For today’s post, I decided to sit down with Lauren Donaghue, Senior Principal Design Manager, Event Solutions, so she can share more about her role on our Event Program Design team at Cvent and how they partner with us on the Client Services and Sales teams to work with our customers to understand their goals and requirements, make recommendations for next steps and solutions, and to ultimately achieve success.
Julia: Tell us a little bit more about what the Event Program Design team does at Cvent, how they can help Cvent customers, and the benefits of engaging with your team.
Lauren: The Event Program Design team partners with customers to understand how Cvent solutions can improve current processes and help achieve a scalable event program. As a team, we strive to provide solutions to help save time, mitigate risk, consolidate data, track the effectiveness of new processes, and increase visibility into an entire event program. We dive deep into evaluating the current state and pain points, then prescribe solution-based recommendations to help alleviate those pain points. As a result of these solutions, data and process is centralized to ease program visibility to key stakeholders within the organization. This also enables the ability to view your program from a holistic standpoint which aids in identifying trends over time for future event strategy decision making.
Julia: What does your typical day look like?
Lauren: I love how my role in Event Program Design has an eloquent balance with supporting both Cventers internally as well as customers directly. We help foster conversations that are incredibly important to have but tend to be hard to get around to amidst the extremely busy hospitality world. I admire all of you! I try to speak to as many customers as possible as it’s exciting to learn about different organizations and the impact that they have on their mission. A lot of what we help with in Event Program Design is to centralize data and visibility to help quantify that exact impact. I thrive off of meeting new people, hearing their stories, building relationships, but most of all I love to help others and that is the primary focus of our team. My background of being a Client Success Manager for 7 years has translated very well into my new role in Event Program Design and I can’t wait to see what is in store, we are just beginning!
Julia: Are there any trends that you are noticing across your different client conversations? Ex: Common challenges, goals, or areas of focus?
Lauren: As a whole, the largest hurdle and obstacle to overcome that the Event Program Design team sees is manual process. Many of these common manual processes include tracking/running events off Excel spreadsheets, a spreadsheet for a calendar or no calendar at all, as well as sending invitations out of an email box. Another common challenge is the theme of silos. Whether different teams that support events operate in silos or multiple systems in an organization’s tech stack is being used, there tends to be a lot of duplicative efforts. When we look at a client's entire total events program, we see the sheer amount of manual process within the organization and focus on where to streamline the approach and that is where we see clients start to take a proactive approach to their program versus feeling underwater with tasks.
Julia: Do you have any recommendations for where customers can start if they are struggling to automate and streamline processes in their meeting and events programs and how can they use Cvent to help?
Lauren: I think the first step is recognizing the manual processes that you are currently facing. From the very start of an event being requested all the way through event completion and budget reconciliation, think about the teams/stakeholders involved, siloed technology systems being used, and any manually tracked information or lack of tracking at all. Once you have an idea of your current state, Cvent can step in and simply help provide consultative conversation along with prescribed recommendations that are custom to your use case. Cvent will provide insight on how to best optimize your investment along with potential new solutions that may not have been adopted yet. I really take pride in Cvent’s customer service as we really take the approach of being extended partners for our customers to ensure they are set up for success.
Julia: What is your favorite Cvent solution and why?
Lauren: If I were to have answered this a few years ago, my answer would be very different! My favorite Cvent solution is the Access Portal. I like to refer to the Access Portal as the “Grand Central Station” for your events program. The Access Portal has evolved so much over time and will continue with that trend. It truly is a “one stop shop” point of entry where internal stakeholders can learn, stay in the know, take action, and have visibility to your event’s program. This solution effortlessly ties multiple Cvent solutions that support the operational side of events into one place, such as the Meeting Request Form for event approvals, event calendars, sourcing, budget tracking as well as real-time reporting. The Access Portal tends to be viewed as a place to share reports with non-Cvent users, but it is so much more than that!
Julia: What is your favorite customer success story/experience that you have been a part of?
Lauren: When I transitioned from Client Success to Event Program Design, one of the customers I partnered with was Foundation of a Healthy St. Petersburg. They had just signed onto Cvent, with Lisa Yacso as their fearless leader. Lisa recognized not only a need for event registration, but also a need to streamline loads of manual spreadsheets for events that were being requested and the approvals that resulted from them. I got looped into a conversation with Lisa to understand their use case, with the priority of identifying areas of streamlining process and to design what that would look like from a solutioning standpoint. Very quickly, but intentionally, the team moved forward with partnering with our implementation team to set up a Meeting Request Form/Approval Process, Event Calendar and Access Portal. This initial setup was and still is just the beginning.
What I love most is the continuation of my partnership with Lisa, bouncing ideas off of each other and ideating is something I could do all day with her! We had the chance to meet at Cvent Connect in person and are now brainstorming the longevity of how to best support the team with dedicated support along with integrating into their tech stack (Ex: Integrating with Asana, Single Sign On for registration etc.) There are always so many moving parts and things to do amidst a transition like this. Taking a phased approach, such as Lisa did and continues to do, streamlines and eases the change management side of things with the goal of driving adoption to a new process. We are continuing to explore how the centralization of data and integrations can provide invaluable insights that will drive forward future event strategy and impact that the organization has on its mission. Cvent solutions are designed to grow and scale with you over time so each organization can stay at the pace that suits best for them in that moment. Lisa’s innovative approach has been an infectious experience, and I can’t wait to see what is in store next for the Foundation!
We hope this gave you some insight into our Event Program Design team at Cvent and how they can help you and your organization decrease your manual efforts, streamline your processes and configurations, break down silos, and maximize your investment. Please don’t hesitate to partner with your Account Team if you have additional questions or are interested in learning more.
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