Event Automation: How Technology Can Streamline Meetings and Events

Meetings and events involve numerous repetitive processes, from transferring data between different systems and producing reports to reconciling information and managing approvals. When these tasks are completed in a manual way, they can consume very significant amounts of time that event teams could spend on much higher-value work.

Event automation provides an opportunity to streamline many of these processes. Technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can complete defined, repetitive tasks across systems with speed and consistency, which reduces manual effort while helping improve data accuracy.

BCD Meetings & Events has developed and deployed automation solutions across its operations, providing practical insight into where automation can deliver value and, equally importantly, where it may not be the right solution.

Here, we look at how automation can support meetings and events, which processes are best suited to it and what organizations should consider before implementation.

Where Can Automation Be Used in Meetings and Events?

Automation can provide the most value where event teams have to repeatedly complete predictable, rules-based tasks that involve structured information. Depending on an organization’s own processes and technology ecosystem, potential applications can include:

• Data processing and transfer: extracting, transforming or moving information between event systems and reporting tools.
• Reporting: consolidating information from different sources and populating recurring reports or templates.
• Reconciliation: comparing data sets to identify discrepancies and support financial or operational reconciliation.
• Approvals and notifications: triggering defined approval workflows, alerts or communications when specific conditions are met.
• Administrative workflows: automating repetitive back-office processes that would otherwise require manual input from planners or operational teams.

The objective here is not to automate every single task. The strongest opportunities are usually processes that consume significant manual time but follow clear and repeatable rules.

How to Identify Processes Suitable for Automation

Before automating any process, organizations should always make sure they first consider whether the underlying workflow is efficient. Automating a poorly designed process will just allow an inefficient process to operate faster, rather than actually solving the original problem.

Strong candidates for automation tend to share several of the same characteristics. They are usually:

• Repetitive and completed frequently.
• Based on clearly defined rules and decision points.
• Supported by consistent, structured inputs and outputs.
• Stable rather than subject to constant process changes.
• High enough in volume to justify the investment required to automate them.

Organizations should also consider the number of systems, steps and decisions involved. As complexity increases, implementation and maintenance can become more challenging.

Processes involving significant subjectivity, frequent changes or low volumes may therefore be less suitable for automation. The potential time and efficiency savings should always be weighed against the effort required to develop and maintain the solution.

How Event Automation Can Improve Efficiency and Data Accuracy

One of the clearest benefits of automation is reducing the amount of repetitive administrative work that has to be completed by event professionals and back-office teams. Processes that would previously require employees to manually extract, enter, compare or transfer information can potentially be completed much more efficiently.

Automation can also improve consistency when working with event data. For example, automated processes can compare data sets and can flag discrepancies, which reduces the risk of errors that are associated with repeated manual data entry or reconciliation.

Faster processing can also support decision-making, as automated alerts, approval workflows and reporting processes can help to make sure that relevant information reaches event teams and stakeholders without unnecessary delays.

Ultimately, the objective is not to remove people from the event planning process. It is to reduce low-value administrative work so event professionals can spend more time on strategic planning, client relationships and the attendee experience.

How BCD M&E Uses Event Automation

BCD M&E has deployed business-facing automations across multiple regions and areas of the organization, helping with the reduction of thousands of hours of manual work.

This experience has reinforced the importance of identifying the right processes before beginning an automation project. Successful automation requires a clear business case and an understanding of how the process may need to be maintained as systems and business requirements evolve.

Plan for Implementation and Maintenance

Automation should always be treated as an ongoing technology investment rather than a one-off project. Changes to business processes or event platforms can affect how well an automation performs and may require updates.

Development and maintenance requirements should therefore form a big part of the business case from the beginning. Organizations should consider the expected efficiency gains alongside implementation time, technology costs, ongoing maintenance and the potential impact of future system changes.

Building scalable processes and establishing clear ownership can help organizations maintain automations effectively as their meetings and events technology ecosystem evolves.

How AI Is Expanding Event Automation

RPA and artificial intelligence can perform different but complementary roles within automation. Traditional RPA is particularly effective when it comes to completing predictable tasks according to sets of predefined rules, while AI can support processes that require capabilities such as interpreting information, generating content or identifying patterns.

Combining different automation technologies can create opportunities to streamline more complex workflows than traditional rules-based automation could manage alone.

However, organizations should select technology according to the problem they are trying to solve rather than introducing AI or automation simply because the capability exists. Clear use cases, appropriate governance and human oversight remain important as these technologies continue to develop.

Build Automation Around the Right Event Processes

Event automation can create significant efficiencies across meetings and events, but successful implementation will always start with choosing the right processes.

Repetitive, rules-based and data-intensive tasks will often provide the strongest opportunities, particularly where manual work is consuming quite a significant amount of time or creating unnecessary opportunities for error.

By identifying suitable use cases, considering the wider business case and planning for ongoing maintenance, organizations can use automation to improve efficiency and data accuracy while allowing event professionals to focus on the work where human expertise provides the greatest value.

Automation is one part of a wider meeting and event technology ecosystem that can help organizations create more efficient, connected and data-driven meetings programs.