CHG Healthcare
Proving People Matter at CHG
As one of the largest healthcare staffing providers in the U.S., CHG Healthcare works to put people first. For their rapidly expanding events program, Manager of Corporate Events Annie Gingrich needed to find a technology solution without sacrificing culture. “One of the things we battled was choosing technology in lieu of another really engaged employee. That was something that we had to sell to our stakeholders, because CHG feels very strongly about taking care of their people,” she explains.
With an astounding 33% growth across eight offices in just two years, CHG needed a single platform that could handle all of their events. They also needed seamless travel integrations with the ability to better manage spend. “Before Cvent, we were spreadsheet-y. There’s really no other way to describe it,” Annie admits. “There weren’t clear metrics. That’s one thing we really wanted to define...how could we benchmark? How could we show value for the event planning profession?”
Finding a True Technology Partnership
CHG needed a centralized database to track attendee data in real-time. They lost valuable time, revenue, and trust from other teams in using manual processes. “We were planning over 250 events a year, and we knew that we needed a technology partner we could grow with,” explains Annie. Venues, resources, and staff were often double booked, creating redundancies. “We realized that we were spending a lot of money on people that might show up,” she admits. “We calculated that back to one evening event that we overspent $32,000 by not having accurate registration data. Being able to take that in front of our stakeholders made Cvent a very easy sell.”
In the first 10 months, her team managed more than 30 events through Cvent. “We started off with a small package. In our first year, we've added on a PNR integration. We're adding on Cvent payment services, we're moving to a Concur integration, and we have done 7,500 registrations within less than a year,” she explains.
Empowering the President's Club Experience
“Our annual incentive trip, President’s Club, had almost a thousand attendees this past year. It was our very first Cvent event,” says Annie. “From the get-go, we created an event that had seven different registrations paths, a PNR integration, and the CrowdCompass mobile app.” Cvent’s automated email capabilities helped target specific attendees. She adds, “In order to get the right message at the right time, we had to know what our people were doing. There are a lot of ways to do that through Cvent. We could see how they were responding to HTML clicks within an email or when we had peak registrations. We could learn their behaviors to really tailor and customize."
To ensure a longstanding solution, integrations were key. "It doesn’t make sense to bring in a new system every few years," Annie explains. "If we can have our existing systems integrate with Cvent, it’s a cost-savings and ultimately a convenience." The PNR integration alone has saved the Travel team hundreds of hours in not having to manually enter thousands of itineraries for the incentive trip.
Mobile was also key to their success. Using the CrowdCompass mobile app for their events, Annie’s team was able to leverage Live Polling, push notifications, Q&A, and session feedback to keep users engaged. CrowdCompass also helped the team save on printing costs and labor. “It was new to our attendees, and it was completely new to our team. It was an absolute massive success. Our post-event survey results were very clear that it was the best President’s Club that they had ever been to,” adds Annie.
Putting People First through Technology
Not only did implementing Cvent create a successful process for their events program, but it also elevated the team’s profile within the organization. “One of the things that our stakeholders really liked was that it wasn’t just for the Events team. It bridged all of these different areas, including our Corporation Communications, Training, Learning and Development, and our Culture teams,” says Annie. For example, CHG's annual humanitarian trips bring together highly-engaged employees to build schools in Kenya. However, the Culture team struggled with overwhelming logistics. “We went through a full day workshop where they mapped out of all of the pain points. Four hours in, I finally had to blurt out, ‘Cvent can solve all these problems!’” laughs Annie.
“One of CHG’s core values is putting people first. Our people are very passionate about giving back to the communities in which they live and work," adds Annie. For the annual “Making a Difference” volunteer week, the team was able to leverage Cvent to gauge the voice of the community. “Engagement is a metric that we track at CHG, and it directly correlates with our growth in business. The higher our engagement scores are, the higher our revenues have been,” she adds. Using Cvent’s Event Management platform and CrowdCompass, Annie’s team was able to connect with employees to create a powerful giving experience. Ultimately, CHG was able to donate an incredible $647,000 directly back to the community as a result.
Innovating Event Success at CHG
Annie believes that event and hospitality professionals alike are creating new and innovative strategies in the industry. Together, they are showing the importance of events as part of an organization's success. “Being able to take a strategic approach and talk about these things at the table is important," Annie explains. "We have to help our stakeholders understand that an event doesn’t start when people walk in the room.” Her team has seen their department’s reach expand as a result. “Sometimes, there are elements of event planning that people don’t understand. They don’t realize that it can be very innovative, and so this has given our team an opportunity to lead," she adds. "The Events team has gained a bigger profile throughout our company because they can lead this technology and help train others to understand it. We go into meetings at least once a week where somebody says, ‘I love Cvent!’"
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