Problem: Pressure Buildup
Each year, Crop Consultants Australia conducts its main event — a two-day annual affair called the CCA Cropping Solutions Seminar — and at least three one-day events for its members and non-members. Prior to adopting Cvent, CCA used a paper-based system to carry out all its event management processes, which largely involved typing and retyping delegate details, manually handling payments, and creating hardcopy mail-outs for event promotion. It was all quite labour-intensive and took a toll on the team. The team also struggled with managing event logistics like seating, estimating food and drink as most of the registrations were happening on the day of the event. CCA was in dire need of a solution that could automate and streamline its processes and take the pressure off the team, while ensuring it continued to deliver high-quality service to its members. That’s when it came across Cvent.
Why Cvent: Less Stress, High Morale
Once Cvent came into the picture, registration was possible 24/7. Figuring out the logistics of catering became easy as automated registration reminders sent prior to the event ensured very few registrations happened on the actual day of the event. This reduced stress for the CCA staff and put more time back in their day. Dealing with emergencies like employees falling sick or a sudden leave in the lead up to the event no longer posed a headache to the team and resulted in high morale and staff retention in the organisation. Delivering a professional event with an efficient event registration processin place also led to other organisations and businesses expressing eagerness to partner with CCA, to offer special training opportunities to its members.
The promotional campaigns for their events also received a boost as the CCA team did not have to deal with hardcopy mailout and paid advertising anymore. They could now easily inform past delegates about upcoming events, while allowing them to share it further in their networks, thus resulting in higher attendance and an expanding contact database.
Another tool that significantly improved work efficiency for CCA was Inquisium. CCA found it to be a highly useful data collection tool for several activities — sponsors leveraged it to secure bookings, members used it to submit their up-skilling data and apply for jobs, and corporates and researchers used it to submit expressions of interest for speaking at a CCA event. With the tool, accessing past records of members, project activities and surveys they participated in also became easier. The tool’s analytics feature has also enabled the team to create infographics for their board reports.
Results: Bigger and Better Events
With an automated registration and marketing process set in place, Crop Consultants Australia has seen its attendee count increase almost threefold — from 75 to 175! What’s more, the team is able to handle this increased number without requiring additional staff.
Inquisium has made the event feedback process for CCA simple and effective, compared to the previous system where hardcopy forms were being used. The new system has led to a response rate of up to 45% vs less than 20% earlier, thus significantly increasing the quantity and quality of data collected. This event feedback data is treated like gold by the CCA Board.
Since 2015, Crop Consultants Australia has leveraged the Cvent system for 15 of its individual events and 30 surveys. Though initially wary of switching to an online event management system, CCA realised its fears were unfounded when its transition from manual to automation turned out smooth, due to the user-friendliness of the system and the round-the-clock support provided by Cvent.
CCA hopes to continue using Cvent for more events in the future and has not ruled out trying out other Cvent products as well.