The One Thing Event Planners Want Most
The event management industry has
undeniably drastically changed with the onset of the technological revolution.
Seems like every month we have a new software or tool that we can leverage to
make our client’s experiences even more memorable. Sounds great, right?! Unfortunately,
the reality of technology in the event management industry is translating to
more work, more unstructured data, more expenditures and less sleep!
We have witnessed the same
revolution within other industries, such as banking and capital markets. As new
corporate technology solutions were released financial institutions would
purchase them in hopes of helping their bottom line, from Goverance, Risk
Management, and Compliance (GRC) systems to cloud storage. However, after a few
years organizations realized that their data was siloed within each respective
system because of software incompatibility or lack of integration solutions.
Today the event management industry
is going through the same cycle. Event Managers are having to manage client,
registration and event data across various systems, many times leading to higher
operational costs, incorrect client data, or delayed customer service[1].
So what is the solution to this madness? – Application Programming Interfaces
(APIs)!
An API is software in the form of
an application that helps access information from one system and transfer it
into another[2].
These integration components have been around for years, but were not as
readily adopted because of their high costs1. However, today API costs are significantly
lower with the increased use of open source coding. So h
ow exactly can APIs
help event managers? Here are a few key areas and examples:
ow exactly can APIs
help event managers? Here are a few key areas and examples:
1. Managing
registration details in real-time on any device3.
a. Eventgrid
is an up and coming event registration and ticketing platform offering an API
solution to clients. This enables the event management company to have access
to their sales and client information at any point in the process. Allowing for
same-day registration without the stress of making sure the door manager has
the most up-to-date print out of names.
2. Access
local event data to better plan event dates or to also conduct competitive
analysis4
a. Ever
wish you could have a visual representation of the pricing of other local
events or what dates have the least competing events? Well that is all possible with
numerous APIs that search open source data and present it to you in a visually
applying manner4.
2. It is a
common saying in event management that you always need a Plan A, B, C and even
D because nothing is set in stone when it comes to events. Well what if you
could seamlessly project all your various plan’s financial statistics.
a. Adaptive
Insights, helps you run more sophisticated “what-if” scenarios, aside from
excel, by accessing your historical data and helping you adapt forecasting
budgets, revenue gains and workforce management5.
So where to go from here? As the event management industry
further integrates corporate managing systems, organizations will become more
aware of their need for information sharing which will lead to an increased use
of APIs. So the question to ask is how can you become an early adopter of this
technology – where can your organization benefit from faster information
sharing?
2 http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/API.html
3 https://www.zkipster.com/3-event-management-software-trends-for-2017/
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