Ultimate Conference Blog

When it comes to conferences, one thing is certain—everyone needs an event registration solution. You can license a software platform and do the work yourself, or engage a registration service provider.

Step 1 to Finding the Best Event Registration Solution for Your Conference.

4 Important Questions to Answer

If you have to decide on the best registration solution for your organization, or you simply want to make the case for software or service, first ask yourself and your internal stakeholders the four questions below.

1. What resources do we have on hand to dedicate to registration and is this the best use of these resources?
2. Do we have a membership or CRM system that needs to “talk” to the registration system and do we have knowledgeable IT staff to guide integration?
3. How many events per year will my organization host and what is the expected volume of registrants?
4. How engaged is our staff currently with our membership/client base?

Step 2 to Finding the Best Event Registration Solution for Your Conference.

Evaluate Your Organization's Needs.

Now that you’ve asked yourself these questions, read on for my evaluation of which scenario might be right for you…

The Case for Licensing your own Registration Technology.

Licensing your own event registration technology is right for you if the following criteria resonate with your organization:

You have the available resources.

You need staff that will learn the new registration software, set up the registration form and manage changes to the form. You will also need staff that can answer a potentially high volume of incoming phone and email inquiries as well as manage onsite registration at the event.

Your accounting department should be prepared to manage the reconciliation and reporting to internal stakeholders of the registration financials. Lastly, if it is important to your organization that your membership or CRM system “talks” to your registration system, your organization will need to invest experienced IT resources to lead this endeavor.

You have high registration volume / multiple events per year.

If you host multiple events in a single year and/or expect a large number of registrations at your event, you will likely qualify for volume discounts by licensing your own registration technology, making this option more cost effective for larger organizations that for small ones. This volume discount may offset the time investment of training your own staff to learn the new software.

Your staff is actively involved with your membership.

If your staff is actively involved with your membership it may be important to your organization to maintain those relationships and offering registration support may be a natural extension for your own staff. Licensing your own registration technology and leveraging your own staff for customer service would mean your members continue to call your organization and may be talking with familiar voices, while getting multiple questions answered at once.

The Case for Hiring a Registration Technology and Service Organization.

Engaging a registration service provider may be right for you if the following criteria resonate more with you than the first option: You have limited resources.

You have little (or no) staff available to help set up the registration form and handle customer service. Or the trade-off is too great within your organization for this to make sense.

A registration service company becomes an extension of your staff—to build the registration form to your specifications, handle all communications with attendees, and lead you through the onsite experience, making recommendations for counters, signage, badge options, etc. This frees up your staff to focus on other areas of the conference.

This option generally eliminates the need for accounting resources as most service providers will handle all the financial management, including credit card processing, check handling, reporting, reconciliation and remittance.

If you prefer to just ask someone else for the information you need, rather than learning a system and building your own reports, this option is for you. Lastly, many registration companies have experience developing data integration with membership database or CRM and your organization may benefit from that expertise.

You don't have that many events per year.

In my experience, most registration technology companies base their pricing on volume, in addition to base fees for licensing and support, so licensing your own software can get very expensive for low volume events.

Registration service companies often have the volume to negotiate significantly lower technology fees and can offset their fixed cost across multiple client and events. That may mean your organization can benefit from a full service package for less than the cost to license the technology directly.

You have a small staff not actively involved with your membership.

If you have a small staff, or your staff is not involved on a day to day basis with your membership then it may make sense to leverage the expertise and customer service of a service provider. You gain a team of professionals who will be available all day every day, allowing your staff to focus on other things.

So, what is the best registration solution for your conference, software or service?

At this point, one of the two scenarios should be resonating with you and hopefully you are ready to start researching companies. When you reach out to your prospects, being able to articulate your selection criteria will help both you and the potential provider.

Stay tuned for future posts from me on the next steps; how to select a registration software provider and a registration service company!