In recent years, the global marketplace of various sectors has become insanely competitive for marketers that compelled them to experiment continuously with various ideas. There are numerous types of software in the market, but nothing brings the world alive as event-related software. Event management software enables marketers to take advantage of real-time data to generate business messages based on events needed for organizational growth. In order to use data and business information, event management platforms must be integrated with various systems in organizations, including customer relationship management, automation marketing software, collaboration platforms, payment gateways, and accounting software. Business event management software assists various organizations to oversee and analyze each participant’s behavior, which ultimately helps them in making effective business decisions.
Event management platforms allow marketers to use real-time data profits to extract business information about events needed to drive an organization’s growth. Moreover, the growing use of smartphones, together with the concept of social media, has boosted the market for event-related software. The massive increase in Internet services on mobile platforms is the reason behind the increase in the population of smartphone users. Various entrepreneurs are planning to develop their own event-related software considering the massive growth and future of the event management software industry.
What is Event Management Software?
Event management consists of handling all logistics before and throughout any specific event, whether it is a conference, a wedding, or any other scheduled gathering. Event software does the work of automating and analyzing the entire event planning process. The solution is designed to cover all the functions of organizing an event, from organizing to the post-event stages. It includes a variety of tools that can be used to reduce time-consuming tasks and streamline event management. The software provides real-time insight into the event and therefore provides an opportunity to meet the presentation of the event. It also helps manage multi-channel marketing campaigns and capture and analyze a participant’s ability to make better business decisions.
The current trend in event technology is the efficiency of mobile applications for events. The mobile applications of the event have different uses. They can be used to run relatively static data, such as the agenda, performers’ biographies, and genric questions. Event handling software also encourages public collaboration and action through communication methods such as direct voting or polling, asking questions to speaker’s questions about and answers, or creating live interactive word clouds. Mobile event applications can also be used as a means of communication by many event organizers. Planners can communicate with members through alerts, notifications, and push messages. These kinds of software can also be used to gather public feedback through in-app surveys.
Event management software: Benefits
Managing an event can be tedious at times, but efficient software capable of managing every aspect makes the process simpler. A custom event management platform not only directs the way to perfection but is also delivers numerous benefits that make it a perfect fit for your business. Here are some of the key benefits that come with custom event management software development.
Enhanced Lead Management:
It delivers businesses one place to store all their leads related data and manage that with efficiency. It displays a list of all your potential prospects and details like who needs a follow-up, etc. If your website has a lead capturing form, it will register every detail round the clock, asks various questions to the client to verify the authenticity so that you get only good leads. In case your event management platform has cloud storage, it will allow you to conduct your business remotely.
Great Analytics:
Any custom software development delivers you the freedom to choose the features or integrations you want in the final product. Any event-related software has a great set of analytical tools that help you manage the key factors of the business. It allows you to features like live polling, reporting, and analytics. Analytics has become essential for any business as it allows you to predict the outcome of your next project or event. Gathering honest feedback from customers gives you some keen insights about the changes to be made to improve the quality.
Unified Approach:
An efficient software crafted specifically for your business allows you to manage everything from one place. It serves as a central station for all the different teams. Event management can be a mind-numbing task sometimes, as you have to coordinate with a ton of people to deliver their assigned duties at the correct time, such as chefs, servers, hosts, sales managers, and clients. An event management platform delivers the feasibility to contact each and every member of the team straight from the software. You can tag them to assign tasks, communicate with your clients, etc.
Efficient Time Management:
Any business creates a positive impression by delivering things on time; event management is no different. With efficient business management software, you can stay right on time to deliver the services. Apart from delivering on time, it helps you in saving time within your various internal operations. It can help you perform several menial tasks quickly, which means you can focus your time on more important tasks such as bringing leads, serving important clients, etc.
Manage Data Efficiently:
Data management is a crucial part of any event management platform. Compared to traditional methods, you can now generate more qualified leads with this kind of software and manage all the sensitive data in one place securely. These data sets may consist of registration details, various email marketing campaigns, client details, and much more. Apart from data management, you can get the performance stats of the business at a single click with real-time analytics to get some real insights for further campaigns.
Event Management Software: Development Process
Creating a piece of software that will be responsible for managing several types of events and conferences is not as difficult as it may seem. All you need is a clear vision, a perfect road map, a reliable development partner, and genuine customer feedback. Before starting on the path of the development of your custom event software, the idea behind the development should be crystal clear. Now that you are determined to execute your idea, the next step is knowing the event management software industry.
1. Know the Industry
The first step involves extracting valuable information from the industry about your project. You have an idea about the software and the purpose it will serve, but it will operate under the spectrum of an industry that will be its ultimate playground. It’s obvious; there are some other players that are more experienced than you, and knowing their strategies and business plan can help you curate your own efficient plan.
Efficient market research is mandatory to know the gist of the market. It is important for the development of your project to get the exact requirement of the users, what are the features users are craving for, the functionality that suits their expectations, etc. Now that you are updated with the customer’s expectations, move towards the other players in the market. Understand their business plan, what offers they make to customers, how they handle clients, what makes them popular, what is the crust of their event management, etc.
2. Plan the Perfect Blue Print
After gathering all the data sets, you will have a tub full of insights to guide you further along the development process. Join all the relevant pieces of data gathered from your market research and create your efficient blueprint for the business to make further processes easy. The first thing you want to decide is the type of event management software you want to develop, as it will decide your target audience. There are no such criteria to divide the event-related software, but they can be divided into several types based on services and end results.
Ticketing Software:
This kind of software helps with the ticket booking part of any event. They manage everything related to tickets, such as booking, canceling, etc.
End-to-end solutions Software:
When you want your software to manage everything from pre-event to event and post-event cycles, etc. This kind of software helps you manage everything from start to end without any hassle to deliver your clients an unforgettable experience.
Video Conferencing/Web Conferencing Software:
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost every business is coordinating remotely, and their demand is on the rise. They help businesses or any group of people to organize web-conferencing, online meetings, group discussions, and much more.
These are the generic types of event software that are used all over the world, not to mention there is some event-related software that is making its way up the ladder rapidly; these types of software consist of polls creating software, event scheduler, etc.
Now that you have finalized the category for your project, it will be much easier to get the facts straight. The first thing forward should be knowing the audience of the type of platform you want to develop. The expectations of the audience are mandatory as they will guide you further to make the project popular. Discuss with your in-house team about the budget of the project as it will clear the path for many integrations ahead. Users of any platform want efficient features that can cater to their varying needs.
Features are the backbone of any project in terms of popularity. Decide the number of features you want in the platform that should awe the users.
Resource Management:
Any kind of event needs a number of people to be successful; you never know when you might be short on staff; it is handy to recruit relevant resources for a specific kind of event. An ideal business event management software delivers you a feature to easily manage the number of staff you need for an event.
Audience Management:
Any event has tiers of services that are supposed to be delivered to the audience. Apart from delivering services, it is more important to get the right number of services delivered to the right audience. This feature helps you in attending to all the matters related to the audience.
Budget Management:
With traditional methods, you can’t be sure of the exact needs of any event, but with a custom event management platform, it is extremely easy to fetch the exact budget and various needs of an event. This feature helps you curate the budget and various other things such as data management and much more.
Ticket Management:
Tickets validate the authenticity of the invitation of any user to an event. This feature handles all the matters related to tickets, such as ticket booking, canceling, ticket validation, etc.
Gamification:
It’s the trend of the current time. Every app or software is trying to make the platform more interactive to the users. Presenting the normal features and functions in such a way that it appears to be an interactive game is gamification, and it has been delivering excellent results when it comes to user engagement.
Live Video & Chat:
Since most of the meetings in the present times are being held online, it is only practical to integrate a state-of-the-art live video streaming feature into the platform. A live chat can also enhance the audience on the platform significantly. You should also consider integrating a web-conferencing feature in your software.
Miscellaneous but Important Features:
There are certain features that should be present in your event software by default, such as analytics for performance insights, reactions like emoticons etc., polls, multiple payment gateways, seat management, and much more.
Now that you are clear about the number of features to be integrated into the project, the next thing in line is the technology that’s going to drive these features and, ultimately, the platform.
A fine technology stack is a key to develop a popular event platform. There are numerous technologies available in the market but choosing the right technology for your platform is the key to success. You can always choose the option to hire the help of a reliable software development company to integrate the right set of technology stack.
A robust software requires an efficient set of programming languages and frameworks to support all the functionalities the platform offers, there are various programming languages available, but the most common ones in the event management software industry are LightBox, JavaScript, Python, Nginx, HTML, MySQL, jQuery, Font Awesome, Bootstrap, PHP, etc. For the purpose of DevOps and development, you can consider using Yoast Plugins, Gravity Forms, Amazon EC2, GitHub, WordPress, etc.
Managing the audience or the customers is always a tedious task. However, you can easily manage these tasks by integrating technologies and tools such as Salesforce Desk.com, Zendesk, GoToMeeting, Gravity Forms, etc. Now that you can easily manage the audience, for the purpose of business intelligence and analytics, you can consider using Tableau Software, Google Analytics, Inspectlet, etc.
APIs are an efficient addition to any platform’s technology stack. In the case of event management platform development, you can consider using APIs such as
Aventri, Glue-Up, idloom-events, Bitrix24, Accelevents, Event Temple, Wix, monday.com, Airtable, Wrike, Ticket Tailor, Wild Apricot, StarChapter, MemberClicks, ThunderTix, Odoo, RegFox, Submittable, EventMobi, and much more.
3. Team Requirements & Cost Estimation
Now that you are done with finalizing the core factors of the development process of your project, it is time to decide the factors that will execute the overall process. A perfect team of software developers will take your project to new heights. Do some market research about a development partner and find out the most recommended company in the market. It should be judged on parameters like reputation, reviews, number of successful projects, etc.
A skilled team of developers will design the perfect UI design of the platform that will awe the users and, most importantly, fit their expectations. Make sure to design and test the software multiple times before rolling out the final product. However, the generic team size of any software development consists of a project manager to oversee the process, a business analyst, developers, testing engineer, QA, etc. Remember, different companies have different types of pricing as per their deliverables and quality. Several companies offer various types of engagement models that are feasible and suit the varying needs of different clients.
Cost is a crucial factor in the event software development process. However, it totally depends on the expectations of the business. The cost involved in the development of any project can be affected by a number of factors, such as number of features, number of platforms, technology stack, choice of a development partner, etc. When you choose to go with an advanced set of features for your event platform, the technology needed to support the functionality of these features hikes up the cost. Similarly, the choice of a development partner also shoots the price up. Price is a variable factor in any software development, but one should remember it is a one-time cost, and you can reap the benefits all day long.
The Bottomline
Managing any kind of event takes a lot of work and dedication, but you can manage them with ease with the help of efficient software. The current trend of the market is in favor of virtual event platform development. The sector’s global market is rising rapidly; various entrepreneurs are developing their event management platforms to reap the exciting benefits. This is the right time to get your ideas in place and dig into this profitable market.
Matellio is referred to as a leading software development company; we have developed a number of event management software with excellent feedbacks and great ratings. With a vast professional experience of more than fifteen years, we understand your needs and expectations to deliver software that fits like a glove with your business needs. Discuss your unique idea of an event management platform with our team of skilled engineers and experts over a 30-min free consultation call. Fill the form now!
