Cvent Excellence Awards 2020: Meet the Finalists

Growth Energy is the largest biofuels trade association in the country. They represent producers and supporters of ethanol who are working to bring consumers better choices at the fuel pump, grow America’s economy, and improve the environment for future generations. Growth Energy events are distinguished by the high quality of execution, exclusive invitation list, and robust programming. Using Social Tables in conjunction with other Cvent solutions, the organization reduced time dedicated to diagramming and saw a valuable improvement in onsite efficiencies. The real-time collaboration tool has eliminated tiresome manual processes and ensured organizational visibility into progress. Growth Energy is a former winner for the 2015 Cvent Excellence Awards.  

Innov8 Meetings + Events is a full-service Strategic Meetings Management company. They use Cvent to ensure ROI for clients, from a custom contract to add value and address risk reduction/cost containment, to a cost savings report to validate results to stakeholders. They provide strategic management and financial reports to validate client success. After adopting Cvent in 2019, the organization now relies on Cvent Supplier Network to help clients reduce spend, contract tens of thousands of room nights, and track hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings in just one year. 

Founded in 1981, Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits markets quality wine and spirits produced by prestigious families from major wine and spirits regions of the world. By conducting effective and clear meetings and events, they continue to create better relationships with both business partners and employees. Using Cvent Supplier Network and Passkey in conjunction with other Cvent solutions, the two-person team centralized their event management processes and created a formal events department. In just a few years with Cvent, the team sent hundreds of RFP’s and sourced over 2,000 venues. With hundreds of thousands of dollars in negotiated savings and room block management efficiencies, the Deutsch Family team leverages strong venue relationships to create memorable experiences. 

Sourcing, booking, and managing the perfect venue is critical for any meeting or event. This award celebrates those savvy site managers who demonstrate expertise in using technology to find the perfect space, fill and manage their room block, and collaborate to create the perfect event set up.

BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager in the financial services industry. The Cvent technologies that they have on boarded serve as firm-wide, global solution. Just two years after implementing the Strategic Meetings Management solution, the BlackRock team has streamlined the entire event process for the organization. They have centralized their data while ensuring visibility into events across the firm through their Meeting Request Form and event approval workflow. Leveraging the budget module has significantly reduced time inputting budgets and receiving stakeholder approval for their events, as well as mitigated multi-currency technical issues. They are currently building their global event strategy across the firm. BlackRock is a former winner for the 2019 Cvent Excellence Awards. 

Boston Scientific is a global manufacturer of medical devices used in interventional medical specialties. There are a variety of meetings at Boston Scientific to support the development and distribution of new products, increase brand awareness, facilitate training and education, and drive engagement. Using Cvent’s Strategic Meetings Management solution in conjunction with the full Cvent platform helped Boston Scientific gain visibility into overall spend and support their formal meeting policy. They saw a dramatic increase in program adoption and doubled their meetings cost avoidance in just two years. With their SMM program in place, the team is improving customer experiences, eliminating manual processes, and reducing risk for the company and their attendees.

The University of Missouri supports 70,000 students across four universities, 114 counties across the state, and affects billions of dollars of economic impact. In 1963, The University of Missouri’s conference office (MUCO) was established to deliver non-credit learning and other continuing education and cooperative extension programs. The team integrated web, content management, e-marketing, online learning, & event management tools to eliminate homegrown solutions and manual processes. After enabling Cvent’s Strategic Meetings Management and other solutions within their tech stack with a CMS integration, they have eliminated hundreds of man hours in labor, more than doubled managed revenue, and stood up Cvent instances across all four campuses.

Implementing a Strategic Meetings Management Program (SMMP) is no easy feat. This award recognizes those successful practitioners who master the complicated blend of registering and approving meetings, strategic sourcing, and budgeting and cost saving methodologies, all while continuously expanding upon their effectiveness.

At The University of Southern California, events are a crucial aspect of maintaining and curating university relations. The Office of Cultural Relations and University Events is responsible for producing over 200 events a year, including Trojan Family Weekend. In their third year with Cvent, USC uses Abstract Management to streamline session management. They increased session offerings with 100% participation from campus partners. They doubled attendance rates for key demographics and used Cvent’s Event Management, CrowdCompass mobile app, and Onsite Solutions to manage over 4,000 attendees onsite. They processed hundreds of attendees per hour with OnArrival, saving hundreds of hours of manual labor. The USC team continues to facilitate best-in-class onsite experiences for their attendees. USC is a multi-year finalist and former winner for the 2018 Cvent Excellence Awards. 

From concept to completion, ALTOUR Meetings & Incentives provides exceptional meeting, incentive, and event management. In 2019, ALTOUR relied on Cvent’s Onsite Solutions and other tools  to manage hundreds of client events. They created a seamless badge printing experience onsite that allowed clients to collect key data on the backend. Centralizing data in Cvent helped showcase increased ROI while streamlining processes through strategic sourcing and management. In 2019, ALTOUR’s team managed hundreds of registration sites for tens of thousands of clients, launched dozens of mobile apps and events with Onsite Solutions, and helped vendors capture thousands of leads with Cvent Lead Capture. ALTOUR is a multi-year finalist for the Cvent Excellence Awards.  

Insperity, a trusted advisor to America’s best businesses for more than thirty years, provides an array of human resources and business solutions designed to help improve business performance. Insperity business performance solutions support more than 100,000 businesses with over two million employees. Using Cvent’s Onsite Solutions and other tools to manage their annual Sales and Marketing convention eliminated long lines and wait time for registration. Session scanning and customizable surveys based on attendee data tracked attendee engagement, and CrowdCompass offered a powerful mobile experience with live Q&A, gamification, push notifications, and more. They reduced check-in time to  less than one minute and eliminated hundreds of hours of manual labor. The team tracked tens of thousands engagement points in the mobile app and captured incredible savings using Cvent solutions in 2019. 

Every event professional knows the importance of an incredible onsite experience. A flawless event creates a seamless experience for attendees during check-in, while navigating sessions, and in engaging with other attendees. Nominees in this category focus on delivering events that capture our attention while leaving us feeling connected and inspired.

SoftPro is the nation’s leading provider of title, closing and escrow software. Offering an award-winning suite of products designed to increase volume and revenue, SoftPro delivers innovative technologies to streamline the closing process. To eliminate laborious and costly printing processes for their annual conference and centralize event information in a modern mobile experience, SoftPro leveraged Cvent’s CrowdCompass mobile app and Event Management solution. Session details, navigation icons, and push notifications helps drive attendance to specific sessions, and SocialWall fostered high engagement. The mobile app also supported the organization’s green initiatives. With an high adoption rates, tens of thousands of engagement points, and thousands of dollars in direct savings, the SoftPro team has proven the value of leveraging the mobile event app for their organization.   

The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) is the world's premier culinary college. The CIA's Leadership Programs, spearheaded by the CIA Strategic Initiatives Group, help foodservice professionals learn more about the next wave of change. Over the past ten years with Cvent, CIA has streamlined the registration, check-in, and attendee experience. In 2019, they implemented the new CrowdCompass feature allowing attendees to modify breakout selections in real-time. CrowdCompass reduced printing costs by thousands of dollars each year. For the Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives program, CIA has used the mobile app as a cost-effective way to maximize reach, communicate with attendees via push notifications, and garner survey responses.The app supports the institute’s sustainability initiatives as they move to eliminate all printed materials. CIA is a multi-year nominee and two-time winner of the Cvent Excellence Awards. 

S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global, provides essential insights for their clients through powerful business intelligence solutions that combine comprehensive data, actionable analytics, and deep sector news and research. In 2019, they managed hundreds of events across 60 global cities for thousands of attendees, generating thousands of new leads and subscription trials. They used Cvent’s Appointment tool and CrowdCompass app to foster networking, and tailored programming with data from session scanning and feedback surveys. They used live Q&A, polling, and the activity feed with social pushes to ensure engagement. The robust reporting was vital when debriefing senior executives to evaluate event ROI, especially since the event feedback form was conducted via the app. For the 2021 sophomore conference, marketers are currently analyzing engagement patterns of attendees across the event lifecycle through Cvent. 

Mobile devices are becoming an intrinsic part of the event experience. This award recognizes those savvy event planners who have tapped into this cultural obsession and made mobile devices the centerpiece of their events. From following sessions to retrieving exhibitor leads, mobile technology is powering events more than ever.

P.E.O. (Philanthropic Educational Organization) has been celebrating women helping women reach for the stars for more than 150 years. Since its inception in 1869, the nonprofit organization has helped more than 109,000 women pursue educational goals by providing nearly $348 million in grants, scholarships, awards and loans and the stewardship of Cottey College. It is now one of the oldest women’s organizations in North America with close to 6,000 chapters. A sudden change in venue requirements for their long-awaited 150th sesquicentennial celebration convention meant the team had to source and manage the event in a matter of months. Using Cvent to manage sourcing, registration, and onsite experiences, P.E.O. saw 60% increase in attendance and coordinated more than 7,000 room nights. They reduced paper requirements and increased survey responses while streamlining check-in and ensuring high engagement via the CrowdCompass mobile app. Because of the impressive event experience, they have now enabled 14 different chapters with Cvent technology.

The National Network for Oral Health Access (NNOHA) is a nationwide network of dental providers who care for patients in safety-net systems. The annual conference is their signature event each year which draws providers from across the nation to provide educational content, networking opportunities, and Continuing Dental Education credits. By using a host a Cvent solutions starting in 2016, NNOHA streamlined registration with a modern registration site, improved their dataflow with a Salesforce integration, and modernized the onsite experience. Since 2016, active membership has more than doubled, and conference revenue and attendance has increased by impressive margins. NNOHA was a finalist for the 2019 Cvent Excellence Awards.

Capture Management Solutions is a full-service professional association management company that has been serving clients for ten years. Their association management services incorporates board governance training, coalition building and better member engagement strategies, and providing outstanding event experiences for associations. Moving to Cvent allowed the team to eliminate seven disparate platforms and integrate data into a single system. Using the entirety of the Cvent platform, the team is able to leverage automated digital solutions to eliminate manual, error-prone tasks while showcasing valuable cost savings, sponsorship opportunities, and driving member engagement strategies. In 2019, they saved hundreds of manual labor hours, saw incredible cost savings, and increased sponsorships for clients by tens of thousands of dollars. They have standardized event and communication processes with a consistent platform experience for all clients using Cvent. 

Meetings and events are essential to businesses for training employees, engaging clients, and building strong relationships through person-to-person interactions. This award recognizes organizations of all sizes and industries who are realizing measurable Return on Event. These nominees are setting and exceeding goals, automating event communications, and maximizing attendance and response.

Standard Life Aberdeen is a global investment management company, managing $670 billion of assets. It is the largest active manager in the UK and has a large global presence operating across twenty countries and supporting multiple investor types from high-end corporate institutions to the private investor. As Standard Life Aberdeen undergoes a fundamental transformation of its digital practices, they onboarded Cvent and integrated the platform with both Salesforce and Eloqua. They have automated registration, onsite experiences, and lead capture processes using Cvent solutions. They reduced lead capture manual labor by 92% and overall timelines from weeks to ensure next-day delivery. With significant leads generated in 2019, automating their marketing workflow has proven to be a valuable investment.   

Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers, retirement plan providers and sponsors, and institutional investors in the debt and private capital markets. For their annual global Morningstar Investment Conferences, Cvent supported a consistent brand experience through the global registration sites. Cvent-housed data helped drive registrations in conjunction with an innovative, omni-channel marketing strategy. By integrating Cvent with their Marketing Automation system, they drove registration through targeted campaigns. Customized Flex microsites helped support a new social media ambassador program, and RFID data helped identify changes in attendee flow and behavior to better formulate the 2020 experience. In 2019, Cvent technology helped generate valuable MQL’s, hundreds of qualified leads for nurture, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in attributed revenue. Morningstar is a multi-year finalist and two-time winner for the Cvent Excellence Awards. 

FIS is the world's largest global provider dedicated to financial technology solutions. The FIS InFocus conference brings the FIS team together with business acquaintances and industry analysts. The Events team’s 2019 goals included proving the ROI of FIS’ conferences, mapping the attendee journey onsite, and using data to show attendee insights. They elevated the attendee experience with Cvent’s Onsite Solutions and CrowdCompass. On the backend, they used a Marketo integration to track event attendance and evaluate campaign performance through link clicks, layouts, and email testing. This resulted in a significant increase in lead generation, influencing hundreds of millions of dollars in existing TCV and driving a measurable increase in new deals created. They also nearly doubled sponsorship revenue. Stakeholders were impressed with the enhanced look and feel of the technology-driven conference.

Event marketing is critical to the success of any event. Nominees in this category develop strategic programming to support their event portfolio, whether for hosted events or trade shows. They prove the value of events as a key channel in their organization’s overall marketing strategy by mastering event promotion, leveraging multi-channel marketing strategies, and enhancing their brand. Moreover, their event marketing process is automated and integrated within the organization’s marketing mix to drive measurable results.

CUE is an education non-profit with twenty-two affiliates serving 26,000 members across California and Nevada. The organization focuses on developing best practices to support student learning with an emphasis on educational technology. CUE began using Cvent for their annual conference attendee and exhibitor registration, event webpage build-out, badging, and lead retrieval during the fall of 2019. During the global crisis, CUE transitioned their 4,000+ in-person conference to a virtual event in just one week using Cvent. With hundreds of sessions and a new virtual attendee pathway, they saw hundreds of additional registrations and leveraged CrowdCompass to engage attendees in the virtual environment.   

As a leading provider of cloud-based SIS, CRM, and ERP solutions and services to the higher education sector, the CampusInsight annual user conference offers customers training, best practice sharing, road map review, and networking. For its 20^th anniversary, the conference moved to a centralized platform with Cvent to enhance the customer experience, streamline processes, more easily recognize revenue, and enhance trade show revenue and deliverables. Campus Management relies on Cvent to deliver ease of registration, access to training documentation, networking, attendee experience and improved customer satisfaction surveys. Together, these directly impact high-level executive reporting metrics. In their first year with Cvent, they converted tens of thousands of training credits with hundreds of unique codes to just a few thousand unique discount codes. They saved hundreds of hours with automated processes, expanded one general conference survey to hundreds of session-specific surveys, and saw a huge increase in engagement levels with the mobile app. By moving to the Cvent Appointments tool, they enabled hundreds appointments for their conference.

Over the past several years, Toyota has transformed from its core business as an automobile manufacturer to a mobility company driving toward ‘mobility for all’. In 2014, Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) announced its relocation to North Texas to better support business and operational priorities. The Event Services team capitalized on this significant kaizen opportunity and challenged the status quo, leading TMNA from a historically decentralized event management approach to an SMMP. Cost savings, enhanced risk management and duty of care, and time savings were instrumental factors in gaining investment approval. In order to successfully launch an organization wide SMMP within an aggressive time frame, Intent strategy Group (ISG) facilitated a comprehensive change management, communication and training strategy complete with a toolkit for agencies operating in Toyota’s Cvent instance. In just ten months, Toyota gained a line of sight into hundreds of events, increased documented spend by millions of dollars, and ensured risk management for the organization. 

It doesn't take long to see positive changes in meetings and events at an organization that has rapidly and successfully implemented new technologies. Nominees in this category may be new to the Cvent platform, but their strong adoption of Cvent technology is already transforming their event planning process and showing impressive results.

BCD Meetings & Events works in a preferred partnership with Cvent across the globe to support their clients’ meeting technology strategies and needs. Their teams have expertise across the Cvent platform to meet those varying needs as they work as trusted consultants in the tool on those clients’ behalf.  For one key client, a dedicated team sourcing managers source and contract around 1,000 meetings per year. They currently use the Meeting Request Form with Cvent Supplier Network and Budget modules. They also leverage an SSO integration for the MRF form and API to the client’s intranet and calendar functionality. As each sourcing manager manages hundreds of venues at one time, Cvent is integral in streamlining information. For reporting, they designed Macros with Cvent’s assistance and added status triggers to their MRF based on RFP active or awarded status. They drive significant average savings on every meeting they manage with an impressive workflow completion rate for 2019. BCD Meetings & Events is a former finalist for the 2019 Cvent Excellence Awards.

CWT Meetings & Events utilizes Cvent on behalf of the majority of their tens of thousands of annual client events. The foundation of their business is managing attendee travel and meetings and events. For one of their largest customers, CWT M&E assisted with implementing a central tool to manage spend and data. Through Cvent, they have one repository to store all meeting and event documentation, including contracts. In addition, CWT helped implement a Meeting Request Form to drill down into components to help them optimally manage their meetings program. They use centralized surveys to collect feedback and store detailed results, and automated post-event surveys provide meeting owners the opportunity to improve on their service delivery and determine event ROI. They registered over 1,000 meetings within Cvent during their first year, and saw impressive average savings for total meeting costs. With a huge increase of lead time quarter-over-quarter and near-perfect data accuracy, CWT M&E mitigated the client’s challenges with a viable and lasting solution. 

The team at Meetings & Incentives Worldwide focuses solely on producing successful meetings, events, conferences, congresses, tradeshows, and incentives. After implementing Cvent instances for many of their clients, the organization saw the need for a consultative approach to help clients optimize system use and effectively manage data. Their Intent Strategy Group (ISG) helps with optimization and system administration support while developing business intelligence (BI) solutions to enhance Cvent data by integrating it with other data sources to deliver more actionable analytics. They have shortened implementation windows by weeks for clients and successfully led new enterprise implementations. With their BI solutions, they rely on Cvent's API to bring over dozens of datasets for tens of millions of rows of data leveraged in thousands of BI visualizations for multiple client accounts. With hundreds of clients managed in Cvent, they have submitted thousands of RFPs and contracted hundreds of thousands of room nights. They've also created thousands of registration sites and dozens of mobile apps. Meetings & Incentives Worldwide is a former finalist for the 2016 Cvent Excellence Awards. 

This award recognizes Cvent Partners who harness the power of the Cvent platform to deliver unparalleled event experiences for their clients. These partners leverage event technology to demonstrate industry-leading expertise, creating stellar attendee experiences, improved efficiencies, and clear return on investment for their clients.

Infor is a global leader in business cloud software specialized by industry. The Global Events team plans and executes over 700 events per year. Inforum is the largest global customer event featuring 5,000 attendees from 63 countries. Infor utilizes Cvent across all global events, but the platform has been an integral part of Inforum. They specifically use registration, Speaker Resource Center, and Exhibitor Resource Center within the Cvent Conference tool to manage event complexities. With integrated data, custom reporting, and automated processes, they can ensure data accuracy for stakeholders. The centralized platform ensures brand consistency, faster registration setup, and improved attendee experience, including registration for customers from different geographical regions. With a Marketo integration, customer registration data then flows seamlessly into the CRM. SRC allows the team to manage thousands of session submissions and the ERC helps oversee dozens of exhibitors and sponsors in one central event management system. They tracked significant time savings and increases in efficiencies using Cvent, eliminating double staff requirements to manage Inforum.

athentahealth’s vision is to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all. Events contribute to this vision through tradeshows or by athena hosted leadership events such as institutes, roundtables, and executive forums. They also host an annual user conference with a goal of strengthening the knowledge of athena’s everyday users through product specific trainings, CSM meetings, and releasing new product updates. athena leverages Cvent’s total platform to manage the end-to-end event experience. Event Management, Onsite Solutions, and CrowdCompass help streamline registration and enhance the onsite experience, while Lead Capture and the Exhibitor portal offer valuable lead generation mechanisms at trade shows and their own user conference. Adding the Passkey and Appointments solutions automated previously manual processes for improved efficiencies and data accuracy. As a result, they saw impressive growth in registrations and revenue year-over-year. 

Founded in 1855, Penn State is one of America’s oldest public land-grant universities. As a land-grant institution, Penn State has a federally mandated requirement to extend its agricultural research and education to the citizens of the state. To fulfill this mission, the university offers extension programs across the entire state, allowing people to register for conferences, events, and non-credit programs. Thanks to its partnership with Cvent, they experienced astounding year-over-year growth across all programs in terms of number of registrants for events, total income, and income paid to internal clients. The department experienced an average 50% increase in registrations and enrollments year-over-year. With targeted marketing tactics and data tracking through Cvent, they can now measure impact, reach, and ROI. Eight other functional units across the university now leverage Cvent, bringing total registrations to 100,000 across university programs. They now manage 10 distinct Cvent accounts across departments. The streamlined system expanded the number of programs by a factor of six and increased income by a factor of ten.  

Event professionals know when it comes to their meetings, conferences, and trade shows, one size does not fit all. Nominees in this category are embracing the power and flexibility of the entire Cvent event management platform to meet and exceed their organization's unique goals.

Michele Gebrayel is a true Cvent advocate. She has been a Cvent CONNECT speaker for two years and has participated in the “Meet the Planner” campaign. Her team has participated in early adopter programs and multiple feedback sessions. She is an active Cvent Celebrity, is Cvent certified, and works to consistently promote the value of Cvent within her organization. Michele feels she is even more valuable to the organization and the industry with her Cvent expertise.

Lindsay was instrumental in implementing Cvent across organizations, with multiple being named as finalists and winners of the Cvent Excellence Awards. She is a Cvent Celebrity, is Cvent certified, and is active in customer advisory meetings to help provide feedback to push Cvent tools forward. When she was VP of Education for the Houston Chapter of MPI, Lindsay also worked to get Cvent onboarded and helped refine the system so it would be optimized for their programs. 

Kyle has not only been a key proponent at the University of Missouri of the Cvent platform, but he has also continued to oversee the expansion and implementation of their enterprise solution. Kyle worked with his team to enable the adoption of the end-to-end tech stack at the University of Missouri. Kyle is a member of Cvent’s Higher Ed CAB, and over the course of the last year has advocated for Cvent through webinars, case studies, and speaking engagements at industry events. These include Cvent CONNECT 2019, multiple webinars, direct mail testimonials, EDUCAUSE 2019, and Event Tech Higher Ed Trends Report. He also presented at Cvent CONNECT 2019.

This award recognizes a Cvent super user who understands and promotes the intrinsic value of the Cvent platform. This person advocates for the use of Cvent event technology within their organization and actively shares the benefits of Cvent across their network. Nominees in this category are unmatched in their appreciation of—and passion for—spreading the power of the Cvent platform across various channels, year after year.