Beyond ROI
Leverage your Greatest Asset — Attendees’ Knowledge
by Joseph DiVanna | Published in September 2007 Focus on Event Marketing
Industry conferences and corporate meetings have four things in common: Meetings are considered expensive, they struggle for justification, they are not considered effective and many participants feel like they are being beaten into submission by PowerPoint.
The traditional value proposition for a meeting or event used to be simple: Give and get. Speakers gave ideas and concepts, while audiences were the recipients of the knowledge.
Today, however, the value proposition of meetings takes on a new dimension, as corporations are eager to justify the costs associated with such activities. The new formula for value is give, get, use — corporations want to know the extent to which the knowledge exchanged is actually being applied to benefit the organization.
A New Way to See Meetings
Consider the following: return on investment (ROI) and return on events (ROE) assume a single investment for a specific one-time activity; however, we know that organizations are in a continual state of change requiring more opportunities to communicate and exchange knowledge. Therefore, ROI is not an accurate indicator because it fails to consider each individual meeting as part of a continuous process of knowledge acquisition.
Corporate meeting planners should look to the overall value proposition for meetings and events as part of a strategic supplement to internal learning processes. In some cases, meetings and events represent the only learning opportunities for employees, making the need for a clear value proposition even more critical.
A better indicator of a meeting’s effectiveness is to develop a quantitative measure such as ROI in conjunction with qualitative measurement.
The value proposition for today’s meetings must place the attendee at the epicenter of the exchange, measuring content (the knowledge to be disseminated), context (the way in which it is transmitted combined with its specificity to the audience) and environment (the location/venue best suited for the exchange), as illustrated in Figure 1.
Meetings are an opportunity to leverage the knowledge and experience of people in a bi-directional dialogue. Simply put, meetings are a moment in time in which the collective intelligence of an organization is assembled. Yet most meetings are still one-way exchanges.
Attendees are looking for ways to apply to their corporate objectives what they experience at a meeting. Therefore, a meeting or event must fulfil a criterion in which it is memorable, credible, demonstrable and actionable. The attendee experience must be measured by the environment’s associated impact on retaining knowledge, the value/volume of content presented within a framework for exchange (or meeting type), and the context in which the content is presented for its direct and indirect applicability.
Measurements can be linked to traditional ROI calculations to enhance the overall value equation for meeting planners, as illustrated in Figure 2.
Objectively Speaking
Significant return on investment is difficult to measure before an actual event. Many variables conspire to retard actual ROI, such as how and when attendees can actually apply what they have learned or experienced to their job.
For example, providing salespeople with the latest techniques should have a measurable impact on sales once attendees learn how to apply what they have acquired at the event to their sales process. Corporations that look to justify meetings by measuring issues such as lost opportunity cost (taking a salesperson away from selling to attend the meeting) send a clear message to employees: We value you as a commodity but not as an asset worth an investment.
What is more important is that the content of the meeting resonate with the attendees so that they can quickly apply the knowledge and information for demonstrable results. Destination management companies must convey to meeting planners that planners are not simply buying an event, they are investing in a process in which the meeting’s effectiveness is actually measured during and at some time after the event.
In today’s business climate, all meetings and events must contain some educational element. Even leisure-based events should communicate to attendees a sense of accomplishment or learning.
To measure the true ROI of any event or meeting, a comprehensive set of tools must be used to assess the total impact on the attendees’ ability to apply newly found knowledge. The salient point is that ROI must be more than just a quantifiable number; it must reflect the specific goals and objective of a meeting or event in the context of what the corporation is trying to achieve.
About the author: Joseph DiVanna
Joseph DiVanna is the managing director of Maris Strategies, a Cambridge, United Kingdom-based think tank for business innovation, and the author of numerous books on business, finance and human capital management.
Contact: joe.divanna@marisstrategies.com