DIY Meeting Tech Options May Seem Easy, But Proving ROI Won’t Be

In 2019, meeting technology had evolved so that the idea of engagement wasn’t simply a show of hands or use of clickers, but rather a purposeful effort to gather data that could be used to inform business decisions. Technology that moved surveys off paper, enabled live polling and allowed attendees to ask questions at-will and without a microphone in their face was becoming the norm. In the background, each of these interactions was collecting important information. We were on the precipice of the most informative and strategic meetings of all time – and then the pandemic hit. Life science meeting planners pivoted to DIY platforms as uncertainty around the industry’s economic outlook forced budget holders to look in-house for resources. This came at a time when bringing people together virtually was more important than ever. Now, these software as a service offerings appear to be everywhere and an affordable alternative amidst declining budgets. But what is the real cost? These scaled-back solutions offer Q&A, polling and engagement, but what’s missing is the benefit of collaboration between a meeting planner and an expert technology partner that makes it possible to maximize engagement and cultivate deeper insights. Stakeholders want more from their dollars and proof of return on investment. If you’re still relying on pandemic-era solutions for engagement and data, you may not be as competitive as you need to be in the bid for those dollars. 

Life science expertise matters to your life science clients

One of the most important considerations in working with technology partners is whether they are generalists or have life sciences experience and expertise. Many platforms are designed to work for all meeting types, with a broad focus on company meetings or use in classrooms. Do not underestimate how important a technology provider’s life science industry expertise is to your success as a meeting planner who needs to satisfy the expectations of a life sciences stakeholder. 

Your client operates with a myriad of compliance and regulatory concerns. Their content and attendees’ privacy must be protected while gathering as much information as possible to inform drug development. Array’s platform is configured with these needs in mind. Attendee questions can be screened by the client in real-time to make sure off-label or other compliance risks aren’t discussed openly. When a stakeholder doesn’t want their slides and materials available outside the meeting room, Array enables attendees to save the notes they made on a slide without seeing the original slide content. SaaS solutions that allow for open discussion and automatically generate word clouds from unmoderated responses can put you and your client in the position of losing control of the meeting’s messages and compliance.

Healthcare professionals are also a particular kind of meeting attendee in that they are highly educated, have a lot of key insights to share and are likely pressed for time due to clinic/patient commitments. Many are also not keen on using technology more complicated than their personal devices and don’t want to learn something new on the fly at a meeting. The SaaS model typically encourages the use of more modules, not less. Who has your attendees’ best interests (and yours) in mind?

Array has focused exclusively on life sciences meetings for 20 years. As other technologies were scaling back, we have been continually developing and refining our product and services to meet the specific, demanding needs of investigator meetings, advisory boards, speaker trainings, satellite symposia, grand rounds, product theater and industry-led educational meetings. This includes solutions for in-person, live virtual and hybrid environments. We work with our partners to help them flawlessly deliver content in a way that keeps HCPs engaged, with techniques for reinforcing and testing their learning and inclinations before they even leave the room. Our engagement features were designed with HCPs in mind, providing multiple options for them to share thoughts and ask questions in ways that suit their learning preferences. As a result, we are able to capture data from these interactions that our clients use not only to prove ROI, but to answer questions their clients have about emerging topics of interest, challenges they may face in product or treatment adoption, and strategic follow up that may be needed with specific HCPs. Each of our solutions is tailored to how our meeting planning partner wants the meeting to flow and what they need in terms of engagement and analytics. We deploy it all on a managed iPad, so the technology is familiar and easy to use, and the experience is a professional, branded presentation. Delivering content on the managed iPad also eliminates potential distractions from attendees’ own devices.

Defining engagement for max benefit

While everyone seeks to have high levels of engagement in their meetings, the definition of engagement can vary extensively. For DIY and SaaS solutions, engagement is usually limited to the ability to respond to polls and type questions into an app in a simple and familiar way. At the end of the meeting, success might be measured by how many people clicked a box or submitted a question, but that leaves so much opportunity unrealized. Engagement should go well beyond the simple definition of people “doing things” throughout your meeting to prove they haven’t tuned out. Done correctly, engagement is the easiest and most effective way to keep your audience in the moment while also gathering actionable intelligence for both meeting planner and stakeholder.

Before Q&A or polling features are programmed into the Array platform, we work with our clients to discuss their goals for engagement. Do they need pre- and post-tests to demonstrate learning took place—and identify specific people who will need more training? Are there particular questions or concerns that need to be answered for the stakeholder, such as whether sites in certain regions are having more difficulty enrolling trial participants than others? Do they need to gauge the sentiment of attendees in relation to a particular therapy? Are they looking for potential roadblocks to adoption? There are hundreds of ways meeting technology can be configured, so it’s imperative to have strategies for acquiring all this information and clearly and concisely reporting it to the stakeholder. DIY platforms tend to be plug-and-play to make them as easy as possible for meeting planners to use. Unfortunately, that means opportunities to fine tune programming are lost in the quest to save time or stay on budget. We fine-tune configuration of our platform with each client. Additionally, our Analytics and Insights Management team is available to guide clients to strategies that deliver more actionable insights and reveal gaps in knowledge.

The Golden Rule of service

When it comes to service, your technology partner should be providing you with the same high-touch attention to detail that you’re giving your client. So much of your meeting hinges on technology, and disruptions may impact your ability to meet goals. Here, too, you may be taking a risk by relying on a subscription-based provider whose business model and profitability rely on low-touch service over having trained, dedicated service and support at all times. You may only have access to virtual service teams (via chat or email) who are available within preset hours or weekdays.

As mentioned earlier, Array starts working with clients at the planning meeting and we continue to provide support as the platform is configured to client’s needs. Onsite (or online in real-time), we’ll be there to adjust for any last-minute changes to the space, program, or content. Because we are not a DIY platform, our team will operate our technology, leaving you to manage myriad other tasks. They’ll also be looking for opportunities to capture more data or increase engagement in the moment. Wonder how something that was just said resonated with attendees? Our technicians can quickly set up and push out a snap poll to get thumbs-up/thumbs-down responses or get bronze, silver or gold ratings on it. If time is running out, or something arises in the meeting that you want to know more about, we can create an asynchronous survey to push out to maximize your data collection potential. Teamwork between Array and meeting planners affords a lot of opportunities because our technicians are trained extensively in all the ways to configure and deploy our platform and are as invested in the meeting’s success as the client. In fact, Array’s onsite team often are cited as going “above and beyond.”

Prove ROI to demonstrate budget needs

Array looks to continually improve our platform and train our staff with a laser focus on life sciences. We took a virtual model that was good pre-pandemic and improved it so virtual attendees share the experience of those in-person in a hybrid meeting. Our staff developed expertise around innovative ways to gather data with the necessary context to answer complex questions and learn new, unexpected insights from healthcare providers. We worked alongside meeting planners in thousands of life sciences meetings and listened to their needs. The result is a complex interplay of white-glove service, features that make it easy and inviting for attendees to interact with the platform, and a system to use that interaction to derive multiple metrics that will convey what the ROI was at the end. Our clients have told us that the ability to deliver this for their stakeholders has been essential to remaining competitive and getting the budgets they need to succeed.