Leverage Technology or Risk Being Outcompeted

With so much technology at our fingertips every minute of the day, deciphering which will help us work smarter and faster and which will bury us in extra effort can be a challenge. When it comes to planning and managing life sciences meetings, Kristen Hunter, an experienced conference developer, event strategist and team leader, sees technology as a key component in improving attendee experience, ROI for the client, and the planner’s workflow.

“Technology is changing fast and professionals who aren’t embracing innovation will become irrelevant,” she says. “Productivity increases exponentially with the right application of technology. To remain competitive, event professionals and event companies must be leveraging AI and other innovative technologies to optimize effectiveness.”   

Budgets are tight, Hunter acknowledges, but it’s not a matter of spending as much money as possible on as much technology as possible. It’s about prioritizing needs and goals and carefully choosing the technology that will help you achieve them.

“Sometimes there are so many bells and whistles to a technology it can be overwhelming. I start with the outcome in mind. What are you looking to accomplish? If the goal is to maximize engagement at a conference, you don’t need to use a platform that has sponsorship features. You want tools such as polling, an opportunity for them to ask questions and so on,” she explains. “Focus on how you would leverage technology to engage attendees in this way without overwhelming and discouraging use. If they aren’t using the technology, you will not achieve any objective, so always keep that user experience in mind.”

Conversely, she notes if you choose a technology with robust engagement and insights features but only use the ‘basics’ at the meeting, you’re missing a lot of opportunities and possibly paying more than you need. “Some conferences run the same way year after year and wonder why they’re not growing,” says Hunter. “People get bored if it’s the same experience every time, but also search for comfort in the familiar.  It’s a delicate balance between providing the event experience you know they love, with a sprinkle of a few technology-driven improvements that increase their overall value.”

Maximizing the meeting’s appeal and benefit

It’s not just a matter of attendees wanting a fun or interesting experience, however. Healthcare providers need justification for leaving a busy practice to participate, and you can use technology to assure them it’s a good use of their time.

“What does everyone need right now but more time?” asks Hunter. “Everyone’s plates are overflowing. We need to show it’s worth leaving the office for a few days or hours, and the only way we’re going to get people to feel like they can do so is to effectively demonstrate that they will get the event experience they need/want in the right amount of time.”

Content is key, of course, but she believes where there’s room for innovation is in how that content is delivered, how people can engage with it and what the cascade effects are. Hunter points to key questions planners should ask themselves: “How are we making the experience at this conference valuable? How are HCPs leveraging their experience here to make change in the industry? What are they going to do with what they learned at this conference, and how are they going to share it with everyone?” Ultimately, she says, you want attendees to be able to say, “I went to that conference, I learned this, and I am taking action to make change.”

Potential lost opportunities

Admittedly, with budgets tight, meeting organizers may identify technology they know will improve the attendee experience and achieve the stakeholder’s goals, but they receive pushback from a budget standpoint. At that point, they need to be able to defend their decisions and articulate what they will gain from using the right technology and, Hunter urges, point out what they will lose by not having it.

“It’s a matter of explaining, ‘Yes, this will accomplish the goal you told me was the purpose for the meeting and here’s how,’ but I also play the devil’s advocate and look at it as what will happen if we don’t implement this technology,” she says. “Here are the inefficiencies, how we will miss our client’s goals and how our competitors are going to outperform us as a result.”

Among the potential benefits that will be lost without the right technology, she points to a lack of engagement, extra time and effort on the part of the planner, and inability to quickly deliver an in-depth report to the client after the meeting.

Engagement features are the resources used to collect data that will answer questions and provide valuable feedback to the client. Without engagement technology (or without technology attendees will be willing to use), insights won’t be collected and goals won’t be met.

Technology also should help streamline meeting operations. Hunter encourages leveraging engagement onsite with tech so you’re not doing it manually. For example, having a way to submit questions versus walking around the room with a microphone can ease a meeting planner’s experience on site. “Meeting planners cannot do everything all the time--but they’re expected to—so they have to be able to leverage technology to get it all done,” Hunter says.

Similarly, if you have to operate the technology, or be very hands-on with your technology partner as they deploy it, that could mean more time and effort on your part during the meeting.  Hunter points to her experience working with Array for life science meetings. “I’ve worked with Array on multiple occasions, and they consistently go totally above and beyond. Their in-person and/or virtual staff will do whatever they can to make the meeting the best it can be. This helps me from a resource perspective because I have confidence in their work and don’t have to spend my time worrying something won’t get done without specific direction,” she explains. “It’s a snowball effect; focusing my efforts elsewhere allows me to concentrate on fires to put out and even proactively prevent a fire from happening.” 

Additionally, when a technology partner is not able to provide data on-site at the end of the meeting and planners have to wait a week to deliver it to the client, there’s an opportunity cost. “Next time, they are going to the competition who will have data available right away,” Hunter warns.

Similarly, if you don’t get a robust and insightful report that tells the story of your meeting – what worked and what didn’t, who learned and who didn’t, for example – how will that impact you? You will likely be taking time out of your day to compile and analyze the data to figure out what story it tells. Hopefully, you’ve been able to collect enough of the right kind of data during the meeting to do so.

“Trying to cut corners and cost often detracts from quality. As planners, we often just do something ourselves to get the quality we want; that is the default.  But our plates are so full, it’s impossible for us all to do it ourselves, we have to leverage good technology and good technology partners to be able to get it all done. There’s only so much time in the day. The right technology partner can take things off that plate.”

Hunter also urges companies to look for opportunities to leverage technology beyond the meeting, to improve the workflow for planners. She advocates all meeting organizations use technology that enables collaboration and transparency among their teams, and that meeting professionals leverage AI for tasks such as emails and working out contracts with vendors. “If you’re not using technology to make your jobs easier, you will be outpaced by the competition,” stresses Hunter. “Your competition is going to be out there leveraging technologies in a way that lets them have twice as many clients as you do.”

The power of expertise and technology

Ultimately, life science meeting professionals have to bring a high level of energy and organization, expertise and experience to the table to make a meeting successful. By employing the right technology, they can make the most of their skills and expertise, as well as their time. As a result, the meeting can meet and exceed stakeholders’ needs and expectations.

Want to take your life science meetings to the next level? Reach out to us to get started.