Every event organiser knows it: choosing the right event management software can make the difference between running events that are genuinely good and able to produce tangible results and failing to do so, but also, and above all, between working well and working badly, which is the precondition for even thinking about running good events.

So, how do you choose event management software?
You start with the fundamentals.

• It has to be secure and reliable, because we cannot risk it putting any part of the project in jeopardy, and we cannot do without the security guarantees that come with certification standards and regulatory compliance, starting with the GDPR.
• It has to be practical and easy to use, which does not mean “basic” or simplistic, but it certainly must not complicate the lives of the people using it only to simplify them later.
• It has to integrate with the tools the company already has, because otherwise we are back to square one: if the friction of adopting a new technology is too strong, if it forces changes that are too drastic or, worse, if it means throwing away work already done, then at the very least the direct and indirect costs of adoption climb quickly, making the choice much harder to make.

So far, though, we are talking about the minimum requirements that any event organiser with a little experience has to keep in mind when assessing event management software. And at the level above? Taking for granted (not that it necessarily is, but let us assume so) that every event management platform on the market has the “basic set” of characteristics identified so far, the question to answer becomes: what do I want the platform I am going to design, build and run my events with to do for me?

There are three answers, and they are clear as day:

• It has to add value to everything that used to be done differently. It has to save time, money, errors and corrections, ideally all three at once.
• It has to adapt to every type of event because these days the same event can be in person one time, online the next and perhaps hybrid the time after that. And we want to capitalise on every experience in order to build the next one better. That lets us be more flexible about the needs of the environment and of our audiences, but it also lets us genuinely build the events of the future and that “perfect experience”, which is our optimal result.
• It has to be modular and customisable: it has to have what we need and it must not have what we do not, because that becomes noise and an obstacle when we have to deal quickly with the emergency that, as we know, will happen right in the middle of our event.

But if these are the characteristics (basic and advanced) that good event management software has to have, do we stop here? Well, if you are reading this, we would be letting you down if we stopped here. So let us carry on. What if the software you organise your next event with also became a strategic planning tool?

Imagine, you could:

1. not just manage experiences, but design them
   When we talk about event management software, the words do not help us. People think of tools for managing things that were designed and decided somewhere else, earlier, by someone else and with other tools. That carries with it the fact that the work somehow gets done twice, rather like at school, when we wrote a rough draft of an essay first and then, after rereading and correcting it, copied everything out onto the neat sheet we would hand in. If instead we drop the idea that management software should only manage, we may discover that we do not have to do the work twice and, above all, that doing it straight away with the full set of tools in front of us can let us do it better the first time. A quick example? Often, when we run demos of our platform and show the modules and how they fit together, the people on the other side are taking apart the idea of the event they had in mind and rebuilding it on the basis of what they can see is possible with the tools in front of them. So why not do all of it in one go?


2. not collect data, but use it
   We all know data matters: it lets us measure results and share them with others, so we can assess, analyse and redesign. In most events, though, all this happens in two stages: the data is collected during the event, while the analysis is generally done afterwards, when decisions have to be made about the future. Bringing the two stages, collection and analysis, together into one can rationalise resources and save energy, but above all it can bring into today the changes and adjustments that would otherwise only see the light tomorrow. Imagine being able to make what is going well go even better, and to correct what is not, while you watch it happening. Would that not be excellent?


3. not put pressure on yourself and your colleagues, but put pressure on your tools
   Every good event has a funnel, an ideal path that the people whose attendance we want (our “audience”) will follow: first informed, then interested, then engaged by our offer, until, ideally, they are enthusiastic enough to become the event’s most effective promoters in future too. Usually this path starts well before the event, with a set of communication and marketing activities that sit somewhere entirely separate from management. And which sometimes do not even talk to it, except through the data of the people moving from one “status” to the next until they really do become our “audience”. Would it not be better if, thanks to technology and the automations it allows, all of it could be delivered in an integrated way, from the website to the newsletters and from awareness to onboarding, so as to create an experience without breaks, both for the people running it and for the people living it?

And guess what?
It is possible.
And if you want to see it, request a live demo.