Why you need an enterprise event management platform

People used to think of event tech platforms the way they thought of a movie set. Once you wrap, you’d tear down the set. Event technology certainly helps to improve the attendee experience at individual events, but treating it as a single-use solution isn’t the way to get the most out of your event platform.

Since event solutions were previously thought of as one-off departmental purchases, organizations switched between different software and vendors, often using something different each time. As you can imagine, this results in a mess of event solutions, contracts, and vendors to manage, particularly within large enterprises. It also makes it exponentially more difficult to make the data you collect from events actionable.

For larger organizations that host a combination of annual internal and external events, this creates an opportunity to consolidate into an end-to-end platform that’s flexible and can be customized to meet all of your event needs. Once it’s integrated into your existing tech stack, it puts event professionals in the driver’s seat — saving valuable IT resources, simplifying processes, and making the data much easier to work with.

From there, your enterprise-grade event platform becomes an evergreen asset, not a point solution. Just like meeting platforms for hybrid work, a CRM for your sales team, or a project management solution, your team should rely on your event management platform to support their day-to-day needs. By partnering with a credible, all-in-one platform that supports hybrid work and events, enterprise teams drive scalability, reduce costs, provide flexibility, and promote connectivity.

Driving scalability

In the past, enterprises have often utilized multiple services and point solutions, often stitching them together into their own custom, yet fragmented, solution. And because departments and business units often purchase tools without identifying if there might be any overlaps, enterprises end up with duplicate tools and functionality.

Enablement becomes difficult and time-consuming when you use point solutions for each part of the event experience. For example, you might have 50,000 employees across 500 departments trying to host events with myriad software solutions — and each software has to be vetted for compliance and security.

Additionally, dealing with multiple vendors, and many products from each vendor, causes a disconnect, from integrating with each other to integrating with existing systems and processes. When each line of business uses their own tool to collect data, you’re only seeing one part of the data story.

An enterprise-ready, end-to-end event management platform provides scalability throughout the organization and eliminates the need to integrate disparate tools together. Enterprises typically use a single solution for their CRM, for example. Why not apply the same approach to event technology? Because events are a valuable part of the customer journey, using just one solution for each stage also enhances the customer experience and helps consolidate data across entry points. Data from all events, no matter the format, in one place helps businesses make smarter decisions based on deeper insights.

Reducing costs

By using a single provider for meetings, communication, webinars, and events, enterprises save tremendously on IT costs and streamline user adoption.

In the past, organizations had fairly simple use cases for event technology. Maybe they wanted to host a webinar. And if that was the primary use they had for a product, a basic solution worked.

But from all-hands meetings and sales kickoffs to customer appreciation galas, we’re seeing events become more frequent, complex, and hosted by teams across an enterprise — not just event professionals.

And when you look at more complex events, service costs increase. Not to mention the headaches and disconnects that can come from managing multiple vendors and solutions.

Unifying solutions and licenses drives significant cost savings by consolidating an existing line item — event tech — to make it significantly more affordable at scale. If you’re going to run 5,000 events on a platform, the cost of that isn’t just going to be one event multiplied by 5,000. You can significantly reduce costs when leveraging an enterprise-ready solution at scale.

Providing flexibility

While a department or individual may be able to quickly download and use a point solution, that solution won’t necessarily solve all their needs — leaving IT to attempt to customize things to provide what the event planner wants. Ideally, the product should be doing that.

With an enterprise-grade event platform, IT departments become less involved in the maintenance of events throughout the organization by empowering individuals and teams to create events with built-in, reusable templates and a drag-and-drop interface in a reliable and vetted software environment.

Event plans can change in an instant, from in-person to hybrid or hybrid to virtual only. A flexible, self-service platform supports those changing event dynamics quickly and easily.

Tech that pivots with your business needs and provides enough customization for the end user to host a variety of events in a variety of formats — from small internal events to large customer-facing conferences — proves critical, especially when decisions must be made fast

Think about it like this: if your business unit is hosting an on-site all hands, what happens if a team isn’t able to attend in-person due to travel delays or exposure to COVID-19? Webex Events enables teams to pivot their events with a simple click of the button. An event that was once in-person can easily transform into a hybrid event, powering both in-person and virtual event experiences.

Promoting connectivity

Just like the shift to hybrid work, the future of events is hybrid, and as a result, more complex. Hosting hybrid events requires making the experience inclusive and global. As SaaS has become readily available, businesses have adopted multiple vendor point solutions to solve their needs. But the need for consolidated data and streamlined standard processes drives organizations to find all-in-one platforms that can be used for varying business cases.

Unifying collaboration with Webex Events

In this new era of event management, it’s important for enterprises to future-proof their events for the long run by working with a scalable platform that’s building for better experiences, not for an acquisition.

Many vendors operate like consulting houses that happen to have their own proprietary technology platform. Until recently, a solution that could accommodate the event needs of an enterprise simply didn’t exist. Now, with Webex Events, you have a single solution for all your event use cases.

Webex Events enables enterprise organizations to host in-person, virtual, and hybrid events of all types for up to 100,000 attendees.

When it comes to seamless IT event management, we have you covered. Our integrations with Webex Control Hub ensure greater IT admin control and simplified management across hybrid work and event environments.

Webex is the only company with the software, hardware, and services under one roof. So, when an organization needs to replace services with a prebuilt, pre-validated solution, we’re on a very short list. We’re strong in virtual and in-person settings, with a worldwide footprint.

It’s not just a unification of event products. It’s the unification of all collaboration. With the Webex suite, you can run your events program, webinars, audience engagement,
and meetings all under a single umbrella.

If IT needs to take the reins of event software, why not be a hero and do it right?

Discover how enterprise IT and event teams can leverage an enterprise-ready event platform to create a successful events program during this on-demand session, ‘Centrally managed. Enterprise ready.’ from our flagship event, WebexOne.

Learn More:

• The evolution of events: Tips for creating a successful enterprise events program
• New features for can’t miss events
• Webinar best practices: Maximizing the five minutes before your event