Sunday, January 3, 2016

Welcome to 2016


 
Happy New year to you all. Get ready for the year because it is going to be quite busy. I want to look at a few things that will get us started for the year, drive us through the year and help us to deliver good results.

 A.  Event Trends for 2016

Every industry has trends that sets the pace for the direction of progress in that industry. It is the same thing in the event industry. Just get on the internet and perform a simple search for “Event trends in 2016”. You will be surprised at the number of responses you will get. Indeed the responses will overwhelm you if you are not diligent.

I scanned through these responses and have chosen to share the expectations from two sources mainly

1.    10 Event Trends for 2016 by Julius Solaris:


OR

10 Event Trends for 2016 by Julius Solaris, Editor at EventManagerBlog.com:


2.    2016 Event Technology Trends:


Because every part of the world is not developing at the same rate, some projections on these platforms may not be easily implementable in your environment. If it is, all well and good. What you need to do to benefit from these forecasts is to try and adapt it to your specific environment.

In general, I expect a lot of Event Professionals to continue to embrace the following

a.    Event Management Software Solutions

b.    Event Online Listing sites

c.    Online Ticketing

d.    Online Invitations

e.    Apps

 
 
B.  Event Planners Tools

What are the basic tools an event planner needs to succeed? There are a lot out there and several articles have been written about it. Some tools may be relevant to you right now while others will not make sense. The most important thing is to identify what is useful to you and adapt it to your environment and operations. Here is a guideline

a.    Calendaring: Every event planner needs a calendaring tool. It could be as simple as a dairy in any medium.

b.    Record Keeping: Keep records of customers, vendors, transactions, finances, etc. These are what you need for analysis.

c.    Event management tool: It could be a project management tool, scheduler, reminder system, etc. The key thing is to execute that task as per when due.

d.    Embrace technology: Technology is a business enabler so embrace it. Get a laptop, internet access, event management software, join online groups, etc. Don’t be left behind

 Here are two references to check out.

1.    Improve Your Event Planning Skills with These 10 Tools:


2.      10 New Event Planning Tools Worth Exploring:


 
 
C.  Business Plan

Business planning is a core part of business success. It is time to perform some analytics and begin to measure your performance Year on year. Many financial and operational indices - Return on Investment (ROI) or Return on Events (ROE) helps you to understand the direction of your growth.

Have a business plan for 2016 and set a baseline for measuring your operations. There are many consultants and business planning tools out there to help you create a plan. Basically you need to have

a.    Mission

b.    Objective

c.    Target market

d.    Financial Targets

e.    Business Strategy

f.     Growth plans

 

And here is where I will cut the tape for the week.

Best Wishes for you and your business throughout the year.

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