A little game we like to play with our prospective customers here at Eventrax is ‘how quickly can you tell us who is going to your events?’

We know it’s not really going to get considered as an alternative to Monopoly on a rainy Sunday afternoon, but we like it because it’s a really good way of showing that spreadsheets and emails aren’t an ideal way to run your events programme.

It’s a calm Tuesday morning in late September at The Completely Made Up Services Company. As manager of the events and sponsorship team, you’re calmly sipping a cuppa and putting some thought into the next event you’re planning.

Your email pings.  A message from Craig, the New Business Manager for the North West region, has arrived.  He’s asked a simple question.

‘Hi Events Team’, he’s written. ‘How many times has Wendy Important-Prospect attended one of our events this year? Can you let me know before 11am as I’m due to call her then about a new project.’

You look at the clock, it’s just gone 10am. It can’t be too difficult to answer Craig’s question within an hour, surely? I mean, you’ve only run 15 events so far this year. It’s just a case of checking through the spreadsheets that record who was invited to each event.

You’re keen to help Craig, so you spring into action. You ask your events team colleague, Sophie, to find out the answer to his question. Sophie immediately springs into action and opens up a few spreadsheets on her computer.

In fact, Sophie has opened fifteen spreadsheets – one for each of the events you’ve run so far this year. She’s scribbling in her notebook making a tally of every time Wendy Important-Prospect’s name appears.

Now, with a slightly puzzled look on her face, Sophie is scrolling through emails in her inbox. More scribbling in her notebook follows.

It’s 10.45am before Sophie gets up from her desk and comes over to you. Only fifteen minutes until Craig needs the answer to his question, so everything is going to be fine. Isn’t it?

You notice a concerned look on Sophie’s face. ‘The problem is,’ she explains ‘I don’t know if the spreadsheet for the last event is up-to-date yet. And we don’t seem to have a record of Wendy attending the event in March, but I’m pretty sure she was there. I’ve checked my emails and we have a request for a vegetarian meal for her, you see.’

At that moment, your email pings to let you know another new message has arrived. It’s Craig. ‘Can you give me an answer before 11am?’ he asks.

Err, no. It’s clear you can’t find the answers before 11am.  And it’s going to take a lot of email detective work to be able to give him an accurate answer at all.

What you, Sophie and Craig need, is an event management system that can tell you exactly whether Wendy Important-Prospect attended each and every event you’ve run this year. That’s what Eventrax does – it is event management software designed for events people, by events people.

In Eventrax, you can see exactly who you are hosting and have hosted at events past, present and future. With just a few clicks, you can search for specific events within a defined period of time and see details on everyone who attended an event.  You can also quickly see what events each person has attended. You would be able to give Craig his an answer within moments.

That’s why we love playing our snappily titled ‘how quickly can you tell us who is going to your events’ game with clients. Because, almost always, the answer is ‘not very quickly at all’. In fact, you can sometimes play an entire game of Monopoly in the time they need to find out!

If you’d like to know more about how Eventrax can help (or just really want to play our game with us), get in touch or read more about it here.