Symphony

Environment Agency

Background: 550 delegates attended the event at the ICC, Birmingham. Before, during and after this event, Symphony was an invaluable tool for the managers involved. It not only freed staff from administrative duties, but it also gave delegates with a far smoother journey from their registration, to their payment and to their attendance at the conference. Even the exhibitors and the conference centre staff felt the benefits, with arrangements for the exhibition stands being managed through Symphony too.

What Symphony needed to do:

• Online registration
• Online payment, including the option to pay using credit card or invoice
• Exhibitor booking
• Support on the day

Benefits delivered:

• Managing the registration process online cut down on a significant administrative task at the start of the project
• Online registration also meant that delegates input and amended (if necessary) their own details and requirements, so there was no need for telephone calls or manual changes to booking forms
• Attendees had the choice of paying online, using a secure credit card payment service (and 60% chose to pay this way), or could request an invoice that was automatically generated and e-mailed to the attendee ready to forward or print out for the finance team
• Allowing exhibitors to book online and upload their own information to the site also significantly reduced what would normally be a huge adminsitrative task. This event saw dozens of exhibitors, who ordinarily would have needed to register their exhibition needs in telephone calls and e-mails to the organisers
• Instead, their exhibition furniture and equipment requests could be produced as a report, in word or excel, from Symphony's up to the second information, and mailed directly to the conference centre, significantly reducing their workloads too
• Symphony was the basis of the help desk facility on the day, being used to make any final changes to delegates plans, generating amended reports for those that needed accurate information at the event and creating name badges for replacement delegates.

"I have to say, I don't think I could have done this without Symphony. It just took away all of those little jobs that can add up to one big nightmare, plus it meant there was a much smaller margin for error, or for overlooking those details that can get lost in the last minute push to get everything done! I just would not consider going into an event now without Symphony there to help."