How to Conduct a Needs Assessment to Find the Right Strategic Event Management Software

Finding the right strategic event management software can be an overwhelming and challenging task. But with an ever-present demand for innovative event experiences, the consequences of choosing the wrong platform can make events more complicated and demotivate your team (womp-womp).

Conducting a needs assessment is a vital first step in selecting the right event management software platform for your organization. Without a thorough needs assessment, you risk investing in software that doesn’t align with your goals, leading to inefficiencies, increased costs, and unsuccessful events. 

For this reason, in this blog, we’ll discuss how to conduct a needs assessment and why it is pivotal to making the right decisions for your organization.

Why do a needs assessment?

When searching for a strategic event management software platform, it’s important to ensure that everyone’s needs in your organization are addressed and accounted for. This ranges from team members who will be using the tool daily to those helping with implementation and integrations, plus other key stakeholders, teams, supervisors, and C-suite executives.

A needs assessment shows you’ve done your research. It’s rare for a single tool to solve every problem for everyone. However, if you can thoroughly explain why you chose a particular software, how it’s an upgrade from your existing tools, and identify solutions for any issues it may not address, it will help your organization understand your decision-making process. In summary, presenting a needs assessment helps everyone feel part of the process and makes it significantly easier to get buy-in.

How long does a needs assessment take?

Organizational decisions take time, and presenting a needs assessment to get the ball rolling can, too. Many variables can affect the length of the process, depending on how many different stakeholders are in your organization, the size of your organization, how many people will be using the tool, and how long it takes to coordinate all the relevant meetings. At any rate, the process doesn’t have to drag on!

To keep things short and efficient, hold meetings within a specific week and set deadlines for all feedback. In cases where people cannot meet, make it so they can provide written answers to the questions—but only if they cannot meet. Face-to-face almost always gets results quicker. Additionally, it often opens up important discussion points you hadn’t originally accounted for.

Even if you believe someone may not be able to attend, invite them. For this reason, you avoid the possibility of eleventh-hour feedback and everyone who needs to be involved in the assessment is given an opportunity to contribute right away.

What teams to involve and who to involve from each team

Conducting a needs assessment requires involvement from various teams to ensure all bases are covered. It’s important to involve marketing, events, software development, accounting, operations, HR, and any other teams that may end up using the tool.

In addition, it’s crucial to speak with both end-users and their managers, along with any key stakeholders who have been involved in software contract signings historically. It’s also recommended to ask all parties involved if they could think of anyone else who might use the tool or be impacted by it, in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the tool’s potential reach.

Sample questions to ask each group & how to get answers:

Preparing a needs assessment requires asking the right questions to identify your organization’s needs. For this reason, we’ve put together some of our favorite questions below:

Questions for potential users of the tool:

• What are your current tasks related to managing our events?
• How do you manage them? What tools do you use currently?
• What do you like about your current tools and/or processes?
• What do you not like about your current tools and/or processes?
• What does your ideal strategic event management tool look like?
• What are some must-haves in a new tool?
• What are some nice-to-haves in a new tool?
• Do you foresee any potential roadblocks?

Sample questions developers:

• If we need to add integrations between a new event management tool and other existing tools, what would that process look like?
• If I have an integration request, how far in advance do I need to submit a request?
• Can you estimate the length of time it would take to integrate a new platform within our organization?
• Who would I need to get sign-off from to get my project prioritized?
• Do you foresee any potential roadblocks?

Questions to ask managers of potential users:

• From your perspective, what are must-haves for new event management software?
• What are nice-to-haves?
• What are your concerns/issues with the way your team currently manages events?
• Do you foresee any potential roadblocks?

Sample questions decision-makers:

• What do you believe to be an appropriate price range for new strategic event management software?
• What’s your limit in terms of the length of time it should take for everyone to get up to speed on a new platform?
• What are your concerns?
• If everyone agrees on the platform, would there be any reason for you to want to hold off on signing a contract?
• How much do you want to be a part of this process?
• Do you have any specific deadlines you want to meet in terms of when to sign a contract and when all team members need to be onboarded?
• Can you confirm your price range?
• Do you foresee any potential roadblocks?

As we touched on earlier, in-person meetings are the best way to gather answers. These meetings allow you to ask clarifying questions and get additional context you may not be able to get over email. If in-person meetings aren’t possible, surveys or emails can be used but should be saved as a last resort. In all cases, set a firm deadline and adhere to it.

What to do with the information you gather

Staying organized is key when gathering information for your needs assessment. Everything should go into a Word document or PowerPoint, organized into a simple one page per person document with a summary of their questions and answers.

Once you’ve completed that, create a summary that includes collective top priorities, nice-to-haves, roadblocks, questions, and concerns. Present your findings to the group of respondents along with any additional stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. Just as with the needs assessment itself, you’ll gain more valuable insights in person—so, if possible, this presentation should be in the form of a meeting rather than a document!

Pitfalls and challenges

Putting together a thorough needs assessment isn’t without its challenges.

Firstly, it can be challenging to meet with everyone you want to meet with. To overcome this, inform those who can’t provide feedback by the deadline that you do value their input. However, if they don’t meet the deadline, assume they trust you to make the right decision without their input. Continue to prioritize in-person meetings as they will save you stress in the long-term, even if they can be taxing in the moment.  

Finally, remember that it’s difficult to get people to think about all the details in the initial planning stages. It is essential to get people to think through details early to avoid stressful eleventh-hour suggestions. You can achieve this by telling them to pretend you’re about to sign a contract, asking them if they can think of anything else to contribute that you haven’t thought of, and asking open-ended questions.

Conclusion

We understand finding the right strategic event management software solution for every situation can be tough. For this reason, we created Attendease, the event planner’s Swiss army knife.

Attendease un-complicates even the most complicated events with seamless and easy-to-use:

• Agency-grade event websites
• Event registration and ticketing
• Multi-event management tools
• Event marketing and automation
• In-person, virtual, and hybrid event management options

Book a demo today and see how Attendease can ‘wow’ your organization and help you deliver better events than ever before!