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8th Wave’s Atika Rosli looks at how technology affects the events industry and client relationships.
The need to keep up with the rapid pace of technology advancement is more important than ever before — in fact, it should be second nature to all event organisers.
Atika Rosli
Technology makes processes faster and connectivity better. Communication with regional and international clients is now easier thanks to conference and video calls and the widespread implementation of customer relationship management (CRM) and project management software — all of which has reduced the need to gather in the same room, or even the same country.
From a PCO perspective, data gathered from event management software is critical. These tools can help send customised email invites and reminders, gather and send relevant information, tabulate data by subsets, build an event app, and formulate a social media strategy. The use of a selected CRM tool will add upfront costs to the client, but this will likely be balanced by a decrease in manpower cost. It’s important to justify this expenditure to the client as these data insights add more value than simply replacing staff at registration desks, or hiring staff for manual data input.
Real value lies in the utilisation of data-driven processes that result in greater efficiency and accurate reports that can then be used to pursue meaningful interactions with customers, employees, and partners. This, in turn, drives more sales, stronger collaboration, deeper loyalty and higher customer satisfaction.
Technology can have a positive impact on client relationships — the key is ensuring that data is collected and analysed correctly and then clearly communicated.
Based in Singapore, Atika Rosli is business development manager at 8th Wave. This article was compiled by staff at Untangled, a Singapore-based content, marketing, and business strategy consultancy.