Eventory is a Polish online platform for managing and conducting all (online, in-person, hybrid) events and business meetings. The platform offers extensive options for engaging participants and analyzing events for marketing, sales, and HR. The company has just announced a partnership with Japan’s INDIVISION, a market-leading technology provider that uses aggregated information about user behavior and preferences to deliver value to customers and data necessary to develop their business.

Japanese events in the era of a pandemic

Unlike Poland, Japan did not follow the path of a complete ban on the organization of stationary business events and meetings during the pandemic. Limitations vary depending on the number of cases and the strength of the spread of the virus. Recently, business events have been held – assuming that the number of their participants allows to keep a distance between the people participating in the event and amounts to a maximum of approx. 50% of the number that a given place can contain. Hence, today in Japan there is a high demand for solutions that allow to combine offline and online worlds in events, in order to be able to reach those participants using virtual space, whose restrictions would exclude from participation in a given event or meeting.

But in Japan, as all over the world, a significant part of the events moved to the online space, although here we are talking not so much about the classic and most widely spread webinars in Poland, but about extensive, multi-stage events. Japanese companies are much more demanding in this area, expecting event providers to provide them not only with better quality services, but also verifiable and usable data about the event.

Conscious Japanese business

Moving a large part of our business and promotional activities online has increased the requirements of our clients regarding the tools used to carry them out. When organizing a company event, Japanese corporations and enterprises – regardless of whether it is an in-person or online event, whether it is strictly internal or a sales event – expect clear information about what a given tool offers them and how it will help them manage over business and coordination of participants. – says Shigeharu Hanazaki, founder and CEO of INDIVISION Inc., responsible for the Eventory development team in Japan. As Hanazaki assures, the company has long been looking for a partner who, within one platform, gives the opportunity to plan, conduct and measure any event. Eventory turned out to be such an ideal tool for the Japanese market, as it offers options for organizing and managing any type of event. As part of the license, the user receives a specific command center for corporate events, equipped with a number of useful functionalities that increase their quality for participants and provide the organizers with valuable information and data. Eventory also has a very good and intuitive mobile application for participants. In a market such as ours, where technology is commonplace and used by everyone and in almost every area of ​​life, the quality of the application and the convenience of its use are simply key. It is even impossible to convince a Japanese customer or user to use technologically weak solutions. Here the bar hangs really high. – adds Shigeharu Hanazaki.

Eventory as the platform of first choice for B2B events in Japan

Eventory started talks with INDIVISION in June 2020, and since November, the company has been Eventory’s exclusive partner in Japan. The first months of cooperation were spent on in-depth market analysis and the preparation of the Japanese language version of the platform and the dedicated Eventory mobile application. Currently, a Polish-Japanese team led by Barbara Kozanecka (PL) and Ikumi Kataoka (JP) is working on making Eventory the target tool for B2B events on the Japanese market within 12 months.

The chances of that are really high. Even before the Japanese version of the platform was officially launched, Eventory’s clients were joined by the tycoon of the local media market – Hearst Digital Japan.

A market worth a fortune

The Japanese event market is currently worth $ 170 billion, and there are several large organizations in the country grouping companies not only in the area of ​​business or corporate events, but also those related to tourism. The country of the Rising Sun in 2019 was visited by nearly 32 million people for business and tourist purposes. As a result of the pandemic, this figure has dropped to 4.1 million. Japanese authorities are joining forces with tourist and event organizations to provide people interested in their country with the best options for virtual sightseeing and visiting places or taking part in events or events.

More often, Japanese companies presenting their brand online prepare a plan or decorations in the place from which the broadcast takes place, as it was before the pandemic at stationary events. The percentage of hybrid events is growing rapidly in this area. In Japan, the number of new cases is falling, so the near future will certainly be dominated by combined hybrid events. Eventory, also as a hybrid solution with such a useful and functional mobile application for participants, has a chance to quickly gain a large part of our market of events and business meetings. – adds Ikumi Kataoka.