracking expenses.
Speaking of your budget, if for no other reason, better control of your budget should be reason alone to consider a corporate event planning solution.
No team is too tiny for technology
We hear this often enough and want to set the record straight.
Just because technology is making an impressive impact on the corporate event planning process doesn’t mean your team needs to be titan-sized in order to get on board.
Quite the contrary, in fact.
You can quickly strengthen your small team with event management solutions and speed up the process of planning your corporate events.
In fact, one could argue that small teams are the ones most in need of event technology to better equip their corporate event planning processes.
A small staff is typically short on resources like money and time. Streamlining, in these cases, isn’t just smart, it’s critical to the success of a small team’s efforts.
Of course, event technology doesn’t save time, per se. As author Benjamin Hoff said,
“The main problem with this great obsession for saving is very simple: you can’t save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.”
Fortunately, when it comes to speeding up your corporate event planning process and spending time wisely, “There’s an app for that.”
