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American Society for Quality, Customer Supplier Division

Volunteer Organizers Increase Efficiency with Real-Time Registration

Challenge     Helping a small volunteer staff increase productivity

Solution       More registration & payment options equal less staff work

Results         Increased efficiency;“pain-free” event registrations & payments

Background

The American Society for Quality is a global community of quality control experts, created to promote quality tools, principles, and practices in organizations and communities. The Society provides wide-ranging resources, including professional certifications, training programs, publications, and conferences. The Society's Customer Supplier Division (CSD) helps organizations build more effective customer-supplier relationships through professional development and learning opportunities.

Business Challenge

Helping a small volunteer staff increase productivity

CSD organizers needed a more efficient way to manage attendee registrations and payments for its various conferences and symposia. CSD was planning a new symposium, "Catch the Wave of Change," and program chair Linda Garriz needed to relieve her small volunteer staff of their payment processing duties so they could focus on the actual event. Garriz had used Acteva in a limited role prior to her arrival in 2006 so she was aware of its cost and timesaving benefits.

Prior to Acteva, attendees could pay only by check, and the time and effort required to process the checks manually had become overwhelming. Further complicating the registration process, CSD was offering an optional networking reception and several workshops prior to the event, all of which had to be tracked separately.

Garriz was determined to 1) eliminate the registration bottlenecks that had plagued CSD organizers in the past, and 2) provide attendees with comprehensive registration and payment options via a secure, user-friendly solution. Ideally, she wanted to move the entire process online.

"It's not my full-time job. I'm a volunteer so it's absolutely essential that I manage my time efficiently as an organizer," says Garriz. "And I really wanted to reduce the burden on the other 3-4 volunteers who help organize the symposium. It's the centerpiece of the West Coast event schedule and we already have a lot on our plate."

Acteva Solution

More registration and payment options equal less staff work

Payment flexibility was a major issue for CSD. Most attendees prefer to register and pay online, but Garriz also wanted to offer check and purchase order options.

Having multiple registration options was also a key requirement. Acteva's solution makes it easy to accommodate the occasional attendee who wants to register via phone, fax or mail, or pay with a check or purchase order, with no special attention required by a staff member.

Another goal was to find a way to identify attendees' preferences and use this information to improve the experience. "People wanted to know which hotels we recommend, where to eat, where to spend their leisure time, and a host of other items," says Garriz. "In the past they couldn't ask these questions until they were already on site. By then it was too late."

By incorporating a mandatory questionnaire into the registration process, Garriz could determine information such as how many people would attend the networking reception, attendees' meal preferences, and how they heard about the symposium. Selected questionnaires even include open-ended questions regarding specific reasons for attending and what attendees hoped to learn.

Results

Increased Efficiency; Pain-Free event registrations and payments

Since adopting Acteva's powerful event-management solution, Garriz can now offer attendees a full range of registration and payment options. Attendees can register and pay online in minutes, safely and securely, while Garriz and her staff avoid the most time and effort intensive aspects of event planning and organizing.

Garriz can now track who signs up for events, as well as how and when they signed up, much more effectively. Acteva provides real-time notification whenever an attendee registers, so garriz can generate up-to-the-minute registration summaries.

CSD event organizers use information gathered from attendees' questionnaire responses to make decisions ahead of time, even making last minute changes if necessary. "Using Acteva has helped me tremendously in ordering accurate supplies and meals - all of which add to the cost of the event if you order too much, or cause last-minute scrambling if you order too little,"says Garriz."

Added benefits

Optional features: Garriz also decided to use several of Acteva's optional features, including the ability to offer early-bird registrations, speaker and presenter discounts, and special alumni rates. Acteva offers event organizers a comprehensive menu of options, helping ensure that every registration opportunity is captured.

Branded registration pages: With help from the Acteva Service Team, CSD has incorporated branded registration pages that include their own logo, fonts and color scheme, creating the impression that the registration page is part of their own site.

What has been the primary benefit of adding Acteva? "There have been many," says Garriz. "It's definitely going to help increase attendance and surpass our goals for this year. We wanted a solution that's simple, provides real-time handling of registrations, and offers many more options for attendees than we've had in the past. Acteva has helped us accomplish exactly what we set out to do."

Garriz concludes that Acteva has eliminated the burden of planning and organizing events, while allowing attendees to register and pay in a secure environment in minutes. "It's my job to get the word out and build excitement about the event," she says. "Acteva provides value by making it easy for people to make a quick decision. Overall, the process is much more efficient. Before Acteva, the process was slow and painful, now it's quick and easy."

Experience that counts

Acteva is the trusted leader in online event registration, ticketing and payment management services. Since 1998, over 14,000 customers have used Acteva to manage more than 260,000 events and process more than 4.6 million registrations. Acteva's customers include Bausch & Lomb, Pfizer, SAP, Girl Scouts of America, Whole Foods, Craigslist Foundation, BMW/MINI, NASA, VMware, Apple, DHL, PG&E and thousands of small to large-sized businesses and organizations.