Is there any chance to save your team from the event reporting process nightmare?

Event reporting process stays among the most problematic aspects of the event management for both members of staff and c-level executives. Is there a chance that there are tools that can fix this problem? Let’s find out!

Investing in event marketing as a part of the company’s marketing strategy is becoming more and more popular. It’s because managers realized the value that this kind of activity brings for the company. It’s raising brand awareness, exposition, creating an employer branding, supporting sales and more. However, while working in the industry for many years, I still see how serious of a problem reporting process is for the team and the supervisors. The struggle which can be simplified with the use of technological novelties, unfortunately, remains the source of frustration and often results in giving up events for good.

As a decision-maker for the company, you want to evaluate investments right away after the endeavor ends. After all, substantive reports give you a basis to make business decisions about further moves, the success of strategies carried out and help you determine the flaws to be improved in the future. However, you probably often meet with delays in getting the reports on your desk. It’s good to realize that it’s not always your team’s fault. Let’s put ourselves in their shoes and see what struggles they may encounter.

Event reporting obstacles in your team’s way

People responsible for organizing events throw themselves in the deep water and stay at full speed during the whole process. Then comes the time to draw some conclusions. Unfortunately, when the reporting process comes in, the speed goes down. There are several factors that should be held responsible for that:

• No clear goals or no measurement,
• The multitude of event management tools,
• Staying analog.

No goals = no measurement = no event reporting

Setting clear and relevant goals for every organized event is what affects the whole process and drives its profitability. Having aims to achieve, you’re able to set proper KPIs which will help you measure important aspects of your event. Now, if you think about it, it’s clear that this should give a clear basis for the post-event report. However, one of the most common causes of problems with event reporting is the lack of defining what was the purpose of the event in the first place.

Another common explanation of the problems with providing a decent report is the lack of ability to measure the Key Performance Indicators of the event. Partly, it connects with the absence of goals – how to measure anything if you don’t know what to measure, right? Another side of this coin is that often event planners don’t know how to start measuring certain aspects of the event and its success. This results in reports based on predictions, assumptions instead of hard data that could show the real effects in terms of attendees engagement, most successful stands and so on. Generally speaking, such reports that are the final outcome of the investment in events don’t have any solid numeric grounds.

The multitude of event management tools create chaos

Event organizing process isn’t an easy task. That’s why, over the years, many event management tools were brought to life. They let your team make the whole process more efficient and took some burden from their shoulders. You may think that the more event planner software you provide the easier their job will be. Well, that doesn’t mean you’ll get reports quicker, rather the opposite.

Imagine that your people have, let’s say, 10 different tools to take care of the event. Each of them gathers its own data set. Different information is being saved on the tool’s database, everything ready to be transformed into beautiful graphs and brought to your desk in the form of fresh post-event report. But there’s a problem, how to aggregate the data set from multiple sources? How to draw conclusions from data obtained with different algorithms and methods? And finally, think about the time wasted on putting it all together! Letting alone the fact that all this often happens in the labyrinth of spreadsheet columns.

Staying analog makes you waste the potential of increasing the event reporting efficiency  

Last but definitely not least – the analog way of dealing with event business that can drive your team crazy and will cost you waiting for the reports for days (if not weeks!). It may come as a surprise, after all, we live in times where technology is used on a daily basis and rules every aspect of our lives. However, while talking with our clients, I see how traditional ways of dealing with the reporting process and the event’s analytical side is still not upgraded to technology development.

Regardless of whether it’s just a force of habit or the unawareness of available solutions, spreadsheets as the only place to store and analyze event data are still a common practice. However, it significantly limits the immensity of the data that can be aggregated. Automatically, the reporting process becomes indigent. Then, there’s a human factor and the ability to process the spreadsheet data quickly. You see, using spreadsheets your employees spend hours and days trying to first – organize the data from all the tools; then analyze it and only then figure out a way to visualize it in such a way that you are able to study the most important trends and draw correct conclusions. Seems like a waste of time and resources, doesn’t it?  Luckily, there’s a way to save your employees from this misery and get yourself a killer-reports on the desk on time. The answer is the event planner platform.

How can event planner software save your team from an event reporting nightmare?

While reading the first part of this article you might have at some point noticed that problems that employees encounter while preparing reports from the event are leading one to another. The matter of setting clear goals and KPIs contributes to more effective reporting long before the process event starts. This is the step that can’t be ignored and is the part of organizers’ duties. However, from this point on, the event reporting obstacles can be terminated with the help of the event management platform.

#1 Event planner software measure up your event and provide substantive data

By implementing technological tools to your event management process, from the very begging you take care that your team will get hard data to base the reports on. With previously determined goals your team can measure the key aspects that will allow them to clearly evaluate the goal accomplishment. This way, you as a decision-maker will be able to tell if the event was worth the investment and did its job.

The event planner software will also save your team a great deal of time which normally they’d need to spend on thinking about the ways to measure certain parts of the event. Having it all done by the software, they are certain that data is accurate and they can rely on it, which let them cut off all doubts while preparing the report.

#2 Data is gathered to one place

Another advantage of reaching for event management system that will extremely improve the efficiency of the reporting process is the fact that data is gathered into one place. It cuts down the effort that needed to be made to connect all information into one coherent piece. Your team can get access to it directly after the event ends, so there’s no risk of delays in event reporting.

#3 Event planner platform will do the visualization for you

Event management technology not only provides your team with data aggregated in one place. Also, platforms like Eventory take care of the introductory analysis. It means that instead of putting data into spreadsheets to create graphs, tables and charts, they’ll see already prepared visualizations. It allows them going straight to the drawing conclusions stage. The visual preparation of the data is already done by the event planner software. It’s yet another skipped and automated stage of the event reporting that would take time in the reporting process taken from your employees’ shoulders.

Giving your team the right tools to work with in terms of event reporting will allow them to focus on the actual evaluation of the results. They don’t get tired of looking on endless rows in the spreadsheet file. They don’t need to work with figures and numbers, count them and focus on proper calculations. Instead, they get a clear view of what was happening during the event and can draw appropriate conclusions. Not only they feel motivated and less frustrated with the work but also it has a positive effect on the c-level executives work efficiency.

Mutual profits of c-level executives and event managers

When you realize how complex the obstacles of event reporting may be, you surely see how much inconvenience it must cause in your employee’s ranks. However, the flawed reporting process strongly influences your, the decision-maker, work as well.

By providing new solutions, such as event planning software, to make reporting less painful and more efficient you invest in the growth of the whole company. How’s that possible? More detailed and hard data-based reports give you better insight into the goal achievement and performance of the strategy. With that, comes a better evaluation. You can say which part of the event was a success, what didn’t work and needs improvements. This way, you’re making sure that ineffective events won’t be held in the future.

What’s more, when the reporting process works flawlessly, the possible errors can be detected sooner and therefore improvements can be made faster. This all results in better event management with which comes bigger returns on the investments. Sometimes, it’s hard to spot the delicate connections between business growth and the simple thing that is reporting. However, once the process is improved the positive impact is obvious and clearly visible.