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Meeting Planning Software
Questions and Answers For the past several months, I have been one of the "experts" on Meeting News' online "Ask the Experts" column in the area of Meeting Planning Software. I am fortunate to be in very good company here with some of the top planners in the world to ask questions to. Nearly every subject in the industry is covered, including: legal issues, ethics, adult education, international meetings, trade shows, ADA, speakers, airlines, AV, ROI and much more. Go to www.meetingnews.com to get all of your meeting questions answered. Responses will be posted at the site. This article is an archive the questions I have received. Corbin Questions Q13.
We hold a twice-annual seminar series and our major challenges are:
coordinating the registration list and badge production process. We have
a very upscale meeting although it is small (about 700 registrants) and our
badges serve to also solidify our brand. We generally have a hard time producing
personalized badges, are there some companies/software that can be gotten. Q14.
I am trying to find software that I can use to schedule one-on-one meetings at
our industry conferences. Recently
we had 1350 requests and scheduled 825 meetings with our senior management and
outside clients. These were
meetings that were scheduled over a three-day period.
We used an excel spreadsheet, however, it was very unsuccessful. -- Angela
Novarro Q17A) What can be done to overcome this problem, knowing that no fee can be charged/claimed for those who register on site?Q19: I would like to know who are the main players developing software in the event-planning industry apart from SeeUThere. - Laura Zanolli Answers Q1: We are a small planning office 4 planners
with on site travel agency who does all air travel. what software would you
recommend? We do about 500 meetings per year average size 50 guests. Is software
necessary for this office? -- Cynthia B. A: This is a question that I regularly receive - and it is one that goes to the heart of using technology to streamline the meeting planning process: Is meeting planning software necessary for my office? With 500 meetings per year, certainly some type of software is warranted. However, to narrow things down, many additional questions need to be considered. In my work as a meeting software consultant, I would start by asking the client a number of the following questions: · What are your goals and objectives in looking at new software? · What meeting tasks would you like to see automated (badge making, registration, online registration, mail merges, meeting specifications, surveys, database management of clients/members, email/fax automation, statistics, room diagramming, budgeting, exhibition management, housing, project management, scheduling, site selection, etc.)? · What over-the-counter software are you currently using (Access, Excel, WordPerfect, Word, etc.)? · Can these products be customized to provide the solution, rather than purchasing specific meeting planning software? · What works well and what doesn’t? · What computer platform are you using (stand-alone PCs, Macs, network type, corporate intranet, browser based solutions, etc.)? · Does your company have a database network or corporate intranet? If so, will you need to integrate your meetings into it? · How helpful is your IS department in understanding your needs and integrating solutions? (This is an area where a consultant often can help in the process - as, often times, IS departments use techno-speak rather than English.) · Do you intend on using web-based solutions to help in this process? (The answer here should almost always be yes.) · Do you wish to integrate the meeting management with the travel management to improve convenience and service to the client or member? · What is your budget? · What is your timeframe for implementation? There are many similarities between these corporate meeting planning software products and companies. Both ISIS Gold 3.0 (www.isisgold.com) and Travel Technologies Group’s (TTG) Meeting Partner 4.1 (www.ttgsoftware.com) have extensive travel management software modules. Both offer, or will soon offer, two-way airline CRS Interface with three major CRS systems (Apollo, Sabre, and Worldspan) to capture PNR data. Both are fully networkable using Novel or NT servers. Both offer Internet registration modules. Both have a similar number of employees (80) and were established about the same time (1988 for ISIS, and 1990 for TTG). ISIS Gold pricing is geared for the larger office (the base module starts with 10-users) whereas the TTG offers a single-user version at a lower cost. The travel module offering the interface to airline CRS costs $10,000. Web module allowing online registration ranges from $2,000 to $4,500 based on complexity of the registration form. The maximum total for ten users is $26,500. TTG offers a basic Meeting Partner 4.1 version at $7,950 for the single-user including airline interface. The 4-user version runs $15,950 with each additional user at $2,000. ISIS support is less expensive offering free support for the first year for toll-free phone and email support. Additional years’ annual support agreements cost 12% of the original licensing agreement. The web module is not charged a maintenance fee. ISIS training costs less. ISIS offers two full days of training with purchase price, usually at the client’s site. Number of installations: TTG has a slight edge with about 65 installations compared to ISIS’s 40 installations. TTG Meeting Partner 4.0 includes 300 standard reports compared to ISIS Gold offers over 200 reports. The new ISIS Gold 3.0 uses the Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 as the database engine. This is the superior choice in my opinion. Meeting Partner 4.0 provides a Fax/OCR module that programs accepts registration forms from attendees over fax lines, read and translate the registration data contained on the forms, and electronically communicate such data into Meeting Partner eliminating the need for manual data entry into the meeting system. Some have said that the difference between these two similar products is a matter of perspective. It has been said that ISIS Gold has been developed from the meeting planner’s perspective reaching out to the travel management department. Whereas, TTG, with is very substantial travel background, has been built from the travel management perspective reaching out to the meeting planning component. TTG, however, would probably not fully agree with this assessment. · Task scheduling and management · Over 25 different report formats · To-do lists and timetables · Advanced seating assignment and floor planning · Nametag and place card printing · Multiple databases for address book storage/reuse · Accounting and budgeting If you are looking for a robust registration and basic ticketing program, PCNametag (www.pcnametag.com) at $179 works great and easily imports and exports into Access or other databases. Additionally, it will print out signs, table tents, and certificates. However, it isn’t set up to easily handle seating. A. Unfortunately, one size does not fill all of the aspects of tradeshow management requested. A major part of a tradeshow is the exhibition, bringing a very specific set of requirements from floor diagramming, to point system tracking to exhibitor database management. One of the best programs that I have seen for this is EXPOCad (www.expocad.com).www.expocad.com). The next step is the registration and meeting specifications aspect of tradeshows. It is difficult to narrow down this area a specific product without asking many follow-up questions. There are dozens of “meeting planning software suites,” each with specific specialties and features. I would recommend checking out my book The Ultimate Meeting Professionals Software Guide available through MPI (www.mpiweb.org) for $25-35, which catalogs more than 180 meeting planning software products. Another part of your question is the room scheduling. Many of the meeting planning software suites mentioned above handle basic room scheduling and event conflict tracking. There are several specific scheduling programs available as well, but most are built for facilities and can be quite expensive ($10,000+). The least expensive is EMS Lite (www.dea.com/Lite/Lite.asp) at $295-695. The final aspect is the calendar component. The good news here is meeting calendars are being built into the newer versions of standard office software products. For example, Microsoft’s Outlook 97 and higher has a fully operational scheduling calendar that allows a workgroup to view calendars, survey for the best time, post meetings, and schedule meeting via email. The Office 2000 version even allows all of this to be relatively easily posted to a web site for broader coverage. As mentioned at the start, one product does fit the wide variety of applications requested, but there are a number of individual tools that can help you get these jobs done. If, however, you need to tie these data into your registration database, most meeting planning software suites handle this. If you have advanced tracking needs for roommate matching, guest tracking with different arrival dates, and more, Isis Gold (www.isisgold.com) and Amlink (www.amlink.com.au ) are among several that handle this. <![endif]> 1. It is designed for a single-meeting,
single-day event. This is great for weddings, parties, and small events but not
for larger meetings. 2. It is not networkable. 3. It is written for 16-bit Windows (Windows 3.0
and 3.1) that is pretty much obsolete. THANKS for the feedback.
What would you recommend that is moderately priced but allows multi-day
planning, registration confirmations, accommodations, budget, etc? The only product that comes close the Event
Planner Plus in price is Ekeba’s Complete Event Planner (www.ekeba.com),
which sells from about $200 to $600. This is just a fraction of what other
planning software suites costs – MeetingTrak (www.psitrak.com)
starts at about $3K and Peopleware (www.peopleware.com)
starts at about $4K. I have not seen Ekeba’s latest version, but I have
reservations about their previous release including no phone support (only
email), difficulties in installation and a generally “clunky” feel to it. Q9. I am interested in scheduling software. My organization currently books their groups by hand. They have about 75 guest rooms and several meeting rooms. They're not utilizing their space well and I believe some type of computer program would assist them greatly. Could someone please tell me where to buy this type of software? -- Lynette Owens A. Sarina, the Web is the perfect medium for
collecting abstracts. A program committee from around the world can review them
and place them into proper sessions. The conference organizers can then
automatically post the program tracks, sessions, speaker abstracts and
presentation to their web site as a searchable, day-by-day, hour-by-hour program
grid. There are several good products that do this including Abstract Planner by
BlueDot (www.bluedot.com);
Event Wizard by Neology (www.neology.com)
and CyberWise by Saratoga Group (www.saratogagroup.com Q11. I have a small meeting, seminar and special event company. I'm having a hard time finding software to cover all areas from planning, tracking and scheduling. It's difficult to cover events vs. meetings. Please give ideas if you can help. Thank you. -- M. Smith A. Mike, computers
are great for tracking and scheduling tasks. Many off-the-shelf
products do this very well. Outlook, for example has some very workable calendar
and task management features. Other products, such as Microsoft Project take it
to a point where the most complex tasks can be managed.
Of course, there are hundreds of meeting planning specific programs that
handle registration, vendor tracking, room diagramming, meeting specifications
and much more. If you can describe the challenges you are facing tracking events
vs. meetings, perhaps I can give some more specific suggestions. Q12. Has anyone has ever seen any meeting software written for Macintosh? I use FileMaker Pro which works very well for me for database, but there are other programs I've seen for PCs that deal with such things as room layouts etc. I haven't seen any Mac stuff yet. -- L. Dunning I am just completing the update on my book the Ultimate Meeting Professionals Software Guide. This year's edition will cover nearly 300 meeting industry related software products (up from 180 covered in last year's book). Of the 300 products, only a handful are Mac compatible (aside from the Web-based products). Of these, none handle room diagramming. The meetings market is a narrow, specific segment. Instead of selling millions of copies, the software manufacturers are lucky to sell hundred or a few thousand. It will be unlikely to see much Mac development for meetings software, as Mac customers represent only about 5 to 7% of what is already a small market share. One option to consider is to buy a PC emulation program for the Mac to enable it to run PC-based programs. The good news is that there is a very strong trend toward moving things to a Web-based environment - even for the software. In the next few years, as the bandwidth increases, not only will users access files from the Web, but they will access the application as well. As the web is not platform specific, everyone will be able to use the applications. Q13.
We hold a twice-annual seminar series and our major challenges are:
coordinating the registration list and badge production process. We have
a very upscale meeting although it is small (about 700 registrants) and our
badges serve to also solidify our brand. We generally have a hard time producing
personalized badges, are there some companies/software that can be gotten. Susan, I recommend using a standard name badge program such as PCNametag ( www.pcnametag). The program works as a shell on top of an Access database and data can be imported and exported to/from an existing database – so the registration list and the badge list are printed from the same source. The fonts and fields printed are customizable. Then,
to upgrade the badges, have them custom printed with the event logo – the
sky’s the limit in terms of printing colors, badge stock, etc. Also, the badge
holder becomes very important. I
tend to prefer to use black lanyard attached to each upper corner of the badge
holder. This avoids having the attendees clip or, worse yet, pin the badge to
their clothing. Attaching on both sides tends to allow the badge to lie properly
and not flip over hiding the badge name. Finally, the display becomes very important. How the attendees are handled vary considerably from with the type of event. However, if most are reregistered, allow plenty of room (at least one 6’ table and one assistant per every 100 registrants. This allows you to spread out the badges and allows registrants to pickup their badges with a minimum of delay. Also, if price is no object, PCNametag provides badge holder stands that allow the badges to be organized and displayed standing on edge.
Q14.
I am trying to find software that I can use to schedule one-on-one meetings at
our industry conferences. Recently
we had 1350 requests and scheduled 825 meetings with our senior management and
outside clients. These were
meetings that were scheduled over a three-day period.
We used an excel spreadsheet, however, it was very unsuccessful. -- Angela
Novarro A.
Angela, there are several calendaring programs available. Even a basic
off-the-shelf program such as MSCalendar can work better than Excel, although
with the large number of meetings, a program specifically designed for the group
scheduling functions is needed. The web is the ultimate solution for this
problem. This allows the stakeholders to take control of the events. Request,
sent via a standardized web form, would come to you for approval, and, once
scheduled, would send an automatic email confirmation to the requestor, guard
against double booking, and printout the calendar. A heavy-duty Intranet version
includes: MeetingMaker 6 (www.meetingmaker6.com)
and OnTime (www.opentext.com/ontime).
TeamAgenda (www.teamsoft.com) is a
calendaring option that also offers full integration into palm devices, an
increasingly important feature.. A
web site that details about 20 of these products is: http://www.collaborate.com/hot_tip/schedgrid.html.
Q15. I am interested in purchasing a meeting software package. We hold several meetings throughout the year, and need something that will allow more than one user at a time on a network environment. We currently use a FoxPro database, so it would have to convert easily. We need to be able to do not only event set-up and accounting, but also registration and badges. This will also be our database for mailings. Can you offer any suggestions? A.
There are many general meeting software packages available. 43 such products are
listed in my upcoming revised edition of the Ultimate Meeting Professionals Software Guide (available through MPI – www.mpiweb.org
including nearly 300 software listings in 17 product categories). Most of them
have import and export capabilities form standard database packages including
FoxPro. To answer you question in detail, would require asking many more
questions. See the article at my website (http://www.corbinball.com/articles/art-choosingsoftware.html)
for a list of these questions. However, a couple programs that have recently
caught my eye are PeoplewarePro
(www.peopleware.com),
which is written in FoxPro. Another
program, written in Access available this fall, is MeetingPlanner Plus available
through Certain Software (www.certain.com).
A. There are several scheduling software programs designed for universities including: SMSI (http://sbsiinc.com/), Meeting Room Manager from Netsimplicity (http://netsimplicity.com); and Event Management Systems (www.dea.com). Others are listed at my web site: www.corbinball.com/tips.list.corbinslist.htm which includes the most extensive list of meetings technology links of the web. Q17: work for an organization that holds a few but quite large meetings each year. Despite that fact that invitations are sent well ahead, some participants (from different countries) do not pre-register. This slows down the registration process. I have three
questions: Q18: We have been using an Excel spreadsheet to manage registration and housing for our annual conference. It worked well when our meeting was only about 200 but now we are over 850 and it is taxing. Could you recommend some software packages we should look at. Thanks for the help!
- Andi Stewart Q19: I would like to know who are the main players developing software in the event-planning industry apart from SeeUThere.
- Laura Zanolli If you find this article helpful, please let me know by signing the Guest Book in the Contact Corbin Section.. |
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