Tag: Awards

4 Ways Technology Can Help You Run Better Awards Events

Posted on by Eventsforce

Technology can be your best friend when it comes to creating and managing successful award programmes.  From launching awards sites and managing submission entries to allocating judges, communicating with stakeholders, managing payments and selecting winners. But having all this information sitting across different systems makes the whole process of managing awards events a lot more challenging.

Whether you’re running employee recognition programmes, peer reviews or award evenings for staff, partners or clients – using a dedicated awards management solution that combines all these different elements together on one centralised, secure platform will give you the insight you need for event success.

Have a look at the many ways awards management systems can help you boost submissions, save time and give you the real-time information you need to make decision on the go:

1. Build Attractive Awards Websites

You can engage with people from the very start and encourage them to submit their award entries with attractive, easy to navigate, information websites that can be customised to match your organisation’s own branding guidelines.  An awards management solution can help you create a unique look for each of your awards websites, branded with your own logos and the same look and feel of your organisation’s corporate website.

Custom templates, Content Management Systems (CMS) and cloning tools can also help you launch awards submission sites in minutes without the need for any html or web design skills.

2. Save Time Managing Award Entries

Having a user-friendly system that allows people to make their submissions online without any fuss is fundamental to the success of your event.  If your submission forms are complex, difficult and time-consuming to complete, then people will just give up and look elsewhere.

A dedicated awards management solution can create a much smoother experience for people when submitting their entries to your awards event.  Mobile-responsive tools will ensure that people can complete forms or make changes to submissions on any device. They can also save their work and submit their entries at a time more convenient to them.

As an event planner, an awards management solution can also bring a host of benefits that will help you save an enormous amount of time around managing the awards submissions process, including:

– Flexibility to set your own awards categories, submission parameters and deadlines

– Customised submission forms, helping you capture information in the format you want

– Integrated payment systems make it easier for you to manage payments people make around award entries – all directly linked to pricing categories, packages and early-bird discounts defined by you.

Are you looking after your attendee data? Learn more about the eight things event planners do that put their organisations at serious risk of breach!  Download your eBOOK now: The Event Planner’s Guide to Data Security in a Post-GDPR World

3. Make It Easy for Your Judges

This is usually the most arduous and time-consuming task when it comes to running awards events.  An awards management solution can help you allocate judges to specific award categories, while making it easier for you to communicate with them through personalised invitations and email alerts.

As with submission entries, a mobile responsive solution will encourage your judges to log-in to a secure online portal that can be accessed from any device at any time.  It can also help your judges do their jobs more efficiently with simple scoring systems and the ability to save their work and complete it later.

4. Make More Informed Decisions

An awards management system can support you with reporting tools that help you track progress on entries by categories, submitters and status. It can also give you insight on judges scores, comments and the whole selection process in real-time.  So at any given point in time, you’ll be able to see how many submissions have been reviewed, which of your judges you need to send reminders to, how close you are to making your final selection process and who to send rejection or nomination emails to.

Eventsforce Awards is a secure web-based solution that simplifies the whole process of managing award events, peer reviews and internal recognition programmes. For more information on how we can help, please get in touch with one of our team members at info@eventsforce.com

 

 

Why Hiring Students for Your Events is a Good Idea

Posted on by Eventsforce

 

Untitled design (14)Many of you have probably read how the role of an event coordinator has been ranked as the fifth most stressful job of 2016.  In fact, the only jobs ranked more stressful were enlisted military personnel, firefighters, airline pilots and police officers. Whether or not you agree with these findings, there is no doubt that working in events is not something that everyone is cut out to do.  It takes determination and experience (as do most jobs) and a good mix of communication, creative and time management skills to be successful.  Many in the industry believe that these skills can’t be taught.  That we don’t need academic degrees in event management.  That experience is what matters most.  But not anymore.

Perceptions around whether or not we need qualifications in the industry are changing. In January this year, the UK government recognized the importance of the events sector by forming the country’s first Event Industry Board.  Meanwhile, the president of MPI (Meeting Professionals International) has called for new standards regarding the certification of event professionals.  There is also a growing trend in big corporate institutions investing heavily in executive certificate programmes and post graduate event management courses for their events staff to keep them updated on the latest processes and methodologies of this fast-paced industry.

Whichever way you look at it, a qualification in event management is a lot more relevant today than it was five years ago. Modern universities like Coventry University are offering courses that combine academia with experience, helping create a new generation of event professionals that already have proven skills in project management – from briefing and planning to on-site management and post event evaluation.  They have worked on real projects with real clients and are certified in the latest event management software. Even before they graduate, these students are able to provide important support on many aspects of an organisation’s event. So why not work with them?

What Can the Event Management Student Do for My Organization?

Untitled design (12)Students today are very willing to take on any opportunity that can provide them with experience in the industry.  Meet and greet is probably the best place to invest in students – especially for those organisations who can’t afford specialist agencies. Many of our students man events like the Liberal Democrats party conference, where they are in charge of meet and greet, registration and other client-facing activities.

Placement schemes are another option. These can last up to a year and provide a cost effective way of hiring someone to do a specific job.  Our students do placements, and volunteering opportunities with organizations like the British Council. By working as part of their events and logistics teams for the ‘Going Global’ conferences, students have been able to work in places such as Dubai, Miami, London and Cape Town in 2016. The work they do includes building event websites, managing registrations, meet and greet, coordinating conference sessions, as well as running live reports and providing post event analysis. The feedback we get from these organizations is always positive and many decide to hire the students on a permanent basis once they graduate.

You can also look at internships.  These are usually unpaid positions that focus on short-term projects that can range anywhere from 4-12 weeks.  This can be a good opportunity to get someone to do important tasks that you may not have the resources for, such as conducting research on your competitive landscape, evaluating your social media performance or doing some post-event analysis. A lot of our graduate students choose to focus their dissertations on evolving areas in the industry such as wearable technologies and cashless events – organisations could suggest topics and work alongside these students for their own research and marketing purposes.

Where Do I Find Students That Add Value to My Events?

If you decide that working with an event management student makes sense for your events, the next step is to figure out where to find suitable candidates. There are a number of universities and other higher education institutions that offer comprehensive courses in event management, but the ones that stand out have some of the following attributes:

Industry-Driven Modules – Event management is still a very young, dynamic and fast changing industry.  Look at institutions that regularly consult with industry experts in creating and updating their modules. Find out how often they expose their students to the industry through lectures given by event professionals, field trips to industry events, course works involving real events and projects, as well as opportunities for practical work experience. Find out what proportion of students are in full-time work six months after graduation – as this gives a good indication of the institution’s reputation and academic standard.

Staff with Industry Expertise – A combined staff of academic lecturers and industry experts (event professionals across corporate, PCOs, associations and government) provides students with a good balance of theory and practical insights.

Industry Partnerships – Find institutions that have dedicated employment and placement schemes with reputable companies. At Coventry University, students have done placement schemes with British Council, Schroders, Bank Sadler and BP and many have travelled to international destinations like Dubai, Cape Town, Berlin and the US for practical hands on experience.  Read through the testimonials of these organisations and find out what they say about the students and their abilities.

Technology Focus: Technology is such an important aspect of events now that any knowledge on the subject can add real value to what a student can offer to your event. Second year students at Coventry University, for example, need to pass the Eventsforce certification programme, which teaches them how to use the event management software to build event websites and registration forms, build agendas, manage sessions, link sites to social media and pull different types of reports.

How Do I Choose the Right Student?

Once you have made a selection of the universities you would like to approach, the next step would be to select your candidates.  You can start by meeting students at university career days or take one step further and conduct an assessment center – this is when a group of students are given a task and they are rated on how they react, who takes the lead, how interactive they are, as well as their overall performance on achieving the set objectives.  You can also get the university to make you a shortlist of their top students.

Once you have your shortlist, then you can assess your candidates on the following attributes:

  • Presentation and content of CV
  • Proven event experience (local or international)
  • Likeability, communication and networking skills
  • Knowledge of event technology
  • Social media presence (views/opinions)
  • Blogs (many students blog about their work experiences)
  • Research skills (eg. social media or industry analysis)
  • Industry recognition (eg. MyEvent.Vision award or the Vanessa Cotton scholarship)

Good luck!

Ian Webster is senior lecturer and creator of the Event Management Honors Degree at Coventry University, which was recently ranked as UK’s number one university to offer a degree in event management (Guardian 2016 Subject League Tables). 

If you would like to get in touch, please email him at: bsx941@coventry.ac.uk

 

 

 

 

 

Why Your Events Could Benefit from Multilingual Websites

Posted on by Eventsforce

Choosing which event to attend is no longer restricted by borders and time zones, as delegates are increasingly happy to travel further afield for the right event. They are spurred not only by the abundance of cheap flights and budget accommodation, but by a real desire to learn about the latest innovations, best practice guidelines and the opportunity to network and share ideas with colleagues and peers from across the world.

But are we doing enough to reach delegates beyond our country’s borders?  A study by the European Commission in 2011 revealed that 90% of Internet users in the EU, said that when given a choice of languages, they always visited a website in their own language. A similar survey by the Common Sense Advisory in the US also found that 72% of consumers were more likely to buy a product or service online if the information provided was in their native language1. With this in mind and the fact that most people now research for events online, doesn’t it make sense for your events to have multilingual websites?

Untitled design (13)Why Multilingual Websites Can Boost Your Events

Multilingual sites today present one of the most cost-effective ways of marketing your events, attracting new delegates, building relationships with them and giving your organization an international outlook:

  • Shows You Care – It doesn’t take much effort to create a multilingual website (more below) but that extra effort shows your delegates that you care about them and are considerate of their needs, which makes them more likely to book onto your event. We all know that personalization is important to our delegates and what could be more personal than talking to them in their own language?
  • Builds Trust with Your Delegates – Trust is an important part of doing business. Trust in an event and the event organizer is even more important if a delegate is travelling from abroad. Communicating with these delegates in their native language helps them feel secure, understand what they are buying and who they are buying from.
  • Helps You Stay Ahead of Your Competitors – Make no mistake, your event has competition. Whether it’s from other events, alternative ways of spending budgets or time constraints, your delegate needs to make difficult choices. If they only go to a few events a year, you need to make yours stand out. Offering a multilingual website will give your event a competitive edge by demonstrating to delegates that your organization thinks, works and deals internationally.
  • Improves Search Engines Optimization – Search engines lead people to your site. While it’s tempting to view Google as the only search engine that matters, in reality this isn’t the case as in many countries, such as France, Japan and China, Google is not the default search engine. Baidu is popular in China, Acara in Japan and Voila in France. Such search engines are a key to tapping those markets unless they have access to a particular language though your multilingual event website, then your event will not be found. In addition, search engines like Google are developing the capacity to run searches in foreign languages.  Having your website available in those languages helps to ensure it will be picked up in searches.

But the Internet is in English

If you assume your delegates speak your language well enough to skip the translation step, you’re wrong. Today only 35% of the Internet’s content is in English, and this number continues to diminish. Russian, Spanish and Portuguese, for example, are continuing to trend upward with no sign of slowing down.  If you are targeting delegates who speak these languages, it is worth considering translating your content to better reach and connect with them. And while other languages like German, French and Japanese are trending down, they still represent such a large portion of the online community that it is worth thinking through your targeting approach to those markets as well1.

It’s a Lot Simpler Than You Think

Having the ability to communicate to a whole new international audience in their own language will undoubtedly bring results not only in a financial sense but also in terms of marketing and creating awareness of your event. And luckily, creating these multilingual event websites isn’t a complicated process if you consider the following basic requirements:

Make Sure Your Event Technology Supports It – Most event management or registration software these days offer a multilingual module, which allows important pages on your event website including those for registration and agendas to be displayed in several popular world languages of your choice.  By providing tools that allow you to automatically translate things like website headings, button texts, warning messages and email communication, the software helps you copy templates from one language to another in no time. Organizations like the British Council do this with their in-country events and the system has proved to be very successful.

Make Sure You Have the Necessary Staff Resources – If it’s a simple event website with a registration form that collects basic delegate information (name, country and contact details), then having staff that can speak the language isn’t entirely necessary as you can manage most of it through an online translation service like Google Translate. In most cases, however, you will need to have someone on your team who has a working knowledge of the language to oversee all translation requirements and more importantly, manage all delegate communication – from sending registration confirmation emails, making changes to agendas and managing requests.

If you don’t have the staff resources, then there are other affordable options.  You can hire a freelance translator through services like Upwork and Fiverr, that offer hundreds of talented and reliable people to work with. Alternatively, you can also use an online translation service like Unbabel, that combines artificial intelligence with crowdsourced human translation to deliver fast and high quality services to companies who want to reach international markets.

Written by Lynda Browne, Client Loyalty Manager, Eventsforce

1 Unbabel: Top Languages of the Internet, Today and Tomorrow

60-Seconds with Allianz Insurance

Posted on by Eventsforce

Charley Jennings (Allianz Insurance)Charley Jennings is the corporate events officer at Allianz Insurance.  Based in their London offices, she works with a team of six people who are in charge of organizing a variety of events from large conferences, dinners, awards, ceremonies and team building days which can gather anywhere between 10 to 600 people at a time.

EventTech Talk had a quick chat with her to find out a little about her favourite venues and restaurants and her worst event experience.

How long have you been working in events?

Around three years in total.  I started at Allianz as a placement student, returned to university to finish my degree and applied for a job when I finished.

Where is your favourite venue for events?

The Shangri-La Hotel at The Shard in London is great for meetings and One Great George Street in Westminster for awards ceremonies.

What is your favourite restaurant?

The Hutong Chinese restaurant at The Shard and SUSHISAMBA for Japanese-Brazilian-Peruvian sushi.

What would you say is your biggest challenge when planning an event?

Time – there doesn’t seem to be enough of it in the day!

What has been your biggest event nightmare? 

We held a large awards ceremony last year and there was a political protest outside the venue the night before the event. We had no idea what time the protest would finish, and if we were going to be allowed near the venue.  After a very long day, we managed to get everything ready and get to the venue before it started!

Mobile app you couldn’t live or work without?

WhatsApp Messenger.

New technology you’re looking forward to using one day?

To be able to use holograms at our conferences would be very exciting.

What has been the best piece of professional advice someone’s given you?

There is no such thing as being too organised!

Lastly, if you could have one superpower, what would it be?

To be able to freeze time!

How technology will help improve next year’s award ceremony

Posted on by Eventsforce

champagne-1-750x400If you’re running internal or external awards, conducting employee recognition programs, peer reviews or even awards evenings for clients, the chances are that this won’t be a one-off event, and is most likely repeated on an annual basis. View this repetition as an opportunity! It’s your chance to use your experiences to understand your previous events and programs better, and use what you learn to improve your future efforts. If this seems like a daunting task, then help is at hand. Technology can be your best friend in creating cutting-edge award programs, fuelling your desire for continuous improvement and allowing you to streamline your processes in the future. We’ve outlined a few ideas below as to how you could benefit.

The idea: Look at the readily available data The tech: Integrated systems

Registrations, entry forms submissions, the judging process, payments – each of these elements create a wealth of data, and so to be truly effective it’s important you take the time to really drill down into the information. This is potentially a lot of data to get your head around, so if it’s in silos and split across a number of different platforms you’re pretty quickly going to get cross eyed. The whole process will be made a lot simpler if you use a system that integrates each element, creating one centralised point from which you can run all the reports you need.

The idea: Source extra data The tech: Online questionnaires

When event professionals say they are trying to improve their awards ceremony, what this often boils down to is trying to improve the experience for those taking part, whatever their role. And what better way to do this than to actually ask them what they liked, and more importantly what they thought could be improved. An effective and cost-effective way of doing this is via an online survey. This will allow you to really understand what worked at your awards ceremony and what didn’t. For example, you’ll be able to find out if those attending found the registration process pain free, if judges found the judging process simple and easy-to-understand, and if people are likely to come back next year. If you don’t get the positive responses you expected, this is a great opportunity to improve. Forewarned is forearmed.

The idea: Listen! The tech: Social media

Effective awards ceremonies now make excellent use of social media, both before and during the big day. Where many awards organisers go wrong is that once the event is over, the social media focus, monitoring of hashtags and relevant communications also comes to an abrupt halt. This is not the right way forward. Keep checking your social media accounts as they could be valuable sources of feedback. Even if people haven’t tweeted to you directly, keep an eye on those that are using your event hashtag as you may pick up some interesting insights that could help you shape next year’s event. (You don’t have an event hashtag? Well you should! Check out our post on social media and award ceremonies to learn more.)

The ultimate idea: Learn and grow The tech: All of the above!

All of this seemingly tedious data analysis is done for a very good reason: you want to put on a ceremony that is even better next time round. This isn’t just about making sure delegates have a good time, it’s also commercially important. The feedback from stakeholders will be invaluable, so make sure you take on board what they tell you and make them aware that they have a number of ways to give you their feedback, and that their feedback is valued and will be acted upon.

To find out more about how Eventsforce Awards can help you meet and beat challenges like these please click here, or contact one of the team for a free demo.

Eventsforce #Techsperts: Technology Considerations For Your Awards Ceremonies

Posted on by Eventsforce

By Richard Lewis, Business Development Manager, Eventsforce

20141125_eventsforce_richard_lewis_18089-1
Richard Lewis, Business Development Manager

For me, dealing with new business at Eventsforce means getting to know people, understanding their needs and exploring ways in which we can help them. Everyone has different requirements and challenges and nothing exemplifies this more than how our Awards solution is used. It’s one piece of technology that is much broader than the name suggests. Organisations using Eventsforce Awards may be running employee recognition programs internally, external awards evenings, or running awards programs on behalf of clients. All have different needs and requirements but they get in touch with us because they understand that technology is the key to addressing their challenges and moving their business forward in the right direction.

Help finding your shining stars

Awards technology is one area that Eventsforce has been making a significant impact in over the last few years. The old saying, ‘your employees are you most valuable asset’ has never been more true, and now employers are recognising this. Over the last few years I have seen more and more organisations wanting to engage with their global workforce, but they face numerous challenges. They struggle to recognise and measure employee achievement, face challenges in promoting their company culture internally, and fail to use employee success as a motivation tools for others. Ultimately, they are drowning in data trying to find their shining stars. Fortunately, technology can provide a solution.

Solving common challenges

When discussing the challenges that businesses face when managing awards or internal recognition programs, three specific areas seem to cause the most concern. These are hosting, security and branding. It’s my role to address these challenges and reassure event professionals that solutions exist and are available.

When discussing hosting I find that a hosted SaaS solution, specifically the fact it can be accessed 24/7 from any device anywhere around the globe appeals and is indeed deemed essential to professionals managing fast paced and constantly changing and evolving events.

Security is also another big issue. Our clients recognise the importance of data privacy and security, and the impact it can have on all areas of the business, and on business performance and success. Fortunately through private websites and a Single Sign-On (SSO), our clients can give secure and private access for all awards stakeholders on a global level.

Lastly branding. Customers with strict branding guidelines are demanding the functionality to create a unique look for each awards or event website, branded within their company guidelines and using their own logos. This is a demand that technology is able to meet.

Technology is the solution

Click to get in touchSo, from all of this we can see one clear thing. Running an awards program of any type can be a challenge, but it’s one challenge that can be overcome. The technology is already in place to provide all the assistance you need, it’s just a question of identifying who can help.

If you want to learn more about how Eventsforce can help you manage the very best possible awards programs please give me a call on  +44 (0)20-7785-7040 or email richard.lewis@eventsforce.com

Organising Awards? Why Social Media Should Be Your Best Friend…

Posted on by Eventsforce

5716026096_e275edf996_bThe importance of social media during live events is well established. According to Event Manager Blog, almost 70% of Event Planners use Twitter for their events, with just under 60% stating that they use social media for marketing activities before, during and after events. When it comes to awards, where interaction between the organisers and the delegates is integral to the ultimate success of the event, social media becomes increasingly influential and important.

Whether you’re planning internal company awards or large-scale industry awards, ultimately the goal is the same: create a great engaging experience. Social media can help you do just that:

Before The Event

As with any event, if you start building a buzz long before the big day, you’ll help drive attendance. Your social media effort, therefore, should begin as soon as you have the date confirmed.

It’s at this stage that you should decide on an event hashtag. Far too many events, including award ceremonies, get to one week before kick-off and realise they’ve forgotten to use a hashtag. As soon as you have one in mind, (you can use services such as TweetReach to make sure no one else is using it) apply it to all relevant communications. Don’t just use it on Twitter; add it to emails, registration pages, wherever you can to make sure people will see it.

The nature of awards gives organisers some great opportunities to have fun on social media. Something that we’ve seen growing over recent years in the inclusion of a ‘social vote’ category, where the winner is decided by the largest number of votes received on social media. This might not work for all types of awards, but it can be a nice way to involve delegates pre-event and tap into their competitive sides. They’ll naturally want to share the voting info as much as possible, so it could extend your reach exponentially.

During The Event

The real fun can start on the day of your ceremony. It’s important to be clear about who in your team will be managing the social media stream. It may be possible to have more than one person doing this, so long as your efforts don’t crossover. There are a whole host of tools available to make social media monitoring and posting that little bit easier. Two of the most widely used are TweetDeck (for Twitter only) and HootSuite (for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.). Both tools are free, with HootSuite offering a premium option should you need to add more accounts or functionality.

Research carried out by Buffer showed that Tweets with images get 18% more clicks, 89% more favourites and 150% more retweets. This goes to show how important it is to include a visual element to your social media content, so if possible it is worth appointing one of your team as social photographer for the day. With Twitter’s recent addition of video support you could even take some short clips of the festivities.

Twitter Walls at events can receive some mixed responses. Some love to be able to see all the social media content from the day displayed, while it could make others reluctant to tweet. If you do go for a Twitter Wall, make sure you have someone moderating the posts before they go live to avoid any unflattering content being displayed!

Of course, being an award ceremony the most important thing you can be doing is sharing the names of the winners and, where possible, @mentioning them directly – this will encourage them to share the news too.

After The Event

Just because the awards are over, doesn’t mean you can stop with the social media posting! This is especially important if you’re planning to attract delegates to another event later in the year – you want as many people as possible to see what a success it was.

Tools like Storify will let you summarise the social ‘story’ following your event, based on the hashtag. This will give a breakdown of the top tweets from the day and highlight key moments. This can then be shared with your network as a neat summary. Make sure you shout about the statistics from your ceremony too – the number of attendees, number of winners – all of this is great content to share.

Click to get in touchFinally, make sure you take the time to drill down into the social media analytics. Visiting www.analytics.twitter.com will give you a detailed view of how each tweet has performed, meaning you can improve and grow next time round.

 

If this post was useful, you’ll also like our ‘Top apps to help your event run smoothly’.

 

photo credit: SSJ100 Hunt: Clue #4 via photopin (license)