The Buck Institute of Education

When Catherine Meharchand, Events Manager, started at the Buck Institute of Education (BIE), venue sourcing was still a completely manual process which took her up to 40 hours per event. Being new to the events industry, Catherine made the best of the resources she had. With four large events falling solely on her plate and with just a few months’ lead-time to source them, however, she knew there had to be a better way. 

Relying on Entirely Manual Processes for Venue Sourcing

Catherine's processes prior to finding an automated solution were cumbersome. "It was difficult because I had to reinvent the wheel each time,”she explains. For each event, her leadership team would give her a list of cities to choose from, and she would have to manually search from scratch for venues within each potential city. 

BIE already had an existing relationship with a Marriott sales representative, so Catherine would reach out to her Global Sales Office contact and then turn to the internet to search for other properties that might fit her needs. This led to the common, painful process of researching each individual property’s website and making cold calls in attempting to reach the hotel’s sales team. Catherine repeated this for each event, starting from scratch again and again.

Compiling and Comparing Rates via Excel

Catherine explains she spent hours on the phone, emailing back and forth with venues, and then patiently waiting for responses. “Every time I had a question about a proposal I would have to wait for the sales representative to get back to me. It just didn’t seem efficient and wasted valuable time," she says. Not only was her lead time short but Catherine is also responsible for planning multiple events at once, including her largest event, PBL World. “I plan everything on my own, so I don’t have time to sit on the phone with a hotel sales rep and wait for those responses,” she adds.

"I plan everything on my own, so I don’t have time to sit on the phone with a hotel sales rep and wait for those responses."

Catherine Mercharchand, Events Manager

Compiling rates was tedious and manual. Every proposal she received was in a different format with no standardized way to view data. “I had a document I would send to hotels and then they would ask me to fill out their own form, which was very time consuming. Everything always came back in a different format, and I would have to manually input data into an Excel spreadsheet I created," she notes.

Once Catherine received the proposals, she would print them out and review them one-by-one, highlighting relevant information. She would then manually input all the information into a spreadsheet in order clearly compare the information, repeating this process up to a dozen times per event.

Luckily, she has always had a great relationship with her Marriott contact who helps facilitate bids with Marriott properties. However, the bids would still be in different formats, which made comparisons difficult. Compiling these spreadsheets manually and comparing all the information could take up to hours, once she already had all the information she needed from the venues.

Finding the Perfect solution with the Cvent Supplier Network  

After about a year with BIE, Catherine started looking for ways to automate her processes and increase efficiency, so she could take on more responsibilities. At first her leadership team was skeptical. BIE only hosts a handful of events a year and budgets are tight, so they needed to see the ROI of implementing this type of technology for their events.

When evaluating Cvent as a partner, Catherine wanted to ensure that using technology would not lead to her losing touch with her existing hotel contacts. She spoke with her Marriott rep, who told her that she could copy her contacts on all RFPs she sends through  the Cvent Supplier Network. “She really likes the fact that I use the Cvent Supplier Network because when I send out an RFP through the system, it reduces the number of times we have to go back and forth," Catherine says. "It gives her more insight into the types of properties I’m looking for and makes communication much easier."

Catherine brought the Cvent Supplier Network to her leadership team and showcased the account’s functionality, explaining each step in her current process and compared it to how it would improve with Cvent. Catherine was able to illustrate the significant advantages of replacing manual processes with Cvent’s technology, including cutting sourcing time from one whole week to hours, and her leadership team was sold.