Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Cloud Based Event Registration Software: Helps Organizers to Overcome Challenges


Until recently, conducting events meant a hard task for most organizers. Sometimes in spite of strategic planning and proper thinking, things would not happen as expected. Right from managing registration forms, to processing payments to event promotion, every step involved some challenges. Recruiting external staff at times proved to be an insufficient support system to manage such large data volumes. Such was the situation when event organizers had to go through real test of time. Today, with the introduction of Cloud-based event registration software has enabled them to overcome some of these key issues. Let me now show you how:

Replacing Manual Registration with Online Registration

Initially managing event registration was a challenge in itself. It brought along with it, the hassles of manually distributing registration forms and its subsequent submission process. The immense workload sometimes led to data mismanagement and data loss. The switch to the online registration platform has visibly simplified the process of registration to a large extent. The web based registration service has automated the entire process of form creation, submission and procession thereby resulting in minimal manual errors. Unlike manual registration, the service remains available 24 hours thereby allowing prospective attendees to register at any time, from any location. Group registration is also facilitated by this service via a single transaction.

Opting for Online Payments

The time consuming process of en-cashing paper checks is eliminated by the online payment service. The automated process of payment management relieves the organizers from the tiresome battles of making phone calls to attendees for data re-verification. Here, the interested participants can pay online via their credit/ debit cards or reputed payment gateways like PayPal which come embedded with the system. The platform also gives organizers to create their separate merchant account where they can accept payments directly. What they need to take care is the security of the payment management system. A PCI compliance and SSL certification will however ensure the high levels security.

Adopting Cost Effective Promotional Means

Initially, event organizers only had to carry out promotional activities via printed mediums. This not only involved substantial cost but also required much of their attention. The Cloud-based event registration interface has however transformed the promotional activity phase completely. It facilitated organizers with a social media connector tool that enabled them to easily promote their event on various networking sites. Besides, they can also resort to the email marketing tool to carry out email campaigns to spread the word about the event.

Automatic Management of Waitlist

Keeping track of the waitlist requires meticulous attention to the number of registrations on a daily basis. Data loss prevented organizers from filling in the seats in case of last minute cancellations. This greatly hampered the event participation figures. However, this is not so, in case with online registration. The software comes equipped with a waitlist manager tool that helps organizers to easily keep a tab on the waitlist attendees. Moreover, it also helps in automatically filling up seats that cropped up out of last minute cancellations thus ensuring maximum attendance.

These are some of the challenges which an event organizer can overcome by resorting to the Cloud-based event registration software.

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