Cover Feature
Lori Hoinkes, CEO,
Montgomery Group
While I’ve been reflecting on what
the event landscape could look like in
the future, I’m very aware that there
are a lot of variables still at play. So,
one of the areas I’ve chosen to focus
on is how we improve the customer
experience by improving our internal
business processes – with a primary
focus on event, commercial, and
marketing plans. I believe this is a solid
approach to protecting our business
going forward – doing what we do, even
better.
As a business, we spent a lot of time
in 2019 looking at ‘why we do’ what we
do, so now we’re looking at ‘how we do’
what we do, and how we can improve
Doug Emslie, Group CEO,
Tarsus Group
I feel confident in saying that a lot of
event planning teams out there have
spent the past weeks evaluating online
event providers, accelerating digital
transformation plans and getting to
grips with what virtual events can
and should look like! For us at Tarsus,
developing digital extensions to
our events has become increasingly
important too. Our online event
offering will be a true extension to our
events, enabling visitors who may not
otherwise be in a position to “attend” to
do so as well as building on the digital
product portfolio we’ve been curating
Geoff Dickinson, CEO, dmg
events
We have faced huge challenges in
cancelling a significant number of
events. The loss of revenues and
profits have been difficult to deal
with and trying to forecast, and plan
for the future has become incredibly
challenging.
Our priority has to been to try and
support our customers and staff. We
tried to take decisions about cancelling
as early as possible by considering first
and foremost health and safety.
We took the decision early on to
tell teams to work from home. It’s
important for all businesses to have a
good Business Continuity Plan and this
it. Across the busines we have pockets
of excellence, so part of this exercise
is about standardisation and ensuring
that each and every team is learning
and adopting best practices. The other
part is about leveraging our customer
segmentation data – and customising
our plans to really deliver for our key
customer personas for each event.
I often say to the team ‘plan your
work, then work your plan’, so we're
doubling down on creating the best
possible plans for our events, and we’re
looking forward to working those plans
in the months ahead.
here’s no doubt that when we return –
even if only gradually at first - we will
have learnt some important lessons.
There’ll be an eagerness to trade, and
a desire in every market we touch to
do business. Our customers will need
assurances, and compelling reasons why
returning to exhibitions will deliver
the ROI they desperately need. In many
cases exhibitions will be the only option
for businesses to kick-start trade. We
know that exhibitions are vital to the
UK’s economic recovery, and the sooner
they return - the sooner we can start
recovery.
We’ve also seen an acceleration in the
Digital Transformation of exhibitions
with many organisers building robust
models that can add value for their
customers. And it can’t hurt to add
more value by developing deeper, and
more beneficial business opportunities
for our customers.
of course ultimately revolves around IT.
Crises teach you things that can help
you to grow stronger as a business. We
have learned how to communicate more
efficiently.
So, whilst this crisis has undoubtedly
hurt our business and sadly, staff and
customers, we have seen some upsides
in the way that we work now and will
in the future. Going forward our huge
adoption of tech communications
platforms will dramatically reduce our
telecoms and travel costs.
With the absence of so many of our
valued industry events we have become
better at delivering webinars, blogs,
podcasts and other useful sources of
information for our customers.
Despite the challenges the events
industry has faced it will recover,
it always does. Our customers will
urgently need to reconnect with their
customers and find new customers
when this is all over and there is no
better or faster way to do this than
through face to face trade fairs.
Conferences will play an even more
vital role in laying out roadmaps for
recovery in a post Covid-19 world. There
will be a growth in virtual events and
as organisers we need to adapt to this.
But I don’t see these virtual events as
replacing face to face.
May — 19