Actual article date: Mar 6, 2015

As technology becomes a big part of face-to-face events, it is necessary to understand the directions that technology trends are heading as they will drive habits and expectations of your technology solutions at your event from your customers. From the recent Accenture Technology Vision 2015 report, five key trends are highlighted as primary movers. This is how they will impact events.

1. Internet of Me

“As everyday objects are going online, so too are experiences — creating an abundance of digital channels that reach deep into every aspect of individuals’ lives. Forward-thinking businesses are changing the ways they build new applications, products, and services. To gain control over these points of access, they are creating highly personalized experiences that engage and exhilarate consumers — without breaching the customer’s trust. The companies that succeed in this new “Internet of Me” will become the next generation of household names.”

What the above trend basically means for events is that the digital tools that you are leveraging on needs to increasingly build on contextual information for each of your customer and ensuring the right messages are delivered. With the pheltora of “competition” over the attention of your customers from the different channels and services that they subscribes to, bringing the right context to your customer will make immediate business sense to your event.

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2. Outcome Economy

“Intelligent hardware is bridging the last mile between the digital enterprise and the physical world. As leading enterprises come face-to-face with the IoT, they are uncovering opportunities to embed hardware and sensors in their digital toolboxes. They are using these highly connected hardware components to give customers what they really want: not more products or services, but more meaningful outcomes. These “digital disrupters” know that getting ahead is no longer about selling things — it’s about selling results. Welcome to the “outcome economy”.”

The outcome economy will fundamentally change how events does their sales and marketing. Proven ROIs and customer satisfaction will be key. While delivering the right content is still a must at events, event organisers will need to increasingly look at the outcome or “value” that is derived from their content programming. This is the same for networking at events. What are the business outcomes and opportunities that you are delivering for your customers attending your event? Specially catered session or networking opportunities will be required.

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3. Platform (R)evolution

“Among the Global 2000, digital industry platforms and ecosystems are fueling the next wave of breakthrough innovation and disruptive growth. Increasingly, platform-based companies are capturing more of the digital economy’s opportunities for strong growth and profitability. Rapid advances in cloud and mobility not only are eliminating the technology and cost barriers associated with such platforms, but also are opening up this new playing field to enterprises across industries and geographies. In short: Platform based ecosystems are the new plane of competition.”

Is your event creating a true platform-marketplace for your customers? Or is your event merely a ground where customers just want to find out more about the industry? I believe strongly that if events acts better as marketplaces, more value transactions take place at the events, resulting in a high quality experience for your customers. This differentiates “must attend” events from “will attend” events.

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4. Intelligent Enterprise

“The next level of operational excellence and the next generation of software services will both emerge from the latest gains in software intelligence. Until now, increasingly capable software has been geared to help employees make better and faster decisions. But with an influx of big data — and advances in processing power, data science, and cognitive technology — software intelligence is helping machines to make even more, better informed decisions. Business and technology leaders must now view software intelligence not as a pilot or a one-off project, but as an across-the-board functionality — one that will drive new levels of evolution and discovery, propelling innovation throughout the enterprise.”

Investment into intelligent events need to start today. This means that all your investment into digital tools must have a bigger goal; it should not merely be focused on the functional aspect (i.e. ability to schedule appointments) but the functional aspect should bring you intelligent data and most importantly customer insights that you can utilise. With such data at hand, it can fundamentally be used to morph data-driven decisions into your event organising team. This helps to bring you closer to your customers needs.

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5. Workforce Reimagined

“The push to go digital is amplifying the need for humans and machines to do more, together. Advances in natural interfaces, wearable devices, and smart machines will present new opportunities for companies to empower their workers through technology. This will also surface new challenges in managing a collaborative workforce composed of both people and machines. Successful businesses will recognize the benefits of human talent and intelligent technology working side by side in collaboration — and they will embrace them both as critical members of the reimagined workforce.”

Technology should enhance physical interactions at events, not replace the function itself. Organisers should be mindful to procure technologies that do not replace face-to-face interactions but enhance it, simply because face-to-face is the fundamental basis of live events. Every technologies out there will market itself as so, but the true implementation more often than not, lacks in that aspect. It is important to set the necessary KPIs and outcome/expectation when working with your technology vendors.

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