Stephen Nold

Is One Technology Dashboard Possible?

Registration vendors have become the most important vendor relationship with show organizers, next to general contractors. When it comes to technology questions, show management relies on the registration suppliers. Makes sense given the importance placed on integrating community data with the show or event information. Ten years ago it was crazy to ask for real time reports on attendance rates. Today, registration vendors can marry pre-show results to statistics from the floor.

With the continued reduction of the barriers originally built around the databases of the association management systems, show organizers are finding greater ease of information access. Data flow into registration tools is creating a one-stop solution that manages and reports on all the key show tools. Metrics on exhibitors can be tied to content access which in turn is combined with social networking tools.

For the large ‘for profit’ tradeshows and events, tracking across events or brands has become a significant measure of results. Hanley Wood has built a customized dashboard that allows management to view each brand tracking to historical results and against other communities. All associations should strive to gain this type of analysis.

A great first step toward integrated reporting is the creation of a dashboard for event reporting. What if show management could go to one website with a set of tabs for the registration solution, membership database, floor mapping tool, lead retrieval systems and matchmaking. What if they had confidence that information relevant to each tool was shared across the event from pre-show to post-show analytics?

As associations and corporate meeting planners become more sophisticated in their tools, simple ease-of-access dashboards are the next generation tools. Registration companies are the best candidates for creating these tools. I am interested to see which registration companies will lead us in this direction.

Posted by Stephen Nold on May 30, 2007 | Comments (13)