Finding the right tools in the events business is becoming harder than organising the perfect event. Until a few years ago the problem was finding any tool at all — even one borrowed from another sector — that could work in an environment as complex and particular as events, because there were essentially none. Today the difficulty is almost the opposite. There are too many tools and too many service providers that could potentially solve problems, save time and money and improve the performance of an event.
So if you do not want to get lost in a maze of proposals — all of them extremely tempting, it must be said — and you want to get straight to the point, what should you be looking for?
Having a map, a guide, a set of questions to answer is sometimes the most important thing for not losing your way. So here is ours: some thoughts that try to answer the question “what should I look for in a good set of event organising tools, if it is really going to be an asset?”.
They are, of course, also the qualities we had in mind when we built SharEvent — but we would like to think we are not the only ones who did, and that these thoughts are therefore useful to any event manager, whatever kind of events they organise and, above all, whether or not they are already our customers. If you are, in fact, we think this short list can be an excellent way of assessing the products of ours you are already using, and of asking us to do better — which is what we aim to do every day.
1. Operational efficiency
Event management software has to automate repetitive tasks, cutting the time spent on manual work significantly. That lets managers concentrate on strategic matters, such as personalising the event and improving the attendee experience. So the first thing to look at is this: how much work can I save every day, and how much of the work that remains is high-quality work — design, ideas, strategic management?
2. Integration and "dialogue"
Software that does not talk to your other business tools is software that only half works. Unless it can become the single tool needed to run an event from start to finish, it is very important that it interfaces as well as possible with the tools already in use, particularly the ones that would be hard to replace. And if that is not possible? That is where it becomes essential to understand how flexible each tool is — how far each side can travel to meet the other, giving something up if need be, to make living together work.
3. Analytics and reporting
Real-time analytics and reporting are crucial. Good software has to be able to give detailed reports on attendance, attendee engagement and, more broadly, every significant measure of an event: the standard ones, easily reused in reports and in designing future events — including different ones — and the specific ones, capable of capturing the real added value of experiences that may be unique and unrepeatable. In many cases the problem is also working out what to measure before you can ask the tools to measure it, but we have written something else about that.
4. User experience
Time is already short when you work in events; if you then have to spend it learning a new tool, frustration is just around the corner. That is why, whatever tool you are assessing, it is essential that its interface be intuitive or at least familiar — because that is the first sign there is ground for working well together. And because ease of use, in any software, is decisive for the operational success of an event, both for the people running it and for the people attending.
5. Support and security
Data security is not just a priority for event organisers, it is an obligation. So every tool you use has to meet the same standard, starting with GDPR compliance and extending to the security of the servers holding the data. Equally important is technical support: how efficient is it, and in what way, against the needs you expect to have? How far can it guarantee — within the limits of what is humanly possible, of course — that problems will be resolved promptly, before they turn critical?
6. Customisation and scalability
Every event is different from every other, and that is not just a turn of phrase. So the tools you choose to organise and run it should be able to adapt what they do — at least up to a point — to meet particular needs, even ones that are not unusual. We mean simple things, like being able to create custom fields for contact records and registrations, and more complex ones, like being able to configure workflows to fit specific requirements. But we also mean scalability: the possibility that the tools grow along with the events, staying with them over the long run and becoming genuine working partners.
Now over to you: how many of the tools you are already using have all, or some, of these qualities?
Which are missing, and which would you add, so they could really become your perfect partners?
We would genuinely like to know — starting, perhaps, from your experience of what we have already built into SharEvent and you already know.
Or that you can try here.