Over the past three months, our clients have been challenged professionally and personally in ways they never imagined. As we saw an immediate decrease in in-person events across enterprise meeting programs, it was difficult to describe why our success team continued operating at high levels of client demand. Here is what Cvent best in class clients have done to maintain momentum to advance their Meeting Program success:
SMM Program Adoption
While no one wanted a global pandemic, no other recent event has driven adoption of Strategic Meetings Management (SMM) under the pretense of duty of care – the concept that companies are responsible for the health and safety of their employees. We saw clients that struggled for years to centralize a meeting registration (or request) process gain immediate adoption across their companies to better improve visibility of events by start date, location, attendees, and financial risk.
Business Minded
The everyday planner leaned into the centralization of tracking credits associated to cancelled space through CSN. We saw a 3X more client using this functionality than any time prior to Q1. The reason is two-fold: (1) to show good stewardship of company monies to ensure that they are leveraged during the recovery phase (2) the threat of reduction in force did not allow to track this information in decentralized excel files.
Technology Training and Proficiency
Our users are faced with doing more with fewer resources. For the first time, they have time to invest in being curious about what the platform can do versus what they need it to do. We have seen a record number of certifications across our user base and continue to see this through the summer months.
Reallocation of Resources
Our clients have been able to fast track their migrations and implementation and adoption of new products such as FLEX, New Reports, and Access Portal. They have also been able to take advantage of IT partner availability to leverage integrations that will improve operational efficiency.
Meeting Policy Revisions
Far too many clients realized that meeting policies depended upon face to face or meeting room night thresholds. This left a large gap in visibility to meeting registration and the services available from meeting professionals. They acted quickly to amend their policy to incorporate virtual events and improve workflow to capture spend and provide expertise.
Non-Traditional Events
The definition of an event is much broader than it was 90 days ago. Today, bringing employees back to the office is an event, bringing students back to campus is an event, and bringing people back to church is an event. Becoming proficient in technology-empowered clients to track more data using available tools. This visibility immediately makes reporting more valuable to senior leadership and allows planning teams to add value and drive accurate decision making quickly.
Employee Engagement
More employee pulse surveys are running through Cvent than ever before. Clients are leveraging gamification through Crowd Compass mobile products to better connect and promote team unity for now largely remote teams. Technology proficiency results in using applying the same technology in new ways for new reasons.
Intentional Communication
Cvent administrators are leading lunch and learns to their entire user base, including customized feature spotlights, virtual event consulting, and showcasing planner resources such as templates to educate and improve their user experience.
Live Event Structure Does Not Equal Virtual Meeting Structure
The key reason and value of meetings did not diminish in the past 90-days. People still need to meet to motivate, educate, and network. The approach to the event agenda, duration, speaker preparedness, and attendee engagement requires a complete architectural redesign to accomplish the same goals and objectives. Planners are pivoting their skills to those of producers to create an engagement structure that mirrors that of television and other virtual environments.
In the next quarter, we predict we will see:
- Emphasis on producing a valuable virtual meeting
- Expansion across companies to grow user base
- Continued flexibility on what constitutes an “event”
- Discussion on how to meet safely as people consider when/how to return to in-person events
- Self-book tools to book and track small, regional meetings that will return first
In the meantime, your success team is here for you. If you have only scratched the surface on some of these topics, we are ready and able to share best practices. Be safe, stay well.
Stephanie L. McNamara, CMP | Director, Client Success Cvent | smcnamara@cvent.com | https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanieagan/
