HITACHI ENERGY

Hitachi Energy is a global technology leader advancing a sustainable energy future by providing high‑voltage equipment, transformers, grid automation, and services that help utilities and industries integrate renewable energy at scale. Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, Hitachi Energy operates in 90+ countries. Recent grid modernization projects in Europe and beyond underscore how critical Hitachi Energy is to the global energy transition — and how vital its customer relationships and field presence are to that mission.

BACKGROUND & GOALS

In North America alone, Hitachi Energy’s marketing and events team runs 25+ large trade shows annually, as well as regional and global programs that together drive millions of dollars in revenue each year. Trade shows are “a really big high touch point for us with customers and prospective companies,” notes Carrie Yeiser, Customer Events Manager – US.

To support these goals, Carrie and Marcos Quevedo, MDR for North America, sought a technology solution that could help orchestrate complex trade show meetings, align tightly with sales, and surface the data leadership expects.

Battling bottlenecks with inconsistent meeting tools 

Originally, Hitachi Energy’s trade show meetings were managed across Outlook, Excel, and a patchwork of other tools. That meant lengthy back‑and‑forth email threads, manual coordination to avoid double‑booking executives and meeting spaces, and little visibility for marketing into meeting details or follow-up. “We tried every product on the market and there really wasn’t a solution that allowed us to schedule meetings, have an internal approval process, and make changes with our customers’ planners at the same time, without going to other people to see if things were available or double booked,” Carrie explains.

With over 25 major US trade shows – as well as a growing number of hosted events and VIP programs – manual processes simply couldn’t scale. Because every event handled meetings differently, data was often inconsistent or missing altogether. Their leadership also wanted a clearer picture of ROI and pipeline attribution – but they lacked a cohesive set of trusted metrics across shows. Marcos and Carrie needed a scalable way to prove trade show value based on the metrics that matter most: meeting volume and quality, follow‑up speed, and the pipeline and revenue those meetings influence.

APPROACH

Unifying trade show meetings and event data with Jifflenow

To modernize their trade show and hosted event strategy, Hitachi Energy standardized on Cvent’s event marketing and management platform, relying on Jifflenow as their trade show meetings engine. With Jifflenow, Hitachi shifted from spreadsheet‑driven meetings to seamless pre-booked onsite meetings with a self-serve, automated solution.

Carrie and Marcos first piloted Jifflenow at a smaller trade show with a limited number of meeting rooms. After validating the system could easily handle their core requirements, they rolled it out to a much larger flagship trade show with significantly more room demand.

They now have the right features and functionality in a single solution to ensure wide adoption amongst their internal teams. “Having one platform like Jifflenow was really impactful,” Carrie shares. “We could actually show the meetings that were going on, have an approval process for executives and VIPs, and make updates that flowed right to Outlook calendars.”

Jifflenow creates simplified, automated scheduling and request workflows for Hitachi Energy. Teams can quickly view available meeting rooms and capacities for streamlined scheduling. Admins can configure mandatory fields to capture meeting context, multiple requested time slots, support for time zones, and so on. Jifflenow automatically sends branded internal and external invitations with meeting objectives and logistics baked in so Hitachi Energy’s sales and marketing teams don’t waste time chasing calendar invites.

They can also configure multiple meeting type options, such as one-to-one meetings, product demos, booth tours, and expert sessions. Approval workflows are tailored to their specific requirements, and real-time visibility into meeting details give marketers the ability to nudge sellers for confirmations or reschedules before gaps appear.

Onsite, teams can quickly scan badges for seamless meeting check-in while automated reminders help reduce no-shows. If needed, rebooking requires a simple update directly within the tool. Feedback from internal teams has been extremely positive so far, and using one tool across events means Hitachi Energy is able to create a reliable and consistent process for their internal stakeholders. Requesters can also use executive briefings, meeting alerts, surveys, auto-check-ins, and enterprise-grade security within the tool. 

Partnering with Cvent Consulting on global strategy and integrations

Jifflenow has been a significant cornerstone of Hitachi Energy’s planned global rollout across six regions and 100+ trade shows. To successfully plan for this broadscale rollout, Marcos and Carrie engaged the Cvent Consulting team to help design a connected, marketer‑friendly ecosystem. Cvent Consulting is now helping to map regional event portfolios and identify where Cvent and Jifflenow should be standardized. They're also helping to design how event and meeting data will flow into Salesforce and Eloqua as part of their broader martech stack. In addition, they're building foundational templates and processes so non‑planners can run governed simple meetings programs.  The goal is to create a repeatable global playbook for event‑led growth that reflects how Hitachi Energy’s internal teams can plan, measure, and scale their programs.

Optimizing the broader Cvent platform for scale

With a trusted partnership in place, Hitachi has found success in leveraging Cvent as a larger technology solution to support their broader events program, from registration to day-of experiences and post-event reporting. Their North America unit now runs its key programs using integrated Cvent solutions, including:

• Registration for seamless attendee registrations, data, communications, and reporting.
• Attendee Hub for digital agenda management, interactive content, and deep engagement.
• OnArrival Premium for flawless onsite check‑in and badging.
• Jifflenow for meeting automation that’s tightly integrated into the broader event tech stack.

Together, these tools create a single source of truth for both hosted events and attended trade shows, giving Marcos and Carrie data-backed visibility into sessions, meetings, and engagement across their program. Cvent’s Registration tool helps them manage complex experiences with tailored pathways, ensuring accurate data capture for targeted campaigns. Attendees can self-manage their registration, reducing time-consuming back-and-forth with event managers. With CventIQ natively supporting AI-driven registration workflows and content requirements, internal teams can launch faster while attendees get instant, accurate answers and a more personalized registration experience — freeing event managers and marketers to focus on strategy.

Driving AI-powered personalization and engagement with Attendee Hub 

With Cvent Attendee Hub, Hitachi Energy centralizes events into one fully branded destination where customizable attendee journeys make it easy for participants to manage their agendas, explore sessions and speakers, leverage built-in networking features, and stay informed via push notifications. CventIQ powers AI recommendations matched to each attendee’s profile and behavior, delivering hyper-personalized experiences. On-demand reports and embedded surveys surface feedback that guides continuous improvement across the program.

Smarter onsite operations with a single source of truth

Hitachi Energy also relies on OnArrival Premium to create an even more seamless in-person experience with effortless check-in and badging, whether at the registration desk or at standalone mobile kiosks. This eliminates long lines as well as wasted materials and resources from pre-printed badges. With OnArrival Premium, Hitachi staff can also leverage session check-in and tracking, signature collection, check-in planner alerts, and more. All of this data is housed in Cvent, providing rich insights into attendee behaviors and preferences.

As Jifflenow now powers both hosted events and trade shows, Hitachi Energy has a single meeting automation solution across its entire program, creating a consistent, reliable experience. Sales no longer has to learn a different organizer tool for every show, while marketing benefits from a seamless flow of meeting data into the same environment as event and attendee data. “Jifflenow is a way for us to show our marketing impact, to be able to get more funding and do more shows, to help show ROI on the meetings we are having and the sales pipeline that they’re producing,” Carrie says. “It’s a big thing for us to be able to go back to our global team and highlight how we’re finding a lot of success here.” Whether the event is hosted or attended, every meeting is requested, approved, executed, and reported in the same way — creating a single source of truth for pipeline‑impacting conversations and making it easier to scale globally. 

RESULTS & LOOKING FORWARD

A measurable, marketer‑friendly meeting automation engine

While Hitachi Energy’s global rollout is still underway, the North America team is already seeing meaningful impact in several areas, including data capture, sales alignment, and proving ROI. “One of the main benefits is the reporting,” Marcos says. “For example, with Jifflenow, we are able to see how many meetings have taken place, how many customers attended, the quality of meetings, and the return on investment. The data we can get from Cvent is a very important feature to us.”

Together, these integrated solutions help create a more compelling story around event‑sourced and event‑influenced pipeline, aligned with how marketing and sales leaders measure success. Ultimately, Hitachi Energy teams are able to shift their focus from manual tasks to managing strategy and proving event value. “It’s a way for us to show our marketing impact to show more ROI on the meetings we’re having and the sales pipeline they’re producing,” Carrie shares.

How Hitachi Energy is expanding reach and deepening impact with Cvent

Carrie and Marcos are excited to continue using Cvent’s intuitive, self-service tools to reinforce Hitachi Energy’s positioning as an innovative, technology-forward organization in a rapidly evolving energy landscape. They are rapidly moving towards completing their goals in creating a fully connected, global event ecosystem, and are looking to continue rolling out standardized Cvent and Jifflenow playbooks across several regions and more than 100 additional trade shows as part of their global expansion. “We’re really trying to grow awareness since Hitachi Energy is a fairly new company in itself, so the next 12 to 18 months will be very busy not only growing internal teams, but also growing knowledge around what we do and how we make an impact,” Carrie says. “That’s why integrating tools like Jifflenow is a really helpful way for us to build that roadmap and have the data to tell that story.” 

They’re also excited to harness deeper integrations between Cvent and Jifflenow with martech platforms like Salesforce and Eloqua to more fully connect data to pipeline and revenue. As Hitachi Energy continues to grow brand awareness and expand into new sectors, Cvent and Jifflenow are becoming central to how the marketing team scales events, partners with sales, and proves event‑led growth.