Registration Complexities
Every year, Chemist Warehouse Group hosts its biggest event, the ‘Marketing and Strategy Meeting - Supplier Function’, to showcase its marketing plans to nearly 1,000 attendees who represent some of the world’s largest healthcare brands and each year, the Chemist Warehouse events team would face major challenges during the registration and check-in process. The team put in a considerable amount of effort to pre-print badges, organise them at the registration desk and move their 1,000 mostly C-level guests through the door within an hour, while also ensuring the entire experience looked efficient and professional. There were times when their neatly arranged badges would get blown away by strong winds, making the entire process even more chaotic. ”Having traditional name badges just didn't work. We were always dependent on the weather, on the wind, on the alphabet,” says Mark Finocchiaro, Managing Partner and Director at Chemist Warehouse Group.
All in all, the team was under an unnecessary amount of stress just for ensuring everyone was registered in a smooth and timely manner. ”A minute per person really adds up when you've got a 1,000 people to get through. Our challenge was to have enough people [on the registration desk] to meet those 1,000 people to get them through,” says Finocchiaro. Chemist Warehouse finally decided to look for a solution that could provide them the speed, efficiency and professionalism to de-risk and de-stress this part of the event.
The Magic of Onsite Solutions
The Chemist Warehouse Group wanted an efficient event management system that would streamline and professionalise their registration process for their Supplier Function. After analysing all the pain points they were facing, the group put their faith in Cvent’s OnArrival 360.
With the new onsite attendee management tool, the entire registration process was transformed. Using the software and kiosks significantly reduced their manual efforts and helped them operate with a much higher efficiency. Attendees didn’t have to stand in long queues anymore, check-in time was shorter and badge printing could be done onsite. The team was able to make their event look more professional than before, which left a great impression on first-time attendees.
”With the OnArrival 360 support team helping us right from concept to execution, we were able to focus on other critical aspects of the event without worrying about onsite registrations & check-ins,” adds Finocchiaro. In addition, Chemist Warehouse was able to make changes to badges in real-time while also tracking live attendee data and generating in-depth reports for future event analysis.
Greater Professional Engagement
Displaying a strong sense of professionalism is extremely important if you want to establish yourself as the industry leader. This is exactly what Chemist Warehouse Group achieved with OnArrival 360. Their major event — the Supplier Function — was better managed than before and they were able to decrease the waiting time for attendees by 25%, which meant they had all attendees seated within 45 minutes without any delays or glitches. An efficient check-in process also meant they now required fewer staff to oversee the task.
Investing in a registration software reaped great dividends for Chemist Warehouse — they saved $5,000 in cost and 24 hours’ worth of full-time manpower. The team saw a sharp reduction in workload and stress, which allowed them to focus on other critical aspects of the event. And last but not the least, organising a well-executed, high-quality event with greater professional engagement and better reporting was a deeply satisfying experience for the team.
Naturally, Chemist Warehouse plans to continue using Cvent for its future events. ”Why would we not!” exclaims Finocchiaro, adding, ”It was such a good experience, we learned a lot! And I'm sure ... they [Cvent] have a lot of recommendations with what we could do next time to make our events even better.”
Finocchiaro concludes by saying, ”There are lots of different solutions available in the market, but you need one that has proven itself, has done the job before. For us, Cvent was the right solution.”