The power of one: Integrated databases deliver

Event data is your No. 1 asset. But when you stash it in disparate databases, it depreciates. By creating integrated databases, you can expose the connections among event participants, and leverage that information to improve event management, increase profitability and create more value for your key stakeholders.

By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor


Unless you’re an IT geek, your eyes may glaze over when shop talk turns to databases. But don’t be data blasé. In the convention and trade show business, event data is one of your most valuable assets. To exploit it, you need to understand how data can be collected, combined and used to deliver more value to your customers.

In the thought-provoking white paper, “Event Data Management: The Next Killer App for the Meeting and Event Industry,” Tech3Partners (www.tech3partners.com) Corbin Ball, Jeff Rasco and Rodman Marymor declare that the by-product of innovative meetings-related technology is a mass of discontinuous and underutilized data.

“We know, at least theoretically, that the people involved in events — sponsors, speakers, attendees, exhibitors, vendors and venues — all have certain needs for information that can help them save or make money,” says Marymor, President and CEO of Point Richmond, CA-based Cardinal Communications (www.cardinalweb.com), which specializes in Web-based applications and content management for the meetings and travel industries. “The piece that’s missing at this point is the single, authorized database that enables stakeholders to get at the pieces of information they need.”

Such a super-data storehouse is admittedly years away from development. In the meantime, technology vendors are finding innovative ways to help event producers link data gathered before, during and after their events to evaluate and improve performance.

Event data management
Data is information, and that information ranges from the demographics of event participants collected when they join an association, subscribe to a magazine or pre-register for a trade show; to the descriptions of companies, products and services collected during advertising, exhibit and sponsorship sales. One individual can be a member, delegate, speaker and sales contact — just a few of the many roles participants play.

“Any time you have more than one database tracking the same individuals, you open yourself up to errors,” says Ball, whose Bellingham, WA-based consultancy, Corbin Ball Associates (www.corbinball.com), advocates using technology to save time and improve productivity. “Data needs to be managed through a single, interactive database. The benefits are, you change it once and it’s up-to-date everywhere.”

The concept behind event data management (EDM) is to have information gathered at every touch point combined in a central database, so you can analyze and manage business processes. In Corbin’s Favorite Bookmarks File (www.corbinball.com/bookmarks), an extensive list of meetings technology, there are more than 100 vendors whose products include event management applications that integrate data from processes such as registration, housing, budgeting, scheduling, exhibit sales and floor planning. 

 “Companies are trying to get to that point where all the various pieces of information related to an event can somehow be hooked together, but no one has gotten there yet.” Marymor says. In an industry where many services are supplied by niche-market contractors, few have the resources to invest in large-scale integration. “It’s the job of the technology entrepreneurs and visionaries to come up with the solutions. The next wave of technology innovation will do just that.”

Reality check
Even the most comprehensive event management system needs to interface with other systems, such as hotel reservation, exhibit service or lead retrieval. The problem is, databases for these various applications are usually in incompatible formats. That makes it impossible to track customer behavior through the event life cycle — an ability that would allow you to improve programming, social networking and matchmaking.

Integrating the databases is like weaving together separate threads to create a whole-cloth quilt, according to Rasco, Founder and President of AMi Attendee Management Inc. (www.attendeenet.com), a Wimberley, TX-based company that provides attendee management services including registration, housing and travel.

“If I develop a registration database in one format like Access [the Microsoft Office database management program], and I get an event management program that works in SQL [pronounced “sequel,” for Structured Query Language] format, unless I’m willing to spend a fair amount of money and time creating translation tables, I’ve got separate data silos or little scraps of cloth in different piles with no strings tying them together.”

Standards being developed by the Convention Industry Council’s Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX, www.conventionindustry.org/apex) may eventually solve this dilemma by encouraging industry vendors to use a common language, such as eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML), to ensure data compatibility across applications.

Until that happens, Rasco says, “If you want to have exhibitors request a booth, make payments, register for the conference and reserve a hotel room block online, then have all that information feed into the member database — and, by the way, we need to know how well they did at the show, who stopped by and what kind of time was spent at the booth by whom — if you want to provide a comprehensive service to this member who is also an exhibitor, you might be talking about five databases.”

Data mining
Data collected before, during and after events may be stored in multiple databases, but the common thread is the individual, whose interactions and interests shared with other individuals create connections. To uncover these connections, one company’s solution is to “crawl” through the databases and collect related information, similar to the way the Google search engine crawls the Web.

“We find out who the person is first,” says William (Rick) Geritz, CEO of BDMetrics (www.bdmetrics.com), a Baltimore, MD-based attendee relationship management company and creator of the “You-Based” portal. “Once we know who they are and what their data is, then we crawl the data to find the relevant information.” Once compiled, that information can be packaged to prompt action.

For example, if a prospective attendee uses this personalized portal to look for information about an area of interest, the search results will turn up people, products, educational sessions and social events to create a personalized agenda. If that individual has not yet registered for the event, a registration window pops up, as well. Similarly, if a prospective exhibitor logs in several times without buying space, an alert message automatically goes to a sales rep.

The portal also gives insight into how many registrants fit the profile of a sales prospect for that exhibitor. “The sales person can call someone who hasn’t signed up for the show and tell them how many leads they’ll get before the show ever starts,” Geritz says.

Without physically integrating the databases, data mining gives you the ability to promote attendance, get registrants to show up and stay longer, and sell exhibitors booth space and sponsorships. It also provides metrics that can guide programming. For example, BDMetrics’ Event Performance Metrics (EPM) evaluates eight business drivers, including registration conversion, session revenue and relevance, and exhibitor ROI.

Attendance justification
The Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI, www.pmmi.org) used the You-Based portal, branded as “My PACK EXPO,” for the first time at PACK EXPO Las Vegas 2005, held Sept. 26–28 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Benefits of the market intelligence it made possible were clear before, during and after the show.

“We enjoyed a 13 percent increase in attendance over PACK EXPO Las Vegas 2003,” says Tom Egan, Vice President, Industry Services, for the Arlington, VA-based trade association, whose more than 500 members manufacture packaging and packaging-related converting machinery in the United States and Canada. “Prior to the show, the prospective attendees could understand what was relevant at the show and justify their attendance.”

Based on the individual’s market segment and job responsibility, a personalized attendance justification report detailed the number of exhibitors and conference programs that would offer relevant packaging solutions. At the show, attendees used My PACK EXPO — accessible from exhibit hall kiosks — to generate personalized maps to the specific exhibits they wanted to visit.

The portal also collected more information about customer interests and expertise, which PMMI is using to deliver more value at the next show.

“If I want to provide value to the attendee, I need to see if they’ve attended our events, subscribed to our magazine and attended an industry partnering event,” Egan says. “If they have, then we can identify specific operational issues to help them improve what they’re doing in their careers and for their companies.”

Analyzing data collected and collated through the portal, which was used by 45 percent of attendees, PMMI discovered interest in new product categories and conference content, which may be introduced at PACK EXPO Las Vegas 2007. Though the investment in My PACK EXPO was “significant,” Egan says PMMI will recoup the costs by staying relevant to attendee and exhibitor needs.

Process integration
Making the business case for database integration becomes more complicated when organizations take it to the next level. “The first level is across audiences — speakers, attendees, exhibitors, press, etc.,” says Krister Ungerboeck, Executive Vice President of O’Fallon, MO-based Ungerboeck Systems International (USI, www.ungerboeck.com), which provides an integrated Event Business Management System (EBMS) for venues, events and destinations. “The second level is across business processes — from attendance marketing to floor management.”

At dmg world media (www.dmgworldmedia.com), USI’s business process integration justified the price.

 “We had already invested a considerable amount on the existing CRM [customer relationship management] system,” says Rick Votano, Toronto-based Director of Information Technology for North America. “It wasn’t a case of how long it would take to recoup the investment with events on this system, it was how long it would take to get us to the stage that we thought we should already be at. More important than financial considerations were the emotions of the users. They were finding the existing system so cumbersome that we were prepared to see some of them revert to the manual system with hard copies of floor plans on the walls.”

Votano led dmg world media through an arduous nine-month process to select an event management system for the North American trade show business (see sidebar on p. 32) and, within the coming months, they intend to launch a pilot implementation within the Consumer Events North America business sector, which produces 56 home and garden shows.

“This is a true event management system from start to end. We’ll have one system that can do contact management, order processing, accounts receivable, contracting and floor planning all in one,” Votano says. “There were other systems out there that may be better in different areas, but USI gave us more benefit because of the way it was integrated.”

The integrated system is expected to pay for itself in three key ways: increase sales by enabling the exhibit sales force to collaborate and share information; save time by automating the floor planning process; and improve event management by providing business analytics, such as how many vendors rebooked last year but not this year.

Change management
Change is an expected outcome of a database integration initiative. Once you gain visibility into your customer interactions, you begin to see ways to improve them.

“As you move down the path to go from non-integrated point A to integrated point B, with all data in one place, and everyone sharing that data, you have to understand how that will change your job,” says Kevin Gulley, President of FuelDog Inc. (www.fueldog.com), a Needham, MA-based trade media services company providing enterprise-level media management software (Javelin) and consulting. “Once you have this tool, you can’t allow business as usual to go on. You have to agree on best practices.”

Best practices in data management include using common terminology, methodology and standards. For example, how do you refer to sales prospects? How do you use abbreviations in titles, company names and addresses? Inconsistency generates garbage and perpetuates errors. If there are problems with your processes, technology won’t solve them.

“This is about process, corporate change and standardization,” Gulley says. “Whether you’re an association or for-profit organizer, the commitment has to be with a goal to improve your ability to make money. You can make money by understanding your customers better, serving your marketplace better and driving costs out of operations. All those things are achievable with implementation of a good integrated database system.”