By Mark Hubrich, Founder & VP Client and Industry Relations

The new year is about to kick off with the first regional MPI conference of the year. January was a hectic start and now the Georgia chapter of MPI will be hosting the Meeting Exploration Conference February 22^nd in Atlanta Georgia. This conference always has great education, networking and business development for the suppliers and planners who attend. The CSR event for the conference, The Gathering, supports the Atlanta Community Food bank and with the great sponsorships generates thousands of dollars for this worthy cause.  The Gathering, from my experience, is one of the premier networking events of the year for the industry with typically over 400 planners and suppliers brought together in a fun evening environment.

I always enjoy attending the MEC conference because it was the first committee I had joined when I became an MPI member. That committee immediately got me involved and within a few months my fellow committee members were 25 new friends within GaMPI. It was an educational experience for me to go from a role of software development background to experiencing all of the different logistical components in the life of a meeting planner. I saw a glimpse of everything involved with producing a large tradeshow.  With attending the upcoming MEC, I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and clients during the two days of the conference and perhaps making some new connections.  The exchange of ideas between planners and suppliers at conferences is also invaluable with many opportunities to grow in your company and career.  I’m particularly looking forward to the educational session on mobile apps for meetings and tradeshows. Smart phones and tablets are quickly changing practices of meeting planners and this should not only be an interesting session but great discussion from the people who attend. Whatever your particular interest, the educational sessions have a lot to offer.

I look forward to seeing everyone there.

Check out our 2012 events calendar.

Since starting with SignUp4, I’ve delved into the depths of the events and meetings industry in an attempt to become more knowledgeable in the space. During my quest for knowledge and more so lately, I’ve come across articles, blogs and press releases about emerging technology and how it is dramatically improving the event planning industry. I’ve noticed an abundance of planner friendly mobile apps, which are appropriate for the mobile workforce and planners on-the-go. Among the latest and greatest innovations, strategic meetings management software remains a driving force.

In a recent poll conducted during our Strategic Hotel Sourcing webinar, approximately 40 percent of the attendees were either currently using or considering the use of meetings management technology. This is fantastic news because it tells me that organizations are acknowledging the importance of meetings intelligence and the need for control, compliance and cost savings. And the organizations that are “considering it” are realizing the need and benefits, which is probably contributed partially to the ever growing buzz surrounding meetings technology.

So what are some of those benefits?

• Unprecedented visibility and tracking at enterprise-level into all meetings
• Ability to measure the ROI of meetings and events to maximize efficiency
• Tools to simplify the creation, promotion and spend of events
• Integration into GDS provides the most current travel info (not applicable to all providers)
• Creation of policies and workflows to streamline internal processes
• Flexibility to quickly send and monitor RFPs
• Significant savings of both time and money
• No more spreadsheets! (Or at least, fewer spreadsheets)

It’s like the song that never ends — yes it goes on and on my friends. There are no limitations on how organized and savvy your team can become. Meetings management solutions are game changers for areas of event planning, registration, success and spend.

See what others are saying!

By Michael Sabani, Client Services

There are a number of important things to keep in mind when creating an event. Sometimes things slip between the cracks! These are four tips to help make setting up customized, dynamic event sites easier for event planners.

1. Customize!

Use the recently updated Color Picker to customize you site. You can match your company’s logo colors, and even upload a banner image to your event. This allows you to personalize your event site to match your corporate identity.

You can even add pictures using the Text Changer. Are there activities like tours or day trips that your attendees can sign up for? Add pictures to your pages to show them the fun that awaits them!

2. Downloadable Files!

Do you have a PDF of your agenda? A spreadsheet for your attendees to view? Don’t forget that you can upload files for your attendees to download. Word documents, PDFs, Spreadsheets, these can all be made downloadable on your event site for your attendees to save to their computer.

3. Breakout!

Is your event going to include breakout sessions or scheduled activities? Use the new Breakout Sessions tool to create your sessions. The Breakout Sessions tool will automatically create rules that will not allow attendees to register for more than one activity at the same time. Help your attendees stay on schedule.

4. TEST!

Test, test, test! You can test your event as many times as you need. Keep in mind that there are many combinations of registrations, especially when using advanced features such as Attendee Types and Event Payment. You should run as many test registrations as you can. Send your event link to your fellow employees and have them test your event as well. You can never test too much. Also, don’t forget that Client Services is happy to test your event for you as well. Send in an email request with your Event ID and we can test your event for you!

There are hundreds of ways to customize your event site, it can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be. Always remember that Client Services is here to assist you with any questions that may arise.

By Will Tucker, Sales Executive

In most cases, having some type of Strategic Meetings Management Solution (SMM) is essential in today’s world of planning and managing events and conferences.  However, there are several different pieces that make up a complete SMM Solution – Event, Travel and Spend Management.  Everyone seems to know the importance of the Event and Spend Management Solutions.  The Event Management gathers the registration information from attendees, the Spend Management allows for a company to track how much money they are spending on all these events – but what are a few benefits to having a Travel Management Solution?

1. Save Time:  A Travel Management Solutions can be a huge time saver to an Event Planner.  Without a Travel Management Solution, event planner may spend hours and hours in Excel manually entering travel information.  That process is now able to be automated.
2. Organization:  If a planner is organizing flights for attendees to an event, chances are, they are also organizing transportation to and from the airport.  A Travel Management Solution can help you organize this by keeping reports for arrival and departure times of attendees in a centralized location.
3. Eliminating Mistakes:  With an automated Travel Management Solution comes piece of mind by eliminating the possibility for human error.  Manual matching of flight information to registered attendees has its flaws.  Ex.  Are the reports you are receiving from your travel department up to date? Duplicates – Are there attendees that have the same first and last name?  Do the hotel check-in and check-out dates match the flight arrival and departure dates? A Travel Management Software solution can help you eliminate problem like this which are often made when organizing an event manually.

By Mark Hubrich, Founder & VP Client and Industry Relations
With the start of the new year, things seem to have gotten busy again and the year looks to be off to a great start. I attended a Georgia Business Travel luncheon yesterday with Jay Campbell from BTN as the speaker who spoke about 2011 in review and expectations for 2012. From some of the conversations around the room, there seemed to be an optimistic viewpoint for business in 2012. One of the colleagues at my table mentioned to me that last Wednesday they had a record number of transactions for their travel agency. Volumes with her existing clients are picking up and they had added some new clients to start the year. Another great piece of news this week was the quarterly survey from Global Business Travel Association (Press Release Here) which is predicting an increase in 2012 and an estimate of 4.6% growth in travel spend. The term I keep hearing is “cautiously optimistic”.

SignUp4 is launching several new initiatives in 2012, which will be exciting. We are focusing more energy on helping to educate the event and meeting management industry and expanding our offerings of webinars and white papers. Next week we will be hosting our first webinar of the year with Shirley Kuhloie presenting strategic sourcing for corporations. Shirley has a background in both the agency and corporate worlds and has worked with Strategic Meetings Management with such global corporations as Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Hewlett Packard.  This webinar will focus on Strategic Hotel Procurement: Increasing control and savings. Check out our webinar page to register for a live session of this webinar or watch a recorded version after January 18^th.  SignUp4 is planning many more webinars throughout the year bringing in industry experts to lead the education with current relevant topics on Strategic Meetings Management. In addition to the webinars, we will be launching follow up white papers to provide takeaways for guidance to apply to your company and career. Be sure to check back to the www.signup4.com website often for fresh and resourceful content throughout the year. We look forward to helping our clients and the industry in adapting and changing with the technology and industry for the upcoming year.

It’s going to be an exciting year!

Kenneth Jones, Managing Director of Dynami Group and Past President of the Georgia Chapter of Meeting Professionals International (MPI) has been a long-time customer of SignUp4 and would like to share his experiences and successes since implementing strategic meetings management technology. Listen to the Podcast below.

SignUp4 – Dynami Group

By Wade Tucker, Sales Director

I have been with SignUp4 in the sales department for 4 years.  I have been in contact with many different companies in many different verticals.  The organizations range from the Fortune 100 to the smaller meeting planning companies here in Atlanta, GA.  In the ever changing world of Strategic Meetings Management, there is one constant….The Event Planner.  There are few things that I have learned about The Planner that have stood the test of time:

If you can make a planners life easier, they are the most gracious people on earth…

In my personal experience, helping implement a Strategic Meetings Management tool helps the planners get better organized and saves them time and the company money.  Everyone is winning!

Planners are the hardest working group I have ever met…

I have spoken with planners that have managed 100’s of events per year, countless hours, and brutal travel schedules.  They need a technology to keep this all together.

Planners do not always have the best tools at their disposal to get the job done

I have personally worked with planners that have had only Excel, Word, and an email engine to collect registrations and manage the entire event.  There are better tools out there.