Meetings and Incentives Worldwide, Inc.
When the meetings management company started, Meetings & Incentives Worldwide (M&IW) had only 30 employees to manage hundreds of client events. Today, M&IW is led by sisters Jean Johnson and Tina Madden and manages more than 2,000 client events per year in the healthcare, food, insurance, professional services, and manufacturing industries.
A Family Dream Becomes a Global Name
When the meetings management company started, Meetings & Incentives Worldwide (M&IW) had only 30 employees to manage hundreds of client events. Today, M&IW is led by sisters Jean Johnson and Tina Madden and manages more than 2,000 client events per year in the healthcare, food, insurance, professional services, and manufacturing industries.
As an industry leader, M&IW needed a reliable system to support its current initiatives and future goals. Tina Madden, Partner and CFO, saw where the future event technology was headed. Cvent was more progressive and providing value that their current provider did not. Their clients were demanding real-time reports and their existing workflow was slowing their team down. They continued to launch as many events as possible, but needed more efficient tools to find and secure venues, process registrations, manage the entire onsite experience, and report back to clients on event success.
M&IW relied on a combination of technology solutions that didn't communicate with one another. This meant the across-event reporting depended on disparate systems that required manual data syncing and cross-referencing. The team looked for a better way to deliver reporting and analytics to client stakeholders without wasting unnecessary time on any one job. Repetitive tasks like registration and check-in prevented the team from maximizing their planning potential, and limited client revenue because of clunky, time-consuming systems.
On their search for a new event management solution, the team found Cvent in 2008 and said it was an "easy sell." Cvent was able to combine the company's processes into one unified platform that could house and pull data from a single system. This consolidated all M&IW's technology solutions into one, and saved the team time and money. When asked why she and Jean decided to switch to Cvent, Tina said, "We laid out the benefits of moving to Cvent and it just made sense - service, efficiency, and the opportunity to differentiate ourselves from other third parties." Plus, they were impressed with Cvent's vision and strong leadership. M&IW knew that the company would be in good hands.
Sourcing Solution for Client Needs
After incorporating Cvent's entire Event Management Platform, M&IW increased efficiency across all its processes by three percent. All of M&IW's data is accessible directly in their Cvent account, boosting the rate at which things can get done. The company has been able to reduce manual work, starting with sourcing venues through the Cvent Supplier Network (CSN).
Tina says CSN has "benefitted our sourcing services in several major ways. The venue listings are complete and have accurate data, which was a major problem we had with other tools. We love the ability to use RFP templates, easily understand hotel responses, and compare hotel features."
CSN has allowed M&IW's procurement team to spend more time on negotiations and pass those cost savings to their clients. The company's cost savings percentage per RFP has continued to rise year-over-year and remains above industry standards. In the current seller's market, M&IW's sourcing team delivered a combined 4.81 percent room rate savings and over 28 percent overall cost savings.
Saving Time and Earning Credibility
With Cvent, M&IW has continued to improve the attendee experience without compromising clients' budgets. With the CrowdCompass mobile event app, Tina adds, "Depending on program size and scope, mobile apps are saving us hundreds of thousands of dollars in printed materials and shipping costs. That doesn't even include what we'd save from reprinting due to schedule changes." CrowdCompass has saved the team anywhere from a few hours to an entire week of work per event, depending on its size.
Tina also mentions that Onsite Solutions has been a lifesaver. She notes, "OnArrival has streamlined the check-in process and provides valuable analytics on event and session attendance - and that data goes automatically into our Cvent account. It has saved us an average of 5-10 hours per event."
Effective and timely feedback is also a critical component of M&IW's strategic events management program. Surveys are an indispensable tool for collecting ongoing feedback, measuring results and analyzing performance to objectives. Tina says, "because of its seamless integration with Cvent, the Inquisium feedback management platform enables us to design a measurement loop within the event planning process that provides real-time data, robust reporting and critical insights to our clients about the success of their events." M&IW also uses Inquisium for their client performance management system to monitor their customers' overall satisfaction as well as their Net Promoter Score.
Throughout the event lifecycle, parked reports have been critical for M&IW as a third party planner. They're able to select the reports that matter most to each client and send or schedule them to go out to key client stakeholders with real-time data. Tina adds, "We've seen an average of 10 to 15 hours saved per meeting by utilizing parked reports." Additionally, the cross-event reporting that Cvent offers have become essential for clients to manage their businesses holistically. This all has contributed to more personalized solutions and better support for clients and their events.
Since 2008, M&IW's credibility among its audiences has grown. Improved communication across their teams has helped them stay organized on a global scale. As M&IW and Cvent evolve together, Tina and Jean look forward to continuing to integrate Cvent into other internal systems and processes, and most of all, helping clients achieve their goals.
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