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Introduction
Every year, executives are tasked with reimagining the machine in a way that meets the aspirations of the CEO, and the constraints of the CFO. Live events are one of the biggest items that executives are constantly looking for ways to not only validate but to provide more revenue back to their organization. Within this guide, we will go over real-life examples of how executives are optimizing their event’s ROI through more efficient use of budget.
What is an Event Budget
An event budget is an estimation of the costs an event will incur based on plans made as well as research. Whether you are planning a small event or a large sophisticated one, your corporate event cannot exceed your budget.
What Cost Saving Tactics are Being Implemented?
We met with three executives in the financial, higher ed and technology industries to understand how they optimized events and made crucial decisions that drove their business forward. In the end, many were left with savings that they had the opportunity to reinvest back into their organization to drive better program content or activities for attendee engagement.
Three cost saving tactics executives are currently deploying to make their event budget plan:
- Controlling costs on hotel rooms, meeting rooms, food and beverage, concessions and travel.
- Consolidating technology into an end-to-end event automation platform.
- Reducing labor hours or shifting labor hours to more valuable work.
To effectively execute each tactic, there are also three steps that you need to take:
- Confirm that the processes underlying the tactics are sound.
- Have the technology enable the process, not prevent success.
- Ensure that people managing the tactic are prepared and supported with the help of an event.
At the end of this guide, you should be able to use these tactics no matter what industry you are in or type of events that you plan to create a holistic approach to event management.
Aspects of an Event Budget Every Event Planner Should Consider
Event planning can be a challenging affair, especially when it comes to the budget. There’s simply so much to consider and prepare. That’s why every corporate event planner needs a planning budget. This will help you prepare for every aspect of the event and ensure you save instead of overspend. By using an event budget template, you’ll be able to plan in detail and prepare for the unexpected.
Make the best choices as you prepare for your event by using a budget plan template that includes the following:
Travel & Accommodation
Will your corporation need to provide accommodation for anyone who will attend the event? If so, how much will this cost? Though this can be an overlooked aspect of your budget, depending on the size and grandeur of the event, be sure to place this estimation at the forefront of your budget to avoid underestimating the finances you’ll need to make your event a success.
Food
How much will food cost? This will depend on the number of people you expect to attend as well as how extensive the menu will be. Estimate costs according to the scale and type of event you are organizing.
Staff Compensation
To avoid financial difficulties that may arise due to a poorly budgeted event, also include staff compensation in your event plan template. Event directors or managers will need to determine how many staff members will be required to organize and help facilitate a successful event. Determine how much time will be spent and the appropriate compensation required.
Facility Expenses
Facility expenses include money spent on acquiring the venue. Make a budget based on what you think would be a likely cost. Also consider hidden costs that may arise such as costs associated with security, lighting or heating.
Logistics
Do you need special contracts, permits or insurance in hosting your event? Each of these considerations fall under logistics, an important aspect of any budget. Your ability to estimate how much this will cost will depend mainly on the venue of your corporate event.
Marketing & PR
Marketing is an important aspect of any event. It can account for a significant percentage of your corporate event budget as well especially when organizers expect to gain profits through event entrance fees or other charges. Consider the tools you intend to use to market your event and make your choices based on which are most aligned with your budget.
How to Create an Event Planning Budget
The best event planning occurs when organizers utilizes the wide array of tools available to them. A few important steps are necessary after including aspects of the event into the event plan template. Create the best event plan by choosing an event template that helps you achieve the following:
Prepare for Adjustments
A budget template is very much like writing a book. The process may require major adjustments, resulting in several drafts. The best templates enable organizers to make these adjustments as often as is necessary whether before, during, after or in between events.
Improve Budget Over Time
Researching expenditures, for instance regarding a choice of venue, may take time. Your template should include features that ensure flexibility. This will event planners to improve the budget as time goes by or as they access details that they may not have known at the beginning of the budget planning process. Using an event ROI tool is helpful to get a comprehensive view of the value of your event—this will come in handy when you are quantifying your event and figuring out future budgets.
Always Include a Contingency Plan
The inclusion of a contingency plan helps a corporate event planner prepare for the things that may go wrong. It’s basically a written commitment to plan for the unexpected. For instance what will you do if your outdoor event is suddenly threatened by an unexpected thunderstorm?
Controlling Costs with Event Management Software
Vicky, a VP of Sales Enablement for a multi-national financial services company, organized and executed hundreds of events geared towards high net worth investors every year. Keeping these events on budget was critical to Vicky’s MBOs. To manage the costs, she conducted a quarterly review of all expenses to understand where there were leverage points and savings opportunities.
There were 5 typical items that she reviewed:
- Hotel room costs
- Food and beverage costs
- Meeting room rentals
- Concessions
- Attrition clauses
Quantify the Value from Your Hotel Negations
Without constant monitoring, it was hard to ensure Vicky was getting the best room rates for guests. The volume of attendees at these investor meetings can fluctuate, and ensuring the right discounts based on volume was time consuming.
To solve for this, Vicky employed a venue sourcing tool that allows her to take in multiple proposals, negotiate room rates effectively and show the cost savings on hotels room blocks. In the end, Vicky saves between 5-15% on rooms in various cities.
Take Control of No-Show F&B Costs
Food and beverage costs are often the greatest offender of misused spend, and rarely are event teams looking for F&B savings in the right place. Poor registration processes, which hinder visibility and accountability for the sales team, lead to high no show rates.
Using an end-to-end event management software to organize all the marketing and communication efforts around events, Vicky is able to track her event outreach with integrated reporting features on each personalized email sent. By personalizing and tracking all communication around events, you can drive down no show rates by 75%, and recover hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on plated meals.
Leverage Benchmarks to Drive Meeting Room Savings
As a large organization, Vicky did not have direct insight into every event that other internal meeting planners were organizing. She believed that across meetings, the planners were not enabled to negotiate the best rates on meeting room rentals because they lacked benchmarks and comparisons.
With the sourcing tool that Vicky implemented and putting an eRFP process in place, planners now had insight into what venues had been booked in the past and the value of each. Overall, this process has helped to save thousands of dollars a year on the multitude of events Vicky’s organization plans.
Drive Concession Value
An often-overlooked aspect of controlling events costs are concessions. Vicky found that simply asking for concessions on Wi-Fi and A/V in meeting spaces often produced savings.
Through her sourcing tool, she set specific concessions to auto populate on every eRFP that was sent through the system. Saving between 5-10% on every event booked, Vicky made it possible for everyone to contribute to savings – even employees with no experience in venue negotiations.
Mitigating your Event Risk Across the Company
Some attrition is inevitable. Paying for that attrition is not. Vicky’s team creates standard company contract clauses that auto-populate on every eRFP. This helps them avoid stiff penalties by setting reasonable fees, such as 25% attrition up to the day of arrival. For additional safeguards, they lock in no walk and resell clauses into all eRFPs. When Vicky reviews registrations vs. attendees and calculates what she would have paid without these clauses, she typically finds 10-15% savings on each event.
Vicky’s strategy required simple invitation and registration systems that were easy to understand for thousands of decentralized financial consultants. It had to be repeatable and scalable for a growing planner team. It had to drive a more sophisticated approach to negotiation that could save millions of dollars a year. In short, Vicky needed an event management platform to manage and monitor all of these moving pieces in order to realize the savings.
Recommended Resource: Did you know for many companies, meetings and events comprise one of the biggest categories of unmanaged spend? Learn how to maximize savings, minimize risk and improve service to attendees with our guide on how to Gain Control of Unmanaged Meetings Spend.
Consolidating Technology with Event Automation
On college campuses around the world, event teams are hindered by primitive systems, siloed decision making, and shrinking budgets. Heidi was tasked by her dean’s office to structure a centralized event plan across campus, with a key goal being to reduce inefficiencies and redundancies across the organization. Heidi set out to analyze three key costs to reduce:
- Software costs
- Maintenance costs
- Enhancements to proprietary systems
Software Costs
Heidi referred to the software systems across campus as the “spaghetti plate,” as in almost every school on campus was using a different platform or process for managing their events.
- Event websites were either on individual school pages or the main university page
- Registration for events were collected through various point solutions or the proprietary system
- A few schools were dabbling in mobile apps and engagement solutions
- Budgeting for events was completed through manual processes
The entire campus was all over the place with the technology they used for events and a unified process needed to happen. With different contracts in place across campus, and different event processes working out of different budgets, bringing them all together seemed an impossible task.
Along with a singular event management platform, Heidi took the opportunity to create standard event planning and execution processes across campus. She hosted numerous trainings on the new processes for the hundreds of planners working at her university to further guarantee success. The university gave all event planners 12 months to migrate to the new event platform. This saved the school 25% of its event technology costs.
Maintenance Costs
Heidi worked with her IT department to determine the cost that went into maintaining the current proprietary systems. Between security enhancements, system upgrades and server capacity constraints, Heidi was able to identify hundreds of hours of IT maintenance.
As she considered options to manage her processes, the ability to "outsource" this work to a trained team of professionals seemed like a no brainer. Plus, the professional services teams that came with their event management platform would be more responsive and knowledgeable of the system than a typical IT department.
She is forecasting 50% less on maintenance costs heading in to next year.
Enhancements to Proprietary Systems
One of Heidi’s solution design principles was that it be agile and walk the fine line of standard processes and custom workflows. As more event teams around campus joined the platform program, there were always one-off workflows that had to stay intact in order to deliver for a planner’s constituents. Being able to accommodate these custom workflows was essential to any solution.
Cost savings on event enhancements are both tangible and intangible. Labor hours are reduced and results are delivered more quickly. This cuts enhancement costs almost completely.
And often, these custom workflows impact the experience of students, university guests and delegates, and alumni.
Heidi was able to build a powerful case for an event management platform that brought the university into the modern age. When software, maintenance and enhancement costs were considered, the CFO was able to understand the business case and feel comfortable making a decision. Providing the tools and information to help the university realize extreme cost savings allowed her to invest in an end-to-end platform that has led to better events managed more efficiently.
Recommended Resource: Events are used at colleges and universities to create an engaging environment on campus, to increase revenue and fundraising efforts, and, most importantly to build life-long relationships with students and alumni. Our free eBook Your Event Essentials: Higher Ed Edition show you how the latest technology can make a world of difference for higher ed planners.
Headcount Planning Tools for a Global Events Team
Success in events is 50% event planning and 50% event talent aligned against the plan. Effective event teams have the best people, while efficient event teams have the right people. Terry was tasked with developing a people plan for the event team in their mid-market technology company.
One of the first key insights as Terry began to develop the people plan was that the team that drove success was wider than simply just the event team. He first established a full roster of roles that impacted the exhibits, user groups and tech conferences that drove their events business. He then considered all the costs associated with each role:
Key Roles:
- Events team members
- Support staff
- Technical staff
- Training staff
Key Costs:
- Salaries and bonuses
- Benefits
- Recruiting costs to fill a role
- Onboarding costs to ramp a hire
Events Team Members
Front line event planners are the most important role in the event team. Terry first determined the competencies that his tech company required from their events team. He assessed his event planners on communication skills, problem solving, creativity, time management and attendee-centric approach.
Terry then identified the tasks event planners were executing to determine which ones were valuable and fit the competencies. 40% of the tasks were able to be automated, which could lead the events team to handle more events. In some cases, it allowed the event team to consolidate as team members left for other opportunities.
Support Roles
Terry found that for every six event planners across the organization, one support team member was required to handle logistical and administrative tasks.The cost savings were multiplied when fewer event planners were required, and support team members could serve more events at any given time. By improving the support ratio to 8:1, the event team was able to realize 20% savings in the support organization.
Technical Roles
With complex systems in place, technical roles were required to investigate bugs and user errors. These technical specialists bounce around the organization and have a general understanding of all of the company systems. Being able to reduce these roles and move them out of the events budget helped Terry identify 10-20% savings on technical support. In addition, user productivity can go up as they spend less time waiting for, and working with, technical support.
Training Roles
With more event planners comes more trainers. These trainers need to ensure new event planners are brought up to speed quickly. They ensure that they receive continuing education, best practices and tools. Finding ways to reduce these training costs was critical for Terry’s budget. Plus, with fewer planners, less onboarding was required. Terry ended up saving 30% on training costs the first year.
Reduce Costs Across Roles
The kicker for all of these roles are the hidden costs of a hire (or mishire). For each new hire, consider the costs of hiring that person: recruiters, advertisements, missed opportunity, etc. Once a new hire is in place, how long until they are fully productive? And what does it cost to ramp them up? Additional insurance and benefits must be considered as well. When these costs are aggregated, they have a major impact.
To realize this cost savings opportunity, Terry required an event management platform that handled those automated and low value tasks. It required a streamlined process which sped up event planning and execution. Within two years of implementing an enterprise wide solution, Terry had realized 30% cost savings per event simply by optimizing their people plan.
Recommended Resource: From tools to assist with budget creation to meeting approval workflows and cost-effective venue sourcing, a great meetings management program takes a lot of effort. That's why at Aventri, we created a free eBook Effective Meetings Management Strategies that combines all the essential meeting management strategies into one package.
Choosing the Best Event Budget Templates and Tools
The best event budget template or tool will enable you to make adjustments in your budget, improve it over time and prepare for the unexpected regardless of what stage you are in your planning. Take for instance the example below:
Best Event Planning Tool for During Any Stage of Planning
Event planning tools are ideal for organizers who want the most efficient budget solutions via user-friendly software or apps. Our budgeting tool at Aventri is one of the best tools available for modern event managers.
This type of tool is ideal for event managers or organizer who want access to the following:
- Tracking spending of multiple vendors
- Sponsorships or exhibitor packages
- Ticketed events or e-commerce
- Monitoring budgets in real-time
- Accessing the ROI of an event
- Non-financial experts
Conclusion
Thank you putting the time in to read these stories. We hope they provide you with simple takeaways that can help you drive your business forward.
We know what it’s like to seek efficiencies in sales and marketing spend because we live it ourselves. It’s great to tell the stories of others who are out there on their journey every day. Hopefully you found it valuable!
