At the heart of any successful event and organization is a good event reporting.
If you want to put together a truly stand-out event, it’s not enough to just bring together all the people and logistics you need to navigate to get everybody you need in one place. You also need to know the details!
There’s a whole lot of data you can use to really perfect your event organizing abilities, and by recognizing the kind of reports you want and need, pulling off a fantastic event becomes easier than ever before.
With the help of the proper software and know-how, you’ll be on the ball with your event in no time. Get the tech and the right techniques, and pull of the reports your event needs to shine!
Grab our FREE Event Checklist here.
Rosters
Rosters are one of the most important reports for organizing a successful event, and they’re probably also the most obvious.
It just makes sense – there’s no event without people, so of course you need to know who all shows up!
Surprisingly, though, you really do need to get the right software if you want to get the kind of rosters your event really needs.
Obviously, you want a comprehensive list of everyone you’re trying to keep track of, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
It’s not enough to just have a list – you should also be able to manipulate that list in any way you need.
Good software will let you filter out groups of people however you want. This means you can have a roster for anything and everything you could want.
Have a roster for your speakers, have a roster attendees, have one for you event and one for every sub-group inside your event and one for anything and everything else you can think of!
You need to know who’s there and who’s not, and it’s as simple as that.
Travel Reports
Most big-time events require quite a bit of travel. You’re trying to put together the best experience you possibly can, and that often involves shipping people back and forth from every corner of the world.
With so many people and so much distance involved, it really pays to keep track of all this data. Flight reservations, arrival times, departure times, etc. – you want to have all this info in one place.
Airfare, in particular, has a tendency to get a little chaotic from time to time, so if you really want your event to run like a well-oiled machine, you should never be in the dark or confused about all the hiccups that might occur.
Learn more about how our client, Reggae Runnerz, manages travel with their online travel and event software.
Post-Program Reports
Any good event organizer knows that the event doesn’t really end when the last person walks out the door.
There are always more events to plan, and everybody always wants the know the answer to one question: What’s this mean for our bottom line?
Looking at the return on investment (ROI) for your event is often a good way to go.
Obviously, you want to know what kind of profits you brought in after accounting for all the expenses. You’re a business, after all!
At the same time, though, a more telling report than just ROI is often your return on objectives (ROO).
This is a more holistic approach to finding out how well your event went. Profit margins are all well and good, but did people actually like being there? Was the pricing fair? Was the content good?
You can often get a better understanding of all this with good registration software, which will let you send out customized surveys to all your attendees after the fact.
Statistical Reports
Statistical reports are another key aspect of putting together a quality event.
Any businessperson will tell you that knowing your customer is at the heart of any smart business plan. Who all is coming to your event, anyway? What do they look like? How do they think?
Good software will give you vastly better perspective on your attendees. You can see what your “average” attendee looks like based on any demographic factor you can think of.
Age, race, gender, location… Having access to a full report on things like this is a great way to better wrap your mind around who you’re dealing with.
Good events cater to their audience, and good event organizers understand who they’re organizing for.
The Report That Changes Everything
At this point, we’ve mostly just been talking about the standard reports a ton of companies use to put together quality events. And there’s a lot to be said for these reports, too.
There’s a reason people do things one way, and it’s important to understand how people usually do things.
But we all know that the best ideas rarely come from doing things the way we’ve always done them.
The best ideas take that human spark, that creativity that doesn’t come from just using the same boring templates everyone else is using.
That’s why the greatest kind of report is the one that doesn’t even exist yet, but is something no one’s even though they should be reporting on.
You want the report that lets you draw the connections the rest of us hadn’t even considered. You want the software that lets you manipulate your data any way you want.
You want the report that changes everything.
Conclusion
Quality reports are what turn good events into amazing events. Don’t settle for less than the best when it comes to your reporting.
You need the data, the connections, and the versatility that really makes an event shine.
Build the event your attendees will never forget.