As part of our ongoing Customer Success Series, Cvent recently convened a virtual customer panel featuring:
Jodie Seaton, Event Manager at Schroders
Nicola Rowe, Event Manager at University of Greenwich
Keelin Murphy, Content Program Manager – Events at AMD
Moderated by Michael Newton, International Account Manager at Cvent. These customers are real Cvent power users – each finding interesting and efficient ways to deliver a range of complex events of varying audience, size and format.
Shifting open days from in-person, to virtual, to hybrid at The University of Greenwich
Nicola explained that the University of Greenwich first partnered with Cvent during the pandemic, following a disappointing experience with alternate providers for going virtual with their open days. They were especially keen on the ways in which Cvent products interact as parts of a larger whole, cutting down on repetition, as well as the ability to provide an engaging digital experience and live sessions with Attendee Hub.
The team arranged their first virtual open day with Cvent in June 2021, and were already hosting hybrid events by November. One key benefit of Attendee Hub for them was the ability to set up one event across three campuses, all while incorporating a virtual component.
The university plan to go carbon neutral by 2030, and the ability to replace paper-based event guides and collateral with Cvent’s event app is already cutting waste. The team wanted to pursue hybrid formats in part to make their events more accessible to wider audiences, such as those with Saturday jobs, those unable to travel, and especially international students. The approach is paying off – they’ve seen an increase in applications from both domestic and international students this year.
Simplifying complex events at AMD
AMD (previously Xillinx) came to Cvent during a search for an effective end-to-end event management platform. Later, the pandemic struck and they needed to convert large, multi-faceted global events conveying a lot of technical information to a virtual format. Keelin discussed an example of a recent event she managed where they hosted 150 sessions across three days, featuring 124 speakers. Having extensive experience of using Cvent for their in-person events, Keelin was able to use Cvent with ease for this virtual event. Another example, with 140 sessions across three global events, with some content in local timezones and some shared between events, and 80 speakers, would have been impossible to deliver without a bespoke management system.
Key to this successful delivery were Cvent’s Speaker Resource Centre and Abstract Management, which together enable speakers to submit content while allowing AMD to automate communication with them, while assembling a full agenda virtually. Keelin found that having both these tools was exponentially more valuable in the virtual world, when she couldn’t easily just walk over to a speaker’s desk in the office. The team were also able to relegate some of the more technical information to downloadable content associated with each session, allowing for a more engaging approach to presentations from their speakers.
Upping production quality at Schroders
Schroders were also looking to adopt a virtual approach to events quickly and easily, and found the unified nature of Cvent’s platform appealing: they needed a platform that could provide for their total events programme. In the last 18 months, they have onboarded globally to 16 different countries and delivered 87 events: 45 virtual, 24 in-person and 18 hybrid.
Schroders were especially keen to move away from typical approaches to virtual events, and wanted to provide a highly engaging experience for the virtual attendees, especially when it came to the broadcast quality of their events. For their 2 day flagship event, now virtual, in December 2020. After just a few months with Cvent, they spoke with their production agency and constructed a studio in their auditorium, including a large LED screen used in speaker presentations. They wanted to avoid the feeling of a regular Powerpoint slideshow, and so retained a dedicated host and used broadcast assets, housekeeping loops, to proactively inform attendees of what to do and expect. To this end, they used Attendee Hub’s polling and Q&A functions to engender the feeling of a 2-way conversation.
The full exchange can be accessed on-demand, and includes a range of innovative ways to use Cvent as well as deliver events more broadly. Stay tuned for news on how the Customer Success Series will continue into Q2!
