Event planning requires considerable time and effort. For event planning businesses, managing venues, guests, booking, and communication can also require a lot of manpower. To reduce the burden on staff, businesses can consider relying on dedicated event/venue management software. These tools also help businesses ensure greater security, smoother ticketing, and better guest management. If unsure about investing in such software systems, understanding a few key details can help businesses make informed decisions.
Event/venue management tools
The terms event management and venue management are often interchangeably used as they are interrelated—a venue is a key consideration for any event. Tools that handle these tasks are mainly used by event managers to organize and plan every facet of a large corporate or public event at a venue. The goal here is to be as resource-efficient as possible.
Today, many software development companies design event management tools. The ease of use and features of each tool vary depending on the credibility and experience of the service provider. Certain tools focus on the payment collection side of things. Some systems focus on ticketing, some on audience management, and others may focus on organizing virtual events. That said, a common aspect of each event or venue management software is that they can be easily integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and other tools used by an organization. This makes them capable of seamlessly transferring data from one tool to the other.
Uses
The best event/venue management software must be able to handle a range of event-related tasks.
Online booking
Event managers can use event and venue management tools to optimize their ticket booking process for a given event. These tools are portals for users to book tickets. Each portal typically contains a super-secure gateway that connects users’ payments to the bank account of the event organizing company. Additionally, the tools can create and provide virtual tickets to the users.
CRM-related processes
Customer relationship management (CRM) is the key to hosting any major event. Venue managers are responsible for responding to inquiries from clients and creating and sending invoices, proposals, statements, and contracts. An event/venue management software may use chatbots or make it possible for event managers to seamlessly facilitate communication between customers and dedicated concierge representatives.
Budget analysis
Anyone planning and running events, whether big or small, is likely to have a set budget for each event. For this reason, sound financial management is crucial for successfully running the event without overspending. An event/venue management tool helps managers in creating budgets, creating reports, financial forecasting, and planning. The tool also provides the data that forms the basis of contract negotiations and discussions. All these features ensure that booked events are financially viable.
Email template creation
Event managers use email templates to send information about a given event to audience members and clients. Rather than typing the emails physically, managers can use the email templates created by event management software systems for this purpose. Additionally, these tools can send emails to as many recipients as possible to spread awareness and information about the event.
Some of the other tasks handled by these tools include catering management, equipment inventory, workflow automation, and security management and coordination.
Key benefits
Sales and marketing assistance
A reliable venue and event management software system integrates with a company’s CRM platforms. Using data from the platform, the tool can segment customers, track leads, and send follow-up messages to them to convert inquiries into full-fledged event bookings.
Many event management tools come with machine learning and AI capabilities to recognize customer preferences and behavior. That information can be used to create a more penetrative and customized marketing strategy for each customer. All of these features ultimately increase the sales and revenue of the organization running the event.
Assistance with dynamic pricing
Usually, the ticket prices for large events such as concerts and sporting occasions do not stay fixed. These prices rise or fall with time, depending on ticket availability and audience demand. An event management tool is adept at identifying such factors and adjusting the prices of tickets accordingly.
Scalability
If a given event is successful, then the organizations running it are likely to make it bigger the next time around. The best event management tools support this expansion and can accommodate larger operations. This scalability does not come at the cost of accuracy in number crunching that businesses need.
Improved reporting
Budgeting and planning events involve the creation of detailed reports, which contain critical information regarding booking, demand, expenditure analysis, and issues affecting the revenues directly or indirectly. Event management tools process loads of data to find patterns and create such reports, which is then simply the process of collecting information.
Top tools
Before investing in an event or venue management software, it is important to assess things like ease of use, extent of customization, efficiency of financial tools, quality of reporting and analytics tools, and integration with other tools used by the organization. Based on those factors, one can choose from various popular software providers today.
- Planning Pod
- Tripleseat
- Perfect Venue
- ClickUp
- Rendezvous Events
- Event Temple
- Function Tracker
- iVvy Venue Management
- Priava
- BriteVenue