In-house or Outsource?

By Margo McCall -- Tradeshow Week, 5/17/2004

Ed Meek's company draws nearly 40,000 people to the Nightclub & Bar/Beverage Retailer/Food & Beverage Convention & Trade Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center each year – without any help from a registration service provider.

Until recently, Meek, president and CEO of Oxford Publishing, didn't know there was any other way. Twenty years ago, when Oxford's bar show was comprised of 145 booths instead of 658, a handful of clerks used large-print typewriters to peck out registration badges on-site. Meek said he ordered the Brother typewriters out of the Sears Roebuck catalogue after rejecting a bid from Galaxy Registration – which is now part of ExpoExchange – that he considered too high.

"I was shocked at the price they wanted. I said, 'We can't do that; I wouldn't make any money,'" Meek recalled.

So Meek's company, based in Oxford, Miss., got in the habit of handling its own registration. And when computers came along, they jumped right in. Meek, a former university administrator with an appreciation for young minds' creativity – and cost-effectiveness – hired students to build the company's Linux registration system.

"It works like a charm," said Meek, adding that the Web-based system was created more than a decade ago, back before most of his 125-member board had even heard of the Internet. "The system has just been wonderful."

There was a learning curve. For instance, Meek didn't realize the system would need maintenance and upgrades. "We thought they would build it and that would be it," he said. But for the most part, it's been painless.

Oxford is by no means the only company using its own system to register exhibitors and attendees, but it is one of the few with tradeshows as big as its bar show. Registration service providers say many others go that route, mostly smaller shows interested in retaining control. Some producers may opt to carry out certain aspects of registration in-house, but call on an outside company to help with a pre-show flurry of signups or handle other specific functions. Almost all of the largest shows farm out registration to companies specializing in that area.

Those involved say it's debatable which strategy is actually cheaper. "It's a little bit like renting versus owning. By hiring a vendor, you don't have to take the risk of building a system and working on it for two years and hoping you've got it right," said Bob Lucke, president of ExpoExchange, which handles registration for more than 350 tradeshows per year.

Building a system can deliver features tailored to the particular show management organization, but those features in all likelihood are also available through an outside registration services company. Because ExpoExchange has serviced so many different shows in its two decades, Lucke said, the company is able to offer a host of features. Recent additions include shopping-cart features for pre-registration, variable pricing, complex discounting schemes, multiple-language capability and credit-card authorizations.

Meek said his company's system offers "everything the major boys have." Exhibitors can register and pick their booths online. Attendees can select from various pre-conference workshops. Some 82 percent of attendees and exhibitors register online well in advance of the show, which helps cash flow. Meek said several dozen people have already registered for the March 2005 show.

Knowing in advance who will attend can provide leverage with exhibitors. "That's a real advantage when you can call up a key exhibitor and say, 'Let me tell you who registered,'" he said. And with most people already registered by the time the show rolls around, Oxford needs only a dozen laptops and temporary workers to handle on-site registration.

Show producers interested in handling their own registration should consider whether they have the in-house technological resources to build and maintain such a system. Besides software developers to build the system, the task requires expertise from business analysts, and hardware, network maintenance and network design engineers.

Handling the sheer volume of signups can be a challenge, Lucke said, especially as a show draws near. To handle registration of several shows simultaneously, ExpoExchange, the industry's largest registration services provider, has about 75 Web servers running around the clock in a data center with an auxiliary power backup and redundant Internet connection. The 24-hour capability is especially critical for shows whose international exhibitors and attendees are in different time zones.

Technology consultant Corbin Ball said it's typically easier to let an outside company handle the task. Ball said when he was a meeting manager, his rule of thumb was to hire a registration provider for any event that drew more than 3,000 people. His rationale was that lead retrieval was needed for events that size or larger. "The real benefit of going to one of these services is some of them are much more sophisticated than what you could develop in-house," he said.

Some shows may prefer to do their own customer service or data entry and others may hire an outside company to perform those roles. "Whether you're a small for-profit doing two shows a year, an association doing one big show or a big company doing 60 shows a year, the scenarios run the gamut," said Lucke, a founder of Galaxy.

Registration service providers also typically handle lead management at the same time. Because the registration providers usually sell leads to exhibitors, Ball said, they can charge show managers lower rates for the registration service.

"They're very much hand in glove," Lucke said. "Registration is the collection of data and lead management is the dispersal of data."

Dan Zumtobel, director of sales for Southern California-based RCS Registration Systems, which offers a Linux-based service, said many of his new customers come to him after handling their own systems. "Usually it's a show that's grown and realizes their time would be more well-spent hiring a professional registration company." Zumtobel argues that hiring a pro can increase attendance and be more cost-effective.

But it's not only the money. Some show managers worry about losing control. Because most registration companies provide a management tool, managers can maintain control even while using an outside service, Zumtobel said.