TD SYNNEX

BACKGROUND

TD SYNNEX is a global IT distribution company which sits at the center of the technology partner ecosystem. With its extensive global capabilities and subject matter expertise, TD SYNNEX offers valuable resources, insights, thought leadership, and specialized knowledge to the IT community. Their events cater to the needs of both customers and vendors, enabling business growth and facilitating strong connections within the industry.

Since 2011, TD SYNNEX has partnered closely with Cvent to execute their total event program. Rae Hawkins, Senior Manager of Conferences and Events, and Abby Livingston, Event Specialist I, manage over 400 annual events with their small team alone. TD SYNNEX operates more than 1,000 annual events in the United States as a whole. Across this partnership, they’ve expanded their solution suite to include a number of event technologies and platform integrations. Rae explains, “Over the past 13 years, we've significantly increased our usage of Cvent's solutions, establishing ourselves as experts and strong proponents of the Cvent suite of products to enhance our total event program.” 

APPROACH

Rae notes that TD SYNNEX prides itself on leading the industry as a technology provider. It was therefore vital that their events present an equally innovative experience for attendees. “We’re a technology company and we want to be tech-forward” she notes. “I would say around 2017, we really tried to integrate event technology into all of our events, so from registration to our production, we wanted to be at the forefront of what was going on with technology.” 

As an extensive, city-wide event, Inspire includes hundreds of sessions and over 200 vendor sponsors. With limited manpower, TD SYNNEX needed to ensure they optimized their technology platforms to work effectively and efficiently. Specifically, they needed to automate lead capture to better demonstrate event ROI. They also wanted to align the conference with their sustainability goals to be Net Zero by 2045. Importantly, post-event reporting needed to be streamlined from a technology and resource standpoint. With a goal of more seamlessly integrating Cvent into their technology stack, they wanted to integrate the platform with MarTech solutions like Marketo and their CRM system. They determined improving ROI, enhancing sustainability, and creating greater efficiencies would ultimately further the program’s success. 

This team manages everything from the initial event build to registration and Attendee Hub configuration, exhibitor and content management, the onsite experience, and live event support. Rae adds that relying on the same project managers year over year has allowed her team to build invaluable relationships. “They’ve gotten to know us, know how we’re generally setting everything up, and that’s been very helpful throughout our different events,” she adds. 

To power their event marketing campaigns and drive registrations, TD SYNNEX leverages Cvent integrations with MarTech platforms like Marketo and their own CRM system.  Through these integrations, they are able to track marketing engagement and overall campaign performance. They can automatically sync contact updates and activities as well as automate task and opportunity creation. This ensures they can create more targeted, personalized campaigns using attendee data to accelerate the sales cycle and ultimately increase conversions.

Driving attendee engagement with the Cvent Attendee Hub and Event App

Using one platform ensures all attendee data is synced automatically between Registration and other solutions like the Attendee Hub and Mobile Event App. These solutions together drive attendee engagement while allowing TD SYNNEX to gather valuable insights for a complete picture of their attendees’ interests. With this on-demand data at their fingertips, Rae and Abby’s team can make informed decisions and deliver more personalized experiences for their attendees. “The Event App and Attendee Hub became an all-inclusive event resource at the attendees’ fingertips, allowing more independence and less manpower - and physical resources - to provide critical event information,” adds Rae. 

Abby and Rae’s team relies on the Event App for communicating critical updates, driving attendance, and engaging attendees across the event lifecycle. Abby finds the push notifications particularly helpful and Rae adds that audience segmentation feature allows their team to “really have those targeted notifications to help drive attendance on a personal level.” They’re able to create more personalized experiences using custom cards and session recommendations. Abby also appreciates the self-serve capabilities of Attendee Hub, as attendees can view session and speaker details, manage their agenda, and add or delete sessions from their calendars. This provides accurate session counts for her team in real time and eliminates manual back-and-forth with attendees. Rae notes, “These features within the Event App allowed us to provide real-time updates onsite to keep attendees engaged as possible.” 

Doing more with less: How TD SYNNEX leverages event tech to save time

Rae and Abby’s team also relies on the Appointments tool to pre-schedule appointments between attendees or with stakeholders onsite. “It’s really helpful to have that interaction scheduled onsite and allow the attendees to fully build out their agenda ahead of time,” notes Abby. Rae adds that the automation capabilities of tools like Appointments saves them invaluable time. “We used to have to build out one on one meeting rooms in our exhibition space and manually manage the scheduling, check-in, and everything,” she says. “Now, using Appointments, they can self-schedule the appointment in a specific location and it automatically gets added to their agenda in Attendee Hub, so it streamlines the process and takes out a lot of steps for us as planners so we can focus on other issues.” With Appointments, they’re able to create appointment types with predefined time slots and locations, maintaining full control of appointments in the backend while granting attendees the ability to manage their schedules on the frontend. Attendees can view all meeting details ahead of time, as well as modify, accept, or decline as needed. 

They’re also able to leverage attendance tracking through session scanning for real-time updates, which they can provide to internal stakeholders to show event progress in real time. It’s an evolution in technology that Rae says speaks to the advancements the industry has made as a whole. “I remember a time when we didn’t have any of that software and we were manually checking people in, reprinting badges, and so on, so from a planner perspective, we’re now able to do more with less people,” she says. She adds that viewing real-time updates in the OnArrival app is an important means of demonstrating event impact to their stakeholders. “Previously, there was a lot of putting that data together in spreadsheets, but now I can just pull a quick report and show my executives who has checked-in with easy-to-read flow charts,” she notes. “They love it and it’s all right there in the OnArrival app, so it really just makes us shine.” 

In addition to providing a myriad of opportunities to drive engagement and capture all-important attendee insights, leveraging digital solutions like the Event App and OnArrival ensures TD SYNNEX can actively support their sustainability goals for a lighter-footprint event. By reducing paper waste for printed agendas or badge stock, they’re able to reduce their overall environmental impact in pursuit of their goal of being Net Zero by 2045. 

To ensure they have an accurate view of event performance, Rae and Abby’s team also leverages Premium Surveys to garner both session and event-level feedback. “Particularly, we want to focus on the value of breakout session offerings for better future program planning,” notes Rae. These surveys allow TD SYNNEX to collect feedback directly within the Event App throughout the event lifecycle, target surveys to specific groups of attendees, and collect data across events for cross-analysis. With enhanced data and reporting, TD SYNNEX can evaluate session, speaker, and multi-event performance. 

With this data housed in a single location, they’re able to provide reports in real time to key stakeholders like their executive leadership. “If there’s any report in Cvent, we’re probably pulling it to show the return on investment for what we’re doing at our event,” offers Abby. “That’s really important to our business, and through Cvent, we’re able to get that data to the people who need it quicker.” They note that collectively, using Cvent has allowed their team to integrate event information and streamline data in a single platform, allowing them to better prove the value of their events program to the business. “We’re in an industry where we need to show our value and the  only way for us to do that is to take that into our data, looking at all the different touch points we’ve had over the years,” adds Rae. 

She notes that relying on a single platform has proven valuable for their team as they continue to expand their events program. “We’re not forced to utilize various platforms and systems to execute attendee experiences at Inspire,” she insists. “From registration to post-event reporting, Cvent has shown to be a high value, event-wide platform for TD SYNNEX’s largest annual event.” 

RESULTS

The results from their most recent Inspire conference have proven this, with over 2,130 registrants and a 94% check-in rate using OnArrival, most within a four-hour timeframe. They also tracked 1,570+ Event App downloads and 2,750+ logins into Attendee Hub, totaling a 73% adoption rate. LeadCapture allowed vendors to capture nearly 6,000 leads in just three days, helping to prove the value of the event to internal executive stakeholders around the pavilion as a key component of Inspire. Equally important, attendee and staff “raved about the attendee experience at Inspire, particularly around the quick check-in and app functionality,” says Rae.

Powering TD SYNNEX’s incredible event program through the use of modern technology and professional support services has proven to be a winning combination. Rae and Abby particularly value the close relationship they maintain with their Cvent team. “One of the benefits of Cvent, and I will say this to anyone who asks me about it, is the amazing customer service and support we get from our account teams,” notes Rae. “They are always there for us, and they’re actively looking at trends and how we can improve, as well as to answer any questions we may have.” This support is a key component of TD SYNNEX’s future growth as well as they look to continue advancing their events program. Rae summarizes, “We will continue to grow and we want to be thought of as a leader in event planning and design, and Cvent helps us get there.” 

PRODUCTS USED