5 Steps to Align Your Facility’s Event Management Process
It’s easy to feel disorganized about your facility scheduling and event management process – and especially at a time like this when events are being cancelled, postponed or changed.
But, it’s important to get a game plan for how you can optimize your processes today for clear communication and cost savings tomorrow (when you start hosting events again).
While there are many areas of an organized event management program, we believe that these five are the most important. See how you can get organized in each of these areas and a few questions you should be thinking about to prepare for what’s next for your organization!
1. Promote
This isn’t just a build it and they will come situation, so you need to have a promotion plan behind your facility usage and after-hours events to ensure good engagement.
As you begin to reopen your facility rental programs, you should start thinking about the spaces you'll offer and how you will engage internal/external stakeholders in reference to each phase.
Some questions to answer:
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What types of events will be allowed?
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What spaces will be offered?
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Do we need to expand our promotion strategies?
Think through each of these questions to tap into what your needs are around hosting events and how you will effectively promote what you offer to your community.
2. Request
The request area allows you to think through what the request process will look like for events – who needs to be involved to ensure all aspects of the event are covered.
From checking event conflicts to looking at room configurations to communicating between the renter and your organization, there is a lot to consider in this event management pillar. But when you can document the various aspects of the request process, you can mitigate risk and breaks in communication.
Some questions to answer:
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Who will be allowed to request spaces?
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Who needs to approve these requests?
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What additional documentation is needed?
This is where event management software is a necessary tool in your toolbox for a digital way to streamline the above and digitize the documentation you need.
3. Manage
The manage section is where the rubber meets the road of how you’re executing on your event management process. And it all starts with the approval process. Make sure you have the right people involved to approve of the schedule, set-up and more to keep everyone, including renters, in the loop.
Then, when the event takes place, you can better organize the room set-up and breakdown, manage tasks between event staff and facilities, and even organize billing via invoices or online payment.
Some questions to answer:
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How should spaces be set up? What about support for social distancing policies?
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What additional supplies are needed?
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Does the current fee structure account for additional cleaning and support needs?
You need one place to manage all these parts and clearly communicate between teams, departments and requesters.
4. Engage
How are you planning to engage with your community around events hosted at your facility?
A calendar is a critical part of this communication, and it can be simple to set up and update. You’ll want to think about having a calendar that serves two audiences: internal and external. You can be more efficient with your planning when you have one centralized calendar for internal departments and external community members to track events.
And, in the current environment, even though many events are canceled, you can still offer your community a place to see what types of events you normally host.
Some questions to answer:
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Should registration be used to limit attendees and track attendance?
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How should the calendar be utilized?
Work out exactly what you want to achieve with your events calendar and find a tool that is flexible to your requirements.
5. Analytics
You also need one place to house all the data and insights around your event program with event management software.
Reporting on your events, facility usage, trends and costs can help you better share successes, see how you’re utilizing space and get feedback from attendees. This can all equate to not only a streamlined events program, but also more community engagement and higher cost recovery.
Some questions to answer:
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How are you tracking details of events and trends?
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Do you have “one source of truth” for events?
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Where can you improve the events process? How do you decide where improvements would make the biggest impact?
With more organization in these five areas, you can really kickstart your events program into being successful for your organization and community.
