“I knew exactly why we needed Eventsforce,” Hannah says, adding that when she began her tenure as a consultant with the CCN, its event operations were managed via spreadsheet, a time-consuming process.
Today, the organisation’s events team uses the platform to support all its live events, including its flagship CCN Annual Conference alongside its presence at the Local Government Association Annual Conference, the largest local government gathering in the country. In addition to these high-profile occasions, the CCN team also use Eventsforce for the 3-4 virtual events it hosts over the course of the calendar year.
Now — with England’s local government landscape on the precipice of monumental transformation — the CCN continues to utilise Eventsforce to manage its roster of events in the face of sector wide change. For the CCN, this means not only adding a substantial number of new members to its ranks but also welcoming in a multitude of new faces to its many events. As Hannah explains, the goal is to ensure that throughout all of this change, the CCN continues to deploy Eventsforce to streamline its event operations while the organisation’s new members are able to effortlessly engage with the platform as professionals within the local government sector.
From apps to integration: Deploying the Eventsforce solution to full effect
Yet even as the future of the sector unfolds in real time, the Eventsforce platform — along with its associated app — serves as the foundation for all the CCN’s events, be they live or virtual, large or small. As Hannah explains, the ability of the platform to integrate with a variety of other interfaces and tools — especially the CCN’s website — ensures that it plays a vital role in supporting the organisation’s event operations, whatever shape they take. Deployed alongside its complementary app — which offers the organisation’s delegates a way to seamlessly connect with each other at every occasion — the Eventsforce solution is used by the CCN to create a comprehensive event experience.
Citing an example of the how the dynamism of Eventsforce has helped the CCN to further its event operations, Hannah explains that, back in 2024, the CCN hosted an event with Active Travel England (ATE), a government agency dedicated to promoting active travel within the nation. Thanks to the close integration between Eventsforce and the CCN website, the CCN was able to build a virtual event that had been honed via the data collected from delegates at the point of registration. The ability to invite delegates directly to their website to book, meant that Hannah and her team could ask the kinds of questions that added shape and form to the webinar, ensuring it was relevant and interesting to all attendees.
Reaping the benefits of Eventsforce through increased efficiency...
For James Holden, the CCN’s Senior Corporate and Public Affairs Adviser — and the organisation’s lead on speaker management for all of its events — the ability to update speakers’ details and amend agendas at short notice within the Eventsforce app has proven to be a real asset. But from Hannah’s perspective, it’s the tracking and reporting capabilities offered by the platform that stand out, empowering the organisation to infuse its event operations with a true sense of efficiency.
With the Eventsforce platform, details such as dietary requirements can be gathered quickly and easily, whereas previously, “It would have taken 30 minutes, so the time savings is absolutely massive. It’s made a huge impact on how we manage our events,” Hannah says. What’s more, should any issues arise within any individual registrations — an incomplete booking, for example — Hannah is able to use the Eventsforce system to track, isolate, and resolve them. “That the system shows you that something’s incomplete seems trivial. But it’s huge,” says Hannah, citing how the ability to keep tabs on the finer details of every occasion have helped CCN to enhance its event operations.
Efficiencies like this, says Hannah, have encouraged the team at the CCN to undertake a more careful evaluation of how their conferences are managed. Elaborating on a recent example of this, after their last annual conference in November 2024, Hannah says that she and James noticed the sheer variety of ticket types offered by the CCN for this event. The aim, she said, is now to review these ticket types to enhance the efficiency of their operations in time for their 2025 event. The Eventsforce platform, she says, offers the “capability for you to look at things in a different way, to further save time.”
… Plus, turning powerful insights into ROI
But more than a sense of efficiency, the platform’s tracking and reporting capabilities have also enhanced the CCN’s ability to show tangible ROI for its event operations.
For example, thanks to the Eventsforce platform, Hannah is able to offer immediate insight into the number of delegates registered for each of the organisation’s conferences and events. “I've also been able to download reports to see bookings, so I can track where we are against previous years. My chief executive loves that,” she says.
On the back of all this, Hannah adds that the responsive and attentive support they receive from their account manager has only added to their overall experience as a user of Eventsforce, with feedback not only received, but acted upon.
“I think there’s been a few things we’ve fed back that have come into play,” says Hannah. “It’s a clever system in that respect because the organisation itself is constantly upgrading and tweaking. That’s incredibly reassuring.”
Offering both stability and the opportunity to create positive change in terms of how the CCN manages its event operations, Eventsforce has, she says, “given us the confidence to then make other changes to further enhance our conferences.” Hannah adds that the platform “does exactly what we wanted it to do and more,” making it the ideal solution for a sector on the cusp of monumental change.
to support its roster of conferences, using its steady functionality to bring efficiency and clarity to its event operations even as the sector in which the body operates is poised for transformation. 