AV OVERVIEW OF EVENT MANAGEMENT

INFORMATION SYSTEM

By

Miss. P. PIRAKATHEESWARI, Lecturer in Commerce, Sri Sarada College for Women (Autonomous), Salem – 16.

E-Mail: prabhasivam_salem@yahoo.co.in

Mobile No: 9952836250

Event – Definition

Marketing Guru, Philip Kotler, defines events as occurrences designed to communicate particular messages to target audiences. Suresh Pillai, Managing Director, Eventus Management, considers events as an additional media whereby two-way or active communication is possible.

Event Management

Management of events has traditionally been alluded to as a post marketing activity and assigned the classic production responsibility as in any manufacturing firm.  The term management of events therefore carries a totally different connotation when used in the context of events.  Management theory would suggest that marketing is also a part of management.  Management of an event encompasses all activities involved in planning, organizing, staffing, leading and evaluation of an event.  In fact, all operational task for an event such as the ground work, viz., venue selection and stage design, arranging the infrastructural facilities required, liaison with artists/ performers and networking with other activities such as advertising, PR, ticket sales, etc., fall under the purview of event management.

Activities in Event Management

In event, activities usually vary with the category of event being organized.  Therefore, the following listing is generic in nature.  Once marketing has managed to convert an enquiry into a firm order, the hands-on work of event management begins.  The following is a sequential flow of how management actually happens, ie. How planning, organizing, staffing, etc., get together for an event.  The flow is divided into three sections – the first deals with the pre-event activities, the second with the during-event activities and the last details the post-event activities involved. This theory states that the functions of management can be classified into planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling.

ü      Planning – The planning function is involved in micro-level event coordination activities such as liaison with the creative team discussing, facilitating and arranging for the technical specifications viz., sound, light, stages and sets.

ü      Organizing – Organizing in the context of event management essentially involves the description of the activities required for an event, identifying individual and team tasks and distribution of responsibilities to coordinators.  Such as exercises helps in creating an intentional structure for clarity or roles and positions.

ü      Staffing – Functional responsibilities in a project type organization structure define event management staffing requirements.  The importance of team structure, experience, background and expertise of team members plays a crucial role in event management.

ü      Leading and coordination – The sum and substance of events as a whole revolves around interpersonal skills.  The need for achieving synergy among individual efforts so that the team goal is reached is the main aim of coordination.  The overall coordinators need to be leaders with fantastic people skills. The leadership qualities desired of an event manager include the ability to spot a deal and think on one’s feet.

ü      Controlling – Evaluation and correction of deviations in the event plans to ensure conformity with original plans is the gist of controlling.  Evaluation is an activity that seeks to understand and measure the extent to which an event has succeeded in achieving its purpose.  The purpose of an event will differ with respect to the category and variation of event.  However, to provide reach and interaction would be a generic purpose that events satisfy.

The basic evaluation process in events involves three steps viz., establishing tangible objectives and incorporating sensitivity in evaluation; measuring the performance before, during and after the event a lastly correcting deviations from plans.

Event Management Information System

A basic Event Management Information System (EMIS) needs to contain information concerning the following:

1. General Event Information: Event Category ID, Event Variation ID, Name, Type ID, Status, Location, the start date/time, end date/time, Required staffing, confirmations, available spaces, event description in brief and the employee ID of the event managers.
2. Event Attendees: Attendee ID, First/Last Name, Title, Company Name, Address, Phone / Fax / E-Mail, Website URL.
3. Event Registration: Registration ID, Attendee ID, Employee ID, Event Category ID, Event variation ID, Registration date/time, Sales tax rates, Fee schedule ID, Registration fee.
4. Event Category: Event Category ID, Event Variation ID.
5. Employees and staff assigned to the Event: Employee ID, Name, Title, Phone / Fax / E-Mail.
6. Event Pricing: Fee schedule ID, Event ID, Fee Description Fee.
7. Event Management Company Information: Setup ID, Sales Tax Rate, Company Name, Address, Phone / Fax / E-Mail, Default Payment Terms, Default invoice Description.
8. Payment Records: Payment ID, Registration ID, Payment Amount / Date, Payment mode (credit card – name/expiry date/cheque/cash), Payment method ID.
9. Payment Methods: Payment Method ID, Payment Method, Debit / ATM card and Credit card.

This system should be able to generate queries such as the number of attendee at any given event, the sum of all payments, total registrations by an attendee etc., Reports that should be available from this system are: attendee listings, invoices, sales by employee and event type.

The identity numbers are used to clearly distinguish between items and are usually unique and generated by the system automatically.  It keeps track of relevant records such that there is no repetition and duplication of entries as well as keeping a sequential record of relevant fields such as attendees and registrations etc, ID’s help in maintaining and generating records.  This basic framework can be expanded to be a web-based system that can be accessed from any computer anywhere.  Thus, giving greater control over information about the status of the event due to real time availability.

Conclusion

The value of focused databases of information obtained from the audience is an invaluable asset for the event organizers and their clients.  Such information in the form of organized databases can be extremely lucrative when sold as a product.  A web-based B2B portal on the lines of a yellow pages service for event suppliers (B2B e-Commerce) that maintains a web-based active database containing names, contact numbers, addresses, rates, etc., would be very profitable to the event organizer.  Every transaction generated with that supplier through the web shall be an opportunity generated by the event organizer for the supplier.  Hence, there can be a contract-fee for maintaining information on the website.  Allowing access to potential clients to this database would allow the customer, especially the corporate ones, to trust the organizer more and trust is a major part of the events business.  Similar web-based services directly to individual customers can be set up as a B2C engine.