Get The Most From Your New Event Management Software Platform: Here’s How

Transitioning your organization to a new event management software platform can feel like a leap into the unknown. Yet as challenging as it may seem at first, this unknown is also a reservoir of untapped potential.

Harnessing the power of your new event management software can be easy with the right strategies. This guide is committed to making this transition easier, helping you embrace your new software and reinvigorate your events!  

Prioritizing Training, Onboarding & Account Setup

Proper training and onboarding is the first step to getting the most out of your event management software. Start by educating yourself and your team about the platform’s features and capabilities. Make use of the tutorials the provider offers and don’t be shy about asking for demos or live sessions with their customer success team! They exist to ensure you’re getting the most out of their software.

Before you’re onboarded, make sure you understand how your new event management software can align with your event planning and execution strategies. This way, you can spend some time with your provider to ensure your account is set up to help maximize your new tool. Remember, this solution should be calibrated to best fit your needs—not the other way around.

Setting Clear Goals & Realistic Objectives

Establishing clear and realistic goals is pivotal for maximizing your event management software’s potential. Specific goals help guide your focus and ensure the platform’s features are used strategically. In other words, it’s not just about ‘managing events,’ but how you plan to do so. Make sure you’re aligning with broader business goals and maximizing the return on your software investment.

Are you aiming to streamline the ticketing process? Looking to enhance attendee experience through personalized communication? Or perhaps you want to leverage data for post-event analysis? Setting these objectives from the start will shape how you use the software.

Aligning Your Team

Effective use of event management software heavily relies on your team’s understanding and integration of the tool into their daily workflow. From your event planners to your marketing department, everyone has a role within the software ecosystem. Ensuring everyone knows how to navigate and use the platform to its full extent is crucial.

Regular team meetings can provide an opportunity to discuss updates, answer queries, and share tips on using the software. Likewise, routine training sessions can help familiarize the team with new features, and regular check-ins can address any ongoing issues, preventing them from becoming bigger problems. When everyone is on the same page, it creates an environment of shared understanding and boosts the team’s confidence in using the platform!

Being Aligned With Your Provider

When it comes to aligning with your software provider, clear communication is vital. Expressing your needs, expectations, and goals can drastically improve your platform experience. Your provider’s insight into the product’s capabilities can help you understand how best to utilize the platform, tailor the software to better fit your needs, and even discover features that you may have overlooked.

So, keep an open line of communication with your provider. Regular catch ups can address any potential issues and sharing feedback can help them understand how they can improve their product to better suit your needs. By nurturing this partnership, you can ensure that you’re extracting the maximum value from the platform.

Staying Engaged and Up to Date

Make a habit of staying updated with regular product changes and upgrades. If you don’t adapt as the software evolves, you risk missing out on improved features or more efficient ways of doing things!

Since new features are continuously being added and existing ones get updated, it’s important to hold refresher training sessions. Often overlooked, these sessions are just as important as the initial training so that you and your team stay on the leading edge of event management.

Lastly, building a strong relationship with your provider’s customer success team is vital. Regular communication can provide you with tips and tricks, tailored advice, and quick problem resolution.

Celebrating Quick Wins

Quick wins refer to tasks that your event management software can streamline and accomplish quickly, providing immediate benefits.

These might be automating repetitive tasks like sending confirmation emails, creating post-event surveys at a click, or swiftly setting up event registration pages. Identifying these quick wins is crucial as they not only save time but also demonstrate the value and potential of the tool. This early success can boost your team’s confidence and encourage them to explore the platform more extensively.

Integrating the Tool Into Your Daily Work Schedule

Incorporating the platform into your daily work is a sure-fire way to maximize its potential. It’s not enough to use it sporadically or only for specific tasks; the software should become a constant companion in your event management journey.

This implies doing everything within the platform, from checking event registrations and attendee queries to reviewing campaign performance and preparing for upcoming events. The more you use the platform, the more intuitive it becomes. You’ll discover shortcuts, develop best practices, and learn how to customize the tool to meet your specific needs.

This doesn’t happen overnight, of course…It’s a gradual process of integration. Start by identifying tasks that can be done through the platform. Then, slowly but surely, move these tasks onto the platform until it becomes an essential part of your workflow.

Pitfalls

With the right strategy and mindset, maximizing the effect of your new event management software can be straightforward for everyone involved. Without it, it can be easy to experience the following 4 pitfalls:

1. Expecting Success without Putting in the Work
   • Success comes with effort. Expecting your event management software to work wonders without proper understanding, training, and usage will only lead to disappointment.
2. Not Having Clear Goals
   • As mentioned before, unclear or unrealistic goals will not allow you to use your software to its fullest. Having well-defined goals gives direction to your platform usage.
3. Minimizing the Importance of Training and Onboarding
   • Inadequate training can result in underutilization of the software, causing potential bottlenecks in your event management process. Make sure to put enough time and effort into onboarding and training!
4. Not Making the Tool a Key Part of Your Work Schedule
   • Sporadic use of the platform won’t yield desired results. Make it an integral part of your daily tasks and you’ll see significant improvements in your event management process.

So, what’s next?

Integrating new event management software successfully can be made easy. However, some businesses fail to invest the necessary effort and commitment required to fully tap into the potential of their investment. This under-utilization often results in missed opportunities, inefficiencies, and ultimately, a less than optimal ROI.

The bright side is that having success with your new software platform is mostly within your control. If you invest the time, effort, and patience to deeply understand the software and how it can be incorporated into your everyday workflow, you can truly transform it into a powerful tool for your business!

If you’re looking for an event management software platform that uncomplicates events even further, consider Attendease.

Our easy-to-use platform is designed to bring calm to the chaos of multi-event management. With intuitive navigation, visual tools, drag and drop options, and unlimited website templates, it’s never been easier to manage event portfolios and complex. Want to learn more? Book a demo today!