For Venues
Digital solutions like online and hybrid and onsite requirements such as apps, wifi, high speed internet, cloud access are becoming more and more common. This automatically means your guests like organizers and exhibitors will have increasing demands on your IT infrastructure and solutions.
To ensure you can provide quality and performance to your guests, a reliable and future proof IT environment is of vital importance. Your team needs to be ready for the changing demands of your guests, especially after Covid. Your sales department needs to understand your clients IT challenges to be able to provide the right solution. IT is now a vital part of any event, trade show or conference. You need to be ready.
REDTREE will support you in translating your strategy and customer requirements into a solid, reliable and flexible solution that empowers your corporate strategy and ensures your revenue and customer satisfaction.
Each solution or option has its own possibilities and cost aspect. For you it is important that the investment you made or going to make pays itself back or even preferably can provide extensive revenue and become part of your business model.
If your sales team fully equipped with commercial IT sales expertise you can ask REDTREE to represent you in your clients meeting. They will find a professional partner who understands their needs and will appreciate your effort and your venue even more.
General Consultancy
When you manage a venue it is important to …
Site Visit
A site visit will give you a general impression with …
RFP
When it is clear what your IT network and service …
Commercial / Technical Expertise
Innovation of IT is unstoppable and so are the possible solution for …
General Consultancy
When you are reading this it means you are looking for advice or ways to improve what you already have.
When you manage a venue it is important to have an IT environment that meets the requirements of organizers, exhibitors and visitors but when you contact suppliers for a solution you may end up getting what you have asked for but that may not always be what you need.
To contact suppliers who can provide what is required you need an independent company that understands what you exactly need for your business and that will provide sellable, workable solutions as requested by your guests. As the meeting industry is a specific industry, suppliers of IT solutions are often not aware of the needs of organizers and exhibitors and that may lead to a solution that is not exactly what you need.
To define what is needed there are two vital steps:
1: A functional description that indicates what is required and what the functional outcome should be in line with your clients’ needs and your business model. In this part technology is not leading but the defined and required functionalities are.
2: A technical description that indicates to what standard the provided technical solution must comply and how it should integrate within your venue.
More functionalities are not always better. Although they may not be that much more expensive, the can lead to additional maintenance cost or extra required expertise of your support team. Also a solution with extensive ‘third party’ support or maintenance can be much more expensive than expected.
REDTREE will help you with the entire process. We will define the standard and make sure the provided solution will bring you exactly what is required. We can setup an request-for-proposal process and check the proposal you receive from the various suppliers.
Site visit
A site visit will give you a general impression with all components of your IT service as a whole service. IT does not only consist of your network components, cabling and internet uplink. Also your support and how you service your clients is a vital part.
If you contact REDTREE for an audit it will be done in a process that looks at the three vital sections:
Product audit:
Does the network provide all the services your clients need. Have your clients’ needs changed and if so, in what have they changed and more important; what opportunities are you missing because of that.
Process audit:
How is your process from a clients request to your sales and operational team? How is the cooperation between your sales and operational team? In many cases a client may need a specific configuration and need you to be flexible. What opportunities are you not seeing and not using?
Also your support is a vital part in customer satisfaction. Is your support in-house or is it outsourced and is it (still) the best setup for your venue?
In this section we zoom in on these processes and can advise you where you can reduce losing money and where you can save money.
System audit:
Which components are you using? Are you using them to the max and does the system as a whole provide you, or better, your customers all they need?
A full audit-program consists of the mentioned section above. You can also order them separately.
Quick scan
If you need information fast we can provide a quick-scan. With this we can provide you within approximately two days with conclusions and recommendations.
Request for proposal (RFP)
When it is clear what your IT network and service should offer to your guests it is time to translate these to a solution.
In this stage you simple just describe your functional requirements. This consists of two parts:
What kind of services does your IT network should be able to provide for organizer and for exhibitors: High-speed dedicated internet, fiber connectivity, Gbit local LAN, Mass wifi, user statistics, (no) firewall, QoS, Trunking, but also more understandable functions like network capacity for registration, presentation management, overflow, streaming/hybrid services, internet, regular wifi etc.
Step two is determining how you would like the network and it services supported. Do you have your own IT department to support these services or is that outsourced and what has your preference. Although an in-house IT team is often more committed, it also reduces flexibility in adding and removing resources when not needed.
To send out your question to suppliers it helps to setup and ‘Request for proposal’ in which you define your functional needs and provide an insight in your venues current situation so a supplier can see what is needed and technically see what he has to work with.
If you are not an IT expert it is important you define your functional requirements well so you can determine the response better.
Professionalization and temporary expansion of your commercial IT team
Innovation of IT is unstoppable and so do the possible solution for organizers and event technology suppliers. Your clients will expect, when he is inspecting your venue, to talk to someone who knows what his IT manager and IT and AV suppliers are talking about. Of course, your sales team does not need to be IT experts, but they need to be able to answer questions and show your possible client he is choosing the right venue. For your client to talk with someone who can explain IT into simple terms will be a refreshing an pleasant surprise.
REDTREE can train your sales team on all new IT solutions that are out there and how to communicate and sell your IT network to your client. It is vital to ask your client the right questions to ensure what you will provide will be a match.
If you don’t have commercial IT expertise available REDTREE can help you and participate in meetings with the client and be your representative to help translating the clients’ requirements to your configuration and ensure your IT revenue.
Would you like more information?
Feel free to contact us. We will be happy to help you.