Association Event Network September 2018 | Page 17

September 2018
Case Study
17
Event tech provides rich soil
for fertiliser event growth
Cvent provided the event tech nutrients for the IFA to make a success of its conferences
Case Study: Th e International Fertiliser
Association (IFA)
Products used: Onsite Solutions, Event
Management Solutions and CrowdCompass
Attendees: 1,500
Th e IFA organises around seven conferences
for their members every year in various cities.
Th e in-house event planning team are tasked
with managing all event requirements from
audio-visual to food and beverage as well as
delegate travel and accommodation.
With roughly 1,500 delegates attending
the series of events, the IFA team found the
registration process a major challenge as they
were required to manually update registration
lists; a tedious task of constantly removing
cancelled participants and adding new ones.
Badges were an issue, too. Th e team
worked late, printing name tags to assemble
prior to the day of the event. In addition, the
team were required to print 50 page lists of
attendees to include in a conference kit. Not
only was printing time consuming and costly,
the information was almost never up to date
on the day of the event due to last-minute
registrations and cancellations.
Why Cvent?
Before working with Cvent the IFA already
had an event registration website, software for
registering delegates, a separate system to print
badges and a mobile event app. Th e planner
team decided to use Cvent after attending a
live demonstration of their event management
technology and responding favourably to their
integrated system which synchronises data
across various components.
Th e IFA used Cvent’s Online Event
Management Solutions for registration and
could track the number of delegates attending
– aiding in room selection for sessions and
allowing for last -minute venue changes.
Time usually spent compiling participant and
rooming lists, creating badges and working on
reports could be redirected as all requests were
manged through one system.
Later, IFA decided to adopt the
CrowdCompass mobile event app. Th is
enabled the team to synchronise their speaker
and programme information directly into
the app (saving time on copying and pasting
data from one application to another). Th e
team could also conduct live polls, send push
notifi cations to delegates alerting them to
updates and collect feedback through post-
event surveys to improve the experience at
future conferences.
Cvent’s Onsite Solutions, including an
on-demand badge printing system, allowed
IFA to provide a seamless check-in experience
for delegates and allowed them to update
their registration information (not possible
previously). Th e number of hostesses required
onsite reduced from 15 to 5 and registration
desks were replaced by four iPad stations.
Th e reporting feature was a great asset,
with a click of a button the team were able to
analyse statistics from past events and compare
them to current events.
Client comments:
Th e IFA plans to continue its partnership
with Cvent and considers its products a game
changer. Jessica de Lafargue, event planner,
IFA, said: “Cvent really simplifi es the event
planning process. As the registration system
and CrowdCompass app are synchronised
planners are able to save a lot of time. Th e
onsite solutions get rid of all the stress,
especially when registration opens and all the
participants come in.”