Orchestrating a successful corporate event involves more than just choosing the right venue and sending out invitations. Though that may be all your guests are aware of, the intricacies of crafting compelling event narratives, curating engaging content, and ensuring that every detail aligns with your overarching goals require more organization than most people realize. From the initial spark of inspiration to the post-event reflections, the event cycle goes far beyond a single date on the calendar.
Luckily, there are event tech solutions that can ease the challenges you may face during the planning process. Technology should play a pivotal role in enhancing every phase of the event life cycle, from planning to execution and post-event analysis. Leveraging the latest tech can not only streamline the process but also improve the attendee experience, increase efficiency, and provide valuable insights for future planning.
Quick Links
- What Is the Event Life Cycle?
- Pre-Event Strategies
- Event Tech for Effective Event Operations
- Post-Event Tactics and Event Tech Tools
- Engaging Event Planners to Leverage Event Tech at Each Stage
What Is the Event Life Cycle?
A single event might seem linear to an outside viewer, with a start and an endpoint. But events are cyclical in nature. Once you’ve organized and executed one, it’s time to evaluate the results to start planning your next. Did you hit your event goals? Did the event meet your ROI standards? Did you educate your team or improve their relationships?
When organizing an event, you’re given the opportunity to optimize past corporate events and deliver an experience that not only impacts your attendees but also achieves your event goals, whether they be to motivate employees or reward them through incentive travel. So in order to deliver a memorable event, you need to understand the event life cycle to plan and execute effectively.
When planning events, you should think about it in three stages. The first stage includes event planning, marketing, and logistics – all of the details that set your event up for success. Next is the execution of the event itself, and finally, there’s the post-event stage. This is the point when you’ll analyze your event goals and take your findings to the first stage of your next event lifecycle.
While this is a considerable amount for event organizers to keep track of, event tech can ensure success at each stage of the event life cycle.
Pre-Event Strategies
Before your next corporate event, you’ll need to engage in extensive planning and organizing to provide a successful experience for your attendees. So it’s best to spend some time familiarizing yourself with technological tools that can make tasks easier or even automate them, such as scheduling, budgeting, and vendor coordination. Making sure you have tech tools on hand as you begin planning will make the event cycle much easier to navigate.
Research
Before ironing out the details, you need to determine what you’d like to achieve for your next event. To do this, you’ll first need to take a moment to develop a clear idea of event goals. This is also a great time to hammer out the details of your timeline and budget.
You’ll invest a significant amount of time researching everything from venues to speakers, so make sure you are aware of the many tech solutions out there to facilitate this process. For example, utilize platforms like Survey Monkey or Google Forms to conduct surveys to understand the demographics and interests of potential attendees. You can also employ expense-tracking tools to streamline budgeting and financial research, and one of the latest tech innovations, artificial intelligence (AI), can be used in many ways to enhance your event. If you want to use AI during research, there are AI-powered predictive analytics platforms that will forecast attendance, engagement, and potential challenges based on historical data.
If all of this sounds overwhelming, an event planner can assist you in this process. They can do all of the above and look into sponsors, entertainment options, speakers, and any other detail you deem necessary, then report back with suggestions based on their findings.
Planning
Planning is a critical and foundational component of any successful event because careful planning ensures goal alignment, accurate resource allocation, timely execution, and so much more. To plan properly, you have to consider the answers to key questions. Is this a destination event? What are the necessary travel accommodations? What activities do you have planned? What will guests be eating and drinking?
While this can take up a considerable portion of your time during the pre-event stage, event tech can help you stay organized. In fact, more than 85% of event planners use management software to assist with planning. These tools can produce virtual floor plans, so you can determine where sessions will be held, where registration kiosks will be located, and where meals will be served. In addition to floor plans, you can also organize all day-of items. Some event management software tools also allow users to store documentation on a cloud server, so anyone who needs to access vendor information, find guest contact information, or track venue options can easily find the data in one place.
To help store information, for you and attendees, an event app or website can address any questions guests may have while organizing the materials guests frequently need to access. Before an event, attendees can turn to their event app to understand what to expect, including schedules as well as nearby destinations.
Promotion
Once the details are ironed out, you’ll need to share event logistics with speakers and attendees. Using your event app or social media platforms, send notifications to your guests’ mobile devices. Or for certain events, you could develop an email campaign to market your meeting to potential attendees.
The promotion of an event is an opportunity to generate excitement. Consider using a game to unlock more information about what’s included, such as off-site excursions or swag bags filled with branded items. As we mentioned previously, using polls and surveys during the promotional stage can also give guests a say in what they would like to see during a corporate event.
Event Tech for Effective Event Operations
Your corporate event is finally here, and you’ve prepped everything for a seamless event, but there’s plenty left to consider and manage during the event as well. Thankfully, event tech doesn’t let you down here either. Here are some key focus areas to promote efficient and effective events.
Staffing
Event tech can alleviate some of the pain caused by staffing shortages by incorporating more kiosks and technology to complete some of the tasks that would be given to staff members. Many industries are still facing challenges caused by the pandemic. For events, many venues are facing labor shortages that pose difficulties, meaning fewer hands on deck, so plans must be put in place to alleviate these issues before the event.
In large event spaces, kiosks with interactive displays can tell guests where they need to be. Alternatively, event apps can show personalized maps to accomplish the same goal. With large-scale events, online registration can also reduce the need for manned check-in tables to ease the flow of crowds entering the venue. Additionally, self-serve buffets often ease the need for large numbers of wait staff in meal areas.
Organization
The day of your event is likely a whirlwind. No matter how well you plan, anything can change. That’s why it’s important to keep digital copies of all event-related information, from rental contracts to vendor information. With cloud-based event software, this information can be easily stored and accessed by approved users for enhanced security. Proper management of your staff, technology, and paperwork will be helpful to refer back to, especially when planning your next event.
For effective management and organization, your team should incorporate an integrated data management system. This software can be utilized with other event tech, such as RFID or smart badges and check-in kiosks. As information is entered throughout the day, it will be stored within your management software for easy organization.
Execution
Throughout the event, technology can give you an upper hand when it comes to seamless execution. A well-organized event runs smoothly, even when things change on a whim. With effective planning, if you need to act quickly to accommodate guests, you can do so without disrupting the experience. Your team should also have a system in place to communicate any changes with one another, whether that be through your event app or management software.
One thing you want to prioritize is a smooth experience for all guests. From check-ins to meals, you want your attendees to be happy and comfortable while engaging with their peers. When utilizing smart badges, you can make networking and transitions easy for guests by using strategies, such as grouping people by similar titles or interests to tap-entry event rooms. This kind of event tech can profoundly elevate the attendee experience.
Post-Event Tactics and Event Tech Tools
Congratulations on the successful execution of your event! However, the work isn’t quite finished. What you do after an event can help you improve your future events, allowing you to increase your ROI and meet your long-term event goals.
Results
During the event, you gathered a substantial amount of information about your attendees. When they checked in for the event, they gave their contact information and potentially additional information from demographics to preferences. When they signed up for activities, you were able to see what events were more popular than others. Also, based on attendance information, you learned what speakers resonated with your audience. Clearly, you’ve learned quite a bit about your guests.
But there’s still more to learn after the event is over. With post-event surveys, you can ask specific questions to gain a better understanding of the event as a whole. You should determine what stood out to your guests and learn more about the challenges they faced. To do this, create a survey. Then, using your event app, you can digitally send them to attendees to promote more responses. Plus, this is a great way to receive information that may become more difficult to obtain as Google moves away from cookies for data collection.
Data Analysis
Now that you’ve gathered your data, you need to use it wisely. Take the information, and see if you can uncover any patterns or trends. Were there some speakers that saw a smaller audience than anticipated? If so, try to determine why. You might be surprised by what you discover when you take a closer look.
With your new knowledge in hand, use what you’ve learned to better organize your next event. Maybe your attendees were engaged the most during the event activations, so then you can incorporate a few more at your next corporate event. Perhaps one session was particularly packed, so you add additional sessions similar to this one at your next program.
While reflecting on your data, keep your event goals top of mind. If you wanted to boost employee engagement and motivation, did you see a boost in productivity once everyone returned to work? If so, you might want to replicate some of the same tactics for your next event. You might also want to consider your budget and how it was spent. If you had low participation, you may allocate more money to personalizing the activities during the next cycle while trying to boost ROI.
Engaging Event Planners to Leverage Event Tech at Each Stage
The right technology can help you optimize event experiences for your guests in addition to helping you stay organized. However, event planners know that pre-event and post-event management is also crucial for a seamless experience. Luckily, event tech that aligns with your goals during each stage of the cycle can set you up for success.
From custom event websites to AI utilization, a wide variety of tools are available to event organizers. The team at Bishop-McCann knows event technology can transform events into impactful experiences. To learn more about how to leverage event tech for your corporate event, reach out to us!
