Event Booking
| SummaryInitially we estimate that overall, managing events online with Member Manager would provide us with our greatest savings of over 350 person hours and around $1500 per year. Not only has Member Manager simplified the task significantly it has helped reduce problems and mix ups to almost zero. |
The Problem
Before we adopted Member Manager the logistics surrounding events had me out of action for weeks prior to the event series. We estimate that it took us around 3 to 4 hours every single day for 5 weeks surrounding each of our event series. Over a year this alone adds up to over 350 person hours – saved by using online bookings.
In the past, we took bookings mainly by fax and some over the phone. When bookings came in we processed the payment, confirmed the booking by email, fax or phone, wrote invoices and sent them by post to our members. Our saving on stationary and stamps is around $1500 per year, and this does not include the additional savings to our membership base.
We had one system for making payments online, but this system did not tie in with out member database, resulting in multiple databases which we could not cross check. Consequently sending reminders and marketing to non-attendees was quite difficult.
Inevitably we had misplaced faxes and mix-ups with bookings. On occasion we were not able to respond to incoming faxes for a couple of days, so members would call or try and book again which caused further confusion.
As we had multiple systems there was a significant amount of double typing. This lead to errors caused by a combination of poor handwriting, poor fax quality and human error. This is virtually eliminated now.
The Solution
We now put all bookings through Member Manager (even those not paying by credit card online) so 
bookings are paid for and confirmed immediately. As a result there is no confusion, no disappointed members, no mix-ups and no issues with rejected credit cards to follow up.
All of our data is now in one place and we can effectively communicate with Members with the right messages – which is increasing attendance and providing greater value to members and sponsors alike.
Now that we have effectively removed any processing problems (the transaction is processed online there and then) we no longer need to make follow up calls to confirm bookings or to correct errors.
Now our event bookings are all handled by Member Manager. This frees us up to concentrate on arranging the most valuable events for members, as well as reacting to sponsor requests and providing increased sponsor value.
