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The Power of One: Integrated databases deliver
Event data is your No. 1 asset. But when you stash it in disparate databases, it depreciates. By creating integrated databases, you can expose the connections among event participants, and leverage that information to improve event management, increase profitability and create more value for your key stakeholders.
By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor
Unless you’re an IT geek, your eyes may glaze over when shop talk turns to databases. But don’t be data blasé. In the convention and trade show business, event data is one of your most valuable assets. To exploit it, you need to understand how data can be collected, combined and used to deliver more value to your customers.
In the thought-provoking white paper, “Event Data Management: The Next Killer App for the Meeting and Event Industry,” Tech3Partners Corbin Ball, Jeff Rasco and Rodman Marymor declare that the by-product of innovative meetings-related technology is a mass of discontinuous and underutilized data.
“We know, at least theoretically, that the people involved in events — sponsors, speakers, attendees, exhibitors, vendors and venues — all have certain needs for information that can help them save or make money,” says Marymor, President and CEO of Point Richmond, CA-based Cardinal Communications, which specializes in Web-based applications and content management for the meetings and travel industries. “The piece that’s missing at this point is the single, authorized database that enables stakeholders to get at the pieces of information they need.”
Such a super-data storehouse is admittedly years away from development. In the meantime, technology vendors are finding innovative ways to help event producers link data gathered before, during and after their events to evaluate and improve performance.
Event data management
Data is information, and that information ranges from the demographics of event participants collected when they join an association, subscribe to a magazine or pre-register for a trade show; to the descriptions of companies, products and services collected during advertising, exhibit and sponsorship sales. One individual can be a member, delegate, speaker and sales contact — just a few of the many roles participants play.
“Any time you have more than one database tracking the same individuals, you open yourself up to errors,” says Ball, whose Bellingham, WA-based consultancy, Corbin Ball Associates, advocates using technology to save time and improve productivity. “Data needs to be managed through a single, interactive database. The benefits are, you change it once and it’s up-to-date everywhere.”
Excerpt from "The Power of One: Integrated databases deliver," EXPO, March 2006. Copyright 2006 Ascend Media, Overland Park, KS. |
