EMC Meetings & Events
Building a long-standing technology partnership to drive client success.
EMC Meetings & Events is a full-service meetings management company with over twenty years of industry-leading experience in event design and execution. By leveraging event technology to deliver events that inspire, EMC Meetings & Events specializes in promoting client success across meetings and events of all sizes.
A Powerful Push to Eradicate Manual Processes
Since its inception, Jody Wallace, President, CEO, and Founder has worked to push the boundaries of technology use both for her own business and those of her clients. She explains, “I’ve been a true believer that we need to eradicate manual processes and use technology for more efficiency, accuracy, and to improve communication.”
Starting primarily as a venue sourcing company, EMC Meetings & Events quickly evolved to meet the changing needs of their clients. “About three to four years into sourcing for our clients, they wanted more services, including meeting planning, and attendee registration support,” says Jody. At that point, Jody’s team launched additional services to become a full-service meetings management company.
She notes that prior to using Cvent, the team and their clients were using Excel spreadsheets to manage registration. All registration changes had to be handled manually, creating a complicated back-and-forth with attendees. Her team would often work until midnight to manage the thousands of emails from attendees. They also struggled with manually sourcing venues via phone calls and emails, relying on conversations with hotels to negotiate bids and compare rates. The tiresome processes wasted untold hours for the growing business.
She and her team set out to find a technology partner that could not only help facilitate the complicated logistics around meetings and events management, but one who could scale in tandem with her organization.
Finding the Right Event Technology Partner with Cvent
In 2005, Jody decided to attend a local event in New Jersey hosted by a small company called Cvent. She explains, “There was this gentleman named Reggie having luncheons all around the country, and we decided to attend. You can imagine the manual work we were doing, and we knew if we could automate this, it was going to be special. So, we went to his luncheon, met Reggie, and signed up that day.” Fifteen years later, that partnership continues to grow in strength.
As Jody’s team dove head-first into using Cvent, she saw the industry increasingly shift towards automating manual processes. To keep pace with these changes, Jody knew her team needed to embrace new technology solutions as they arose. “It’s been a great opportunity to meet Cvent and really grow up with Cvent as well,” she says. “We started with attendee registration through the Event Management tool. We then moved into venue sourcing with the Cvent Supplier Network, and then the Strategic Meetings Management tool.” By leveraging digital solutions to eliminate these tiresome processes, Jody was able to scale EMC Meetings & Events’ services for clients. By using the Strategic Meetings Management tool, her team is creating an average of 20-22% cost savings for their client’s meetings and events.
Advancing Client Success with New Technology
As her client base has grown, so has EMC Meetings & Events focus on growing their success through event technology. After adopting the Strategic Meetings Management tool, her team quickly moved to equip their clients with the Cvent’s CrowdCompass mobile event app. “We were on the bandwagon right away with CrowdCompass, and went out to introduce them to all of our clients. We’re actually up to over sixty mobile apps per year for our clients,” Jody notes. Her team also added on surveys to help clients gauge attendee feedback, benchmark key metrics, and support evolution within their own events. By engaging attendees via digital means, Jody sees client costs decrease drastically. “One customer told us they’re saving over $50,000 and up,” she says. She notes this is direct cost and doesn’t even take into consideration the time and effort required to print and assemble thousands of printed materials.
To alleviate onsite pain points like countless hours spent stuffing badges, Jody’s team moved to adopt OnArrvial as soon as it was on the market. “When Cvent came out with on-demand badge printing, we were hooked before they even started. We went out to all of our clients and said, ‘You have to do this. We have to do this together’,” she says. By partnering with her Cvent product experts to optimize the tool for their clients’ events, Jody’s team achieved incredible adoption in the first year. “With the help of Cvent, I would say ninety percent of our clients adopted on-demand badge printing. We sold over seventy-five events in the first year, and it has really improved our goals and the end-vision for company growth.”
Forecasting a Future of Continued Success
In growing her organization’s partnership with Cvent over almost two decades, Jody has found a true source of support. “Cvent has really helped our company grow, so I thank them every day,” she says. “We’ve really taken their tools, their resources, and their support to help us grow, not only with our current client base but to attract new clients that understand how to use technology to support their meetings and events.”
As Jody looks to the future of EMC Meetings & Events continued partnership with Cvent, she understands the value found in the reciprocal nature of the relationship. “To me, what’s so unique about this company is they’ve really heard our voice. Their people are enthusiastic. They’re there to solve the issues that we have within our industry,” she insists. Moreover, Jody and her team are eager to adopt the next set of technologies designed to revolutionize their clients’ events. “We’re having our customers come to us, knowing that we are a technology-driven company that really wants to eradicate those manual processes,” Jody says. She adds that clients want to better understand how to use event technology to optimize the entire attendee journey, from early event marketing to registration and the onsite experience. Most importantly, the evolution in technology has allowed EMC Meetings & Events to build trust as a technology leader. “We’ve changed the way our clients do business today. They’ve really trusted us and trusted Cvent to help us eradicate those manual processes they were using before,” adds Jody.
As the company has grown from two to thirty employees, Jody estimates EMC Meetings & Events will double in size over the next three years. They are also cataloguing impressive achievements, such as becoming a certified woman-owned minority business. Importantly, mastering event technology over the last fifteen years has helped cement Jody’s own position within the industry. She says, “I never thought of myself as a technology guru, but with the support and help of Cvent, that’s what I’ve become. We have truly transitioned our company and our people to be innovative and really drive new processes.”
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