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Why “One-Size-Fits-All CRM” Doesn’t Work for Event OrganizersA KEY COMPONENT TO EASIER WORKFLOWS, BETTER CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS, AND INCREASED SALES

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Who needs CRM? Certainly salespeople are key users, but it’s not just sales who reap the benefits – it’s everyone, including customers. A quality CRM system makes customer data available to anyone who interacts with the customer, allowing organizations to provide seamless service. This higher level of service increases satisfaction by helping customers complete transactions or resolve issues faster and more completely.

SALESPEOPLE & EXHIBIT MANAGERS: CRM software that is a good fit for exhibitions and events business has specialized tools for creating exhibitor sales funnels, managing exhibitor information, booth applications and contracts, cross-selling shows, and sharing information with exhibitors in the sales and booth assignment process.

MARKETING: Research shows that targeted marketing is much more effective, with relevant emails driving 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails (Source: Jupiter Research 2012). A good CRM solution provides marketing teams with the information needed to finely tune outreach campaigns.

FINANCE & ACCOUNTING: Having an embedded invoicing tool within a CRM platform that is used daily can increase the speed and accuracy of the invoicing process, increasing productivity dramatically.

EXECUTIVES: Complete CRM solutions that offer integrated reporting provide executives and board members with the snapshots they need to understand where an event is in the planning and execution process without requiring employees to stop what they’re doing to run multiple spreadsheets or prepare reports.

CONFERENCE MANAGEMENT: By having “event-business-appropriate” fields and functions already built into a CRM solution, session management, conference registration, scheduling and budgeting are easily accessible at any time throughout the event planning process.

General Purpose vs. Purpose-Built CRMYou’ve probably heard the term “CRM” but what does it mean for exhibition and event professionals?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is a set of tools and processes that organize, track, and manage customers through the entire sales lifecycle. CRM software allows businesses to manage prospective customer relationships and the data associated with customers in one central location, so the information is accessible by everyone in real time.

What general purpose CRM fails to address is the unique sales process of exhibitions and events. Selling and servicing exhibitors and sponsors (and members and attendees) requires very different workflows than companies selling physical products.

As a result, new CRM solutions that are purpose-built for conferences and exhibitions are gaining traction. This new breed of CRM systems takes into account the unique nature of events and as a result, is much more than just a stand-alone database of prospect and customer sales opportunities. In addition, the ability of these CRM solutions to operate within a connected event management system is creating a host of new efficiencies for event professionals.

UNGERBOECK SOFTWARE INTERNATIONAL CRM WHITE PAPER 2

It Won’t Work If You Don’t Use ItMany CRM providers sell their product with the promise that their one-size-fits-all software will help clients meet sales and growth goals. Although a 2013 Gartner report indicates that CRM software product purchases have increased by 13.7% in the last year, data from Forrester Research shows that 47% of CRM projects fail to meet expectations.

Among the reasons cited for not adopting CRM software is that users have to retrofit existing processes to the software, making it difficult to use. For show organizers in particular, the issues with general purpose CRM are that it doesn’t know what an “event” is, nor does it understand a booth or floor plan, or the assignment of an opportunity or contact to a space on a floor plan. By extension, it doesn’t

understand the financials associated with the show sales process. Therefore the simple process of taking a booth order or selling a booth to an exhibitor requires extensive customization.

During the research phase, software acquisition project managers should survey both employees and managers to discover what processes should be inherently included within the product.

As Gartner analyst Robert DeSisto points out, “As many as 85% of companies that buy CRM software to automate sales efforts don’t pick the right tools because they fail to define business objectives or develop processes for meeting objectives.”

CRM Stats Over the YearsData indicates that substantial numbers of CRM customers are dissatis�ed with some signi�cant aspect of their implementations.

Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst, Bill Band, presented evidence that under 50% of CRM projects meet expectations (Source: Forrester, 2009).

0% 50%

2005

2006

2007

18%

31%

29%

InformationTechnology

Line ofBusiness

26%

41%


When One-Size-Fits-None Why are failure rates so high? There are many reasons, but one acute issue arises when specialty industries attempt to use broad CRM applications for their unique businesses. When large, general purpose CRM software was introduced, companies from many different industries switched from their custom-built CRM platforms to these now well-known players in hopes of taking advantage of economies of scale. For organizations that sell physical products, these general-purpose CRM platforms can perform very well.

What event organizers have found, however, is that general purpose CRM doesn’t offer the functionality they need to capture all of the important data and actionable items around their main “product” – the event. Without customization there is no easy way to compare events year-over-year, track customer preferences, or link exhibitor information to an interactive floor plan, making what should be a simple process very complex.

For example, in most popular general purpose CRM software, the term “event” refers to an “appointment.” Literally. If you want to book a 15-minute call with a prospect, that’s an “event.” In the world of managing an exhibitions business, a show has a start and end date/time, as well as tens, if not hundreds of “sub-events” (sessions, social functions, etc.). It also has exhibitors linked to it who purchase booths and sponsorships, one

or many floor plans with booths to which exhibitors are assigned, payment schedules tied to start and end date, registrants, and budgets.

Also, in standard CRM programs, the entire customer relationship consists of purchasing a product. In these systems, often the “event product” is listed with a name, something like ‘EXPO 2015,’ without clarifying if the actual product purchased was a booth, badge, dinner, sponsorship, or a combination of them all. Those details are kept in separate event management software.

Mismatched Workflows Reduce EfficiencyCRM software should allow an organization to streamline processes so sales teams can focus more on selling, providing excellent customer service, and building long-lasting, profitable relationships. CRM solutions not built with the events business in mind have some specific shortcomings that can negate many of the promised efficiencies.

For example, a common complaint is that ubiquitous CRM platforms don’t understand the concept of an attendee registration order, which is far more sophisticated than a product order. A registration order can have one or many attendees associated with it. Each person can have their own activities for which they’ve registered, their own guest, their own attributes and classifications, and much, much

CRM vendors and industry analysts will be more than happy to provide

you with wonderful numbers about efficiency and performance gains.

Don’t get too excited about those numbers for these reasons … They

don’t apply to you. Since your business processes, competitive situation,

product lines and sales personnel are different from whatever companies

were measured to produce those numbers, the payoffs and interaction of

leveraging CRM systems will not be directly comparable.

David Taber, Author, 2012


more. When using a general purpose CRM system, or a third-party registration-only provider, extensive customizations will be needed to track, manage, and report on attendee participation year-over-year.

With CRM systems not specifically geared toward events, manual processes are required to aggregate this diverse customer information. What may appear to be minor differences with general purpose CRM software can actually have big implications.

What’s Missed with Generic CRM Software? A general purpose CRM provider may retrofit “opportunities” to serve as the “event” field to show that a customer is buying booth space, but that doesn’t give the complete picture. For instance, having that single field doesn’t easily show the booth number, booth preferences, booth location, booth contacts, “bill to” contact, product and service categories, exhibiting objectives, printed and online catalog information, nor will it provide a seamless link to the exhibitor on an interactive floor plan. These fields may be added, but at an additional cost.

With standard CRM, the time teams spend on relearning their jobs to work within the program’s framework is time they’re not spending doing the jobs that impact the bottom line – making sales, building relationships, and executing events.Conversely, software that’s built specifically for the events industry already incorporates fields for common industry functions, the important relationships between an exhibitor, their booth and their history, and traditional show workflows, thus reducing training time and costs for end-users. Configurable software allows an organization to tailor the platform to use their vocabulary and to follow unique workflows to further gain efficiencies.

The Time & Cost Implications of CustomizationAll CRM providers can adjust their product. The question is how much time and money should be allocated for these adjustments. If any of the

software functionality needs to change immediately or in the future, significant customization will be needed at an additional cost. If the requested customization is new to the software, the customer may incur costs associated with updating their custom fields and functions. If the software needs to interface with another program, there will be additional costs associated with the development of custom application programming interfaces (APIs).

Another factor that can cause costs to balloon is the need for middlemen. Most general purpose CRM software is not installed by the actual software company; they rely on third-party vendors to customize the software to suit a client’s needs. For event organizers, typical customizations include the development of fields and functions for show planning and execution – fields that are not common in general product sales scenarios.

In order to make customization successful, an organization and their software provider, or a third-party software implementation specialist, schedule a fairly intense discovery process to learn the client’s workflows and understand their needs.

Generic CRM systems DO NOT: “Understand” what events are or what

information needs to be associated with them; in most general purpose CRM products “events” are actually designated as “appointments”

Offer appropriate business rules governing event substitute categories like “marketing campaigns” or “projects”

Have built-in floor plan tools allowing you to easily assign booths

Validate booth orders and invoices at the rate a customer should pay based on who they are, i.e., member, non-member, returning customer, etc.

Easily offer views of previous exhibitor order details by event, year-over-year

Allow exhibitors to manage their booth attributes in a portal via the Internet


The company implementing the software will then present the organization’s requirements to their product developers to begin customization. Testing of the modified software will be done to verify that it meets the client’s needs. This process can take several months to a year or more depending on the level of changes requested. Organizers must also carefully account for additional cost implications of “optimistic” work/customization scoping during the sales process.

With the new class of CRM software built specifically for exhibitions and events, product development has been solely focused on the needs of the category. Base products include industry-specific features and workflows right out of the gate. In addition, support staff is already up to speed on the exhibitions industry and can be proactive and address issues that have been brought to their attention by customers with similar needs. In some cases, configuration on these specialty CRM systems is intuitive enough that an individual software user can do it vs. requiring an IT professional.

A Customer ExperienceDuring the economic downturn, a leading U.S. exhibition organization wanted new tools to give them an economic advantage and help them improve sales. They decided to switch from a purpose-built solution to a market-leading, ubiquitous, general purpose, sales team focused CRM system. The general purpose CRM provider listened to their needs and agreed to customizations totaling nearly $300,000, with the promise that the CRM would help them be more effective and efficient. Within months, the exhibition organizer’s sales team members were calling their previous CRM provider to find out why they only had access to client contact information and couldn’t compare year-over-year sales by customer. They couldn’t access customer history and other essential information in a way that was useful to them during the sales process. After three years, and nearly $500,000 dollars spent, the exhibition organizer switched back to their original CRM solution – and the CIO who was in charge of the original switch was let go.

The Cost of Scattered DataWhen reviewing CRM software choices, an important feature to consider is the database both in terms of data accessibility and data availability. If each team member is working from a single, airtight platform, they don’t have to rekey information, causing data entry errors and the headaches that come along with them. Being able to enter information once and have it immediately available to the entire event team without having to wait for software to sync is valuable in the fast-paced exhibitions and events industry. In terms of efficiency, the ability to enter new information once and have it immediately available to all departments in real time eliminates the need to go back and reconcile data in multiple systems. In a recent survey, Ungerboeck Software event management customers working within a connected system reported saving three to ten hours per week, per user, since switching from multiple disconnected systems. They also report that they are able to reassign staff away from administrative and data entry tasks and focus them more on sales and relationship-building activities.

Another benefit of working from a single database includes avoiding embarrassing and often costly mistakes. By having a single repository of data, team members across departments are always working from the most up-to-date information. For instance, a change made over the phone on the day before an event is automatically immediately available to show coordinators and the accounting department, meaning the customer gets what they expect on the show floor and accurate invoices can be issued in a timely manner. For exhibition organizers who rely on separate systems for different departments, if a change is missed, show coordinators have to spend their time making it right at a time when they’re already stretched thin, and last-minute changes may not make it to the invoice, resulting in lost revenue.


Big Data Will Turn Into Customer

Insight. We expect more organizations

to ramp up their efforts to turn big data

into business insights. But most

organizations don’t know where to start.

(Source: Leggett, February 2014)

When looking at CRM software, it is imperative to discover both what is captured by the product and how that information can be used for reporting, benchmarking, marketing, sharing, etc.

It’s Not Just the Information, It’s How You Use ItWith the majority of trade show booth and sponsorship sales coming from renewals, building long-lasting relationships through excellent customer service is imperative. The ability to track an exhibitor or sponsor’s interactions with your organization from initial phone call through final invoice within an event or multiple events allows organizations to provide a consistent experience across all departments.

Most one-size-fits-all CRM platforms are not designed to give a 360-degree view of exhibitor, sponsor, and attendee participation within the framework of shows or events. In addition, general purpose CRM systems don’t show information “by event” without costly customization, so there’s no way to easily compare year-over-year data, customer preferences, payment information, etc. CRM solutions for exhibitions and events allow sales teams to track who is signed up to participate and who hasn’t renewed yet. An exhibit manager is able to delve deeply into their customer’s account information in order to talk to them about what they’ve done to be successful in the past and where they might want to invest for future success.

A Top 5 Trend for CRM Software

Found by Forrester Research:

Consider the 1-10-100 RuleAs a general rule, failure to take notice and correct mistakes escalates in cost the later they are realized.

to verify the accuracy of data at the point of entry

to correct or clean up data in batch form

(or more) per record if nothing is done – including the costs associated with low customer retention, and inefficiencies

In other words, a shared database eliminates the time and costs of rekeying and verifying information entered into separate disconnected systems. A single database for CRM, exhibition management, and financials also eliminates costly and embarrassing mistakes that are created with disconnected systems.

(Source: totalqualitymanagement.wordpress.com)


One-Shot, One-Way Info FlowAnother primary difference between general and purpose-built CRM is their connection to other event management systems. Changes to exhibitor contact information, booth preferences, �oor plan placement, payments, invoices, etc. happen routinely throughout the event management process. Without complex and costly system interfaces, generic CRM platforms can only push information one way, from one stand-alone database to the next application in the chain. These databases get out of sync when staff has to go back to update information, and details get lost.

APIs push data from one system to another down stream, but get out of sync if changes are made within the process. Changes to booths, billing, or set-up must be updated manually in each of the stand-alone systems.

Exhibition Managercreates opportunity

Salesexhibitor and

sponsorship info

Ops Teamgets service

orders

Accountingpulls billing

detail and P&L

DEADEND

Any Exhibitor Changes

Database Update

Manual UpdateRequired

Manual UpdateRequired

The Difference Between an API Connected System and a Closed Loop SystemA simplified show management scenarioTypically, an exhibition manager creates an event in the exhibition management system, and pushes that information to the sales team. The sales team adds exhibitor and sponsorship information into a stand-alone CRM system. That client information must then be pushed to the accounting team for billing, and to the operations team for show execution. With independent CRM, operations, and finance platforms, each uses a different database, created by different development teams, using different code

bases. All of these systems will likely classify information in a different way; the exhibitions manager by an event ID, the sales person by an exhibitor ID, the operations team by the booth number, and accounting by the invoice.

Although events are cyclical in nature, with a majority of booth rentals and sponsorships coming from renewals, a system that includes general purpose CRM connected to other department-specific platforms has information flowing one direction. Unfortunately,


“single-entry orders” are not how the events world works. A significant number of exhibitor orders have corrections or revisions from the client, requiring changes to the associated data back through the various systems used by different departments. With multiple APIs in place, it’s nearly impossible to accurately automate data validation back and forth between systems. It also makes it difficult to offer special pricing based on priority points or membership status.

A CRM platform that is built specifically for exhibitions and is part of a closed loop system is fundamentally different. This approach creates a platform that is seamlessly connected through a central database to the other elements of an exhibition organizer’s event business management

software. The connection of the CRM platform and electronic exhibitor file throughout the system allows it to accommodate the dynamic and complex nature of shows and events. Booth applications, contract, payment plans, floor plan placement, booth size, order validations and invoicing are all accessible within the system. If an exhibitor is an organization member or prior participant, their status, preferences, and any appropriate special billing rates are automatically calculated within the system and communicated across teams. If a change is made at any time in the show cycle, it can be automatically updated for every department, because the information flows from one central database to each business unit – sales, exhibition management, accounting, all the way to executive reporting.

SINGLEDATABASE

Closed-Loop, Fluid Info SharingIntegrated CRM systems built as a part of a larger event management system can provide a single customer ID number and a single customer order number to help track changes from the sales funnel to the show �oor. Applications that share a single database can also pull information back and forth throughout different stages of the process.


Sources

“CRM Market Statistics.” smallbizcrm.com

“Beyond Software: How to Budget the Cost of ERP Implementation Services.” Sherwood.com

“What is the 1-10-100 Rule?” totalqualitymanagement.wordpress.com. February 25, 2009

Gilbert, Alorie, “CRM software or CRM shelfware?” cnet.com, March 3, 2003

Krigsman, Michael, “CRM failure rates: 2001-2009.” techrepublic.com in Tech Decisions Maker. August 3, 2009

Leggett, Kelly. February 22, 2014. Forrester.com. “Forrester’s Top Trends for CRM in 2014.”

Rossi, Ben. May 6, 2013. Information-age.com. “CRM Software Market Grew 13.7% in 2013 – Gartner.”

Sinha, Ashish, “Most Used Features in Microsoft Word and a few design lessons.” nextbigwhat.com. September 2, 2008

Taber, David. August 13, 2012. cio.com. “How Much Should You Spend on CRM Software?”

About Ungerboeck SoftwareUngerboeck Software International delivers world-leading event management software, including CRM purpose-built for exhibitions and events, and complete financials, empowering over 40,000 users in more than 50 countries. Each year, 650+ shows run using Ungerboeck Software. Since its inception in 1985, Ungerboeck has taken a market-driven approach to product development, purposefully producing software designed specifically for the events industry. Thanks to its modularity and flexibility, Ungerboeck Software can easily be configured to meet your individual needs and ease your stress. You won’t find any other event management software with all of the features packed into Ungerboeck.

ConclusionGeneral purpose CRM systems, while well-suited for products that follow a traditional sales funnel, need extensive customization in order to be effective for exhibitions and events. With these systems, exhibition organizers have found lower than expected adoption rates among staff, reduced efficiency as duplicate data entry and additional manual systems are required, and increased implementation time and costs for extensive customizations to make the software “event aware.”

CRM that’s purpose-built for exhibitions and events inherently includes the features and processes most commonly used within the industry. It gives organizations the ability to more easily track various customers, their exhibition goals, and their

relationships with their booth space and sponsorships. Users can see their main customer contact, where to send billing information, the names of booth staff that will be on the show floor, and press and VIP contacts. It allows organizations to delve deeper into their customer’s relationship with events – and offer strategic advice that will help exhibitors and sponsors reach their business goals when exhibiting at that organization’s show or shows.

With a single, airtight system that includes purpose-built CRM, show organizers spend less time tracking down information and more time on the activities that make a positive impact on a customer’s experience – and on the organization’s bottom line.


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