AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT ORGANISATION

BACKGROUND

This Australian state government organisation is responsible for creating opportunities for people through employment and skills, supporting businesses and industries to grow, and building vibrant communities and regions. The trade facilitation agency within the organisation is responsible for helping local businesses reach their potential in international markets.

GOALS

Effective guest management

The state government organisation’s trade facilitation arm frequently hosted dignitaries, ex-pats, and corporate guests at state-sponsored, in-person events to deepen relationships with local businesses that had the potential to expand to global markets. Their events team was responsible for identifying and finalising the attendee list for such events. Says their Event Manager, who oversees attendee management for the organisation, “We are allocated a certain number of guests we can invite to an event. We have to look over all the logistics involved in making sure the guests get there at the venue, they get their ticket and know where they're seated on the day of the event.”

Occasionally, the team is also responsible for planning and organising events from scratch. “There are a fewevents for which we are involved with everything – from the design of the venue where we're going to host the people, to what food should be served, how should we market the event, and other things.”

When the team decided on getting event technology to manage these tasks, they were sure about one thing – they wanted a solution that would suit their unique needs. As the Event Manager explains, “Sometimes we have to tell delegates they can bring someone along for the event; sometimes they are only allowed to bring an additional person for one session; sometimes they can bring up to 5 more people with them. So, it varies. There are a lot of such little specifications that pop up [during event planning] that I don't think normal event organisers have to deal with. Like, our delegates don’t choose their own sessions. We assign them to their sessions; we decide where they need to go based on what would be relevant for them.”

APPROACH

Streamlining processes with tech

Previously, the team managed their event guest lists and information using spreadsheets, which they recognised as a “long, hard, old-fashioned and tedious way of doing things.” One of their directors had chanced upon Cvent’s solutions while working on a separate project. And that’s how their team found out about Cvent. “They brought Cvent into our organisation and our team. And it seemed to fit really well with our events side of things, and now we use it more than the other team. We sort of took up the ownership of it.”

They dove headfirst into Cvent’s product training during onboarding and fell in love with the prompt customer service. “We only had been using Cvent for a month, and we had this event coming up that had 52 sessions. So, I would be on the phone with Cvent Client Services all the time to learn as much as I could. I took it upon myself to learn the product, because I could see at the end of the day, it was going to make my life easier. And even now when I need, I'll ring up Client Services or connect with them via chat, and I love it!”

It didn’t take long for the team to take advantage of Cvent’s time-efficient features to streamline their tasks. They began leveraging the platform to handle everything from sending out invite emails to capturing the registrations and pulling reports. “You would have to draft up a registration email to send it out to people. Or get on the phone and invite them.Well, now we just send out invite emails through Cvent, and then generate the registration link and build the registration pages – all using the system,” says the organisation’s Event Manager, adding, “When my boss asks me the registration numbers for some event, I can just run the Cvent report in no time! In the old days, I would have 15 spreadsheets with me and had to merge them and then filter them and do all of that.”

Another thing that the Event Manager gushes about is Cvent’s onsite check-in and badging solution, OnArrival – Event in a Box. “We love OnArrival! It's my favourite thing in the world, and it took me so many years to talk my boss into letting me get it.And you know, the other day, my boss asked me if we were going to have OnArrival at the next event. Because he could see how much it made our lives easier. Instead of printing, say, 160 name badges, having them all spread out on a table, and then, wasting all that paper when people don't come, with OnArrival, our guests can just come and check in, print their name badge, and then done! OnArrival was the best thing to get for us!” 

The team also talks about their experience with Cvent Event Diagramming. “We have some events where we do need to plot table settings and seating plans. We'd sit around with a piece of paper with round things representing tables, and pencil in where each person sits. And then we'd share the seating plan with the office, and we'd hear back from them, saying, ‘No, I don't want to sit there’ or ‘I want to be seated next to this person’, and they’d start moving things around. So when we learned about this tool that lets you actually see the room in 3D and plot out who sits where, and lets others make changes to it in real-time, we were very excited.”

LOOKING FORWARD

A true-blue Cvent advocate

A self-confessed Cvent advocate, the Event Manager says, “I've sort of been championing Cvent from day one — not just because it’s powerful, but because it’s made a real difference in how we work.”

Having worked closely with Cvent for years, including for major events like the Australian Grand Prix, the Australian Open Tennis, and the Australian International Airshow, they are looking forward to exploring more of Cvent’s features and functionalities for their future events.