Decoded: How tech can drive experiences, scalability in meetings & events
Meetings & events is an ever-evolving industry and right now it is undergoing digital transformation. The industry is looking at creating immersive experiences, enhancing attendee engagement, meeting business objectives and delivering measurable impact through technology and investment.
At the second edition of the FCM Corporate Travel Summit in Bengaluru, attendees got insights into how tech is shaping the meetings & events industry and balancing return of investment (ROI) and return on engagement (ROE).
Our experts Simone Seiler, Global Leader- Meetings & Events; Manpreet Bindra, Leader-Asia, Meetings & Events; and Nikhil Relan, Leader- Indirect Procurement & Global Tech Sourcing, Amway, decoded creating progressive experiences with technology.
Tech and innovation driving experiences
Technology is leveraged across entire meetings & event’s life cycle- right from pre, during to post-event.
“We are heavily investing in technology, productivity and efficiency improvements for not only our clients but also for our business. We are a business of experience and about connecting humans and bringing people together, where worlds meet. For us, we have to carefully navigate what role does AI play in the business of what we do and making sure that we protect that human element, personalisation, and the expertise that only our people can bring in designing meetings & events experiences,” said Simone.
With increasing demand for speed, self-service, and personalisation, FCM Meetings & Events team is investing in different models to simplify and empower clients.
“For travel procurement and a pre-event experience, the technology that we offer today is FCM Venue Finder. It is an online booking tool for venue sourcing that can be accessed through the FCM Platform alongside your known benefits of SSO, data reporting to give you everything you need as a one-stop shop. Your meeting planners and bookers are looking for the right venues, with the right hotel chains for the right price and experience,” said Simone.
Creating 'wow' factors
Recently, to engage and energise top performers, Amway took 1200 employees to Kerala on incentive trip. Here, technology played a crucial to create a wow factor and engage the attendees.
“There was a LED tunnel where attendees could simply scan a code, upload their selfies and photos that were getting displayed on a huge LED wall. The AI Photo booth was set up as facial recognition tech with interactive filters that created instant shareable content to share on social media. (The event) should build towards the business momentum so that they aspire and re-qualify and we were able to deliver on that vision,” said Nikhil.
Investment vs Engagement- how companies define success
“These are very common questions… what’s the ROI and when we reach out to the business heads, they ask ‘what’s my return on engagement’. That’s where we have to work with the left and right brain operators… so what’s your model of looking at the ROI,” said Manpreet.
During the summit, Nikhil gave a holistic view of ROI vs ROE and how they were built into another.
“Both the metrics, ROI and ROE, are crucial and we track both of them. We conduct numerous events throughout the year. Few events are focussed towards driving the engagement, especially when we are entering into a new territory or launching a new brand, we want engagement to take the front end. We want to build that brand visibility and loyal customer base for that brand of that market segment and the metrics like social media engagement, community participation takes the centrestage,” said Nikhil.
“When we do events like incentive trips, it’s engagement driving the return on investment. If we are engaging the ABOs (Amway business officers) and they foresee it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience they are getting, it encourages them to again perform and requalify for the next incentive trip. We never repeat a destination and basis the engagement even on social media platforms, lot of other ABOs who didn’t qualify come up and qualify for the new trip. You are tracking all those engagement metrics as well and you are also tracking the business impact metrics after the event concludes. One builds into the another.”
Global practices trickling into India
“There are two areas where we are investing in meetings and events. One is event technology standalone. We are also investing in the integration of tech where it makes sense with the FCM Platform suite. The beauty of that is it helps us clients take us on a journey where we are bringing together managing meetings and events programme around cost, consolidation, visibility of spend, duty of care, transparency of booking and supplier spend and negotiations. The other part what we call is the right brain component of experience design, which is around event tech and the experiences that you can create,” said Simone.
The Summit was attended by over 150 key stakeholders, including travel managers and decision-makers.