Speaker: Chelsie Stott, Deputy Head of Global Event Operations, Reuters Events
How long have you been using XpoBay? How many events per year do you run on XpoBay?
Chelsie Stott: Hello, I'm Chelsie from Reuters Events Deputy Head of the Events Team here. We've been using XpoBay now for I think around four years - something around that time. We run currently I would say 75 to 80 events a year on the platform, and also did use it for our Virtual Events throughout COVID as well.
Why did you choose XpoBay, and what do you love about it? How has XpoBay helped you improve the exhibitor experience?
Chelsie Stott: So we find here at Reuters Events that XpoBay has really allowed us to develop a one-stop-shop for our exhibitors and previously maybe some of our communication is a little bit bitty. Wasn't necessarily is clear. But now we're able to point people to one platform where they can get all of the information about all of the events that we run. It's also allowed us to streamline our communication with the exhibitors and cut down on the amount of admin in terms of collecting things that we need from them, which obviously is never a bad thing when working in events. Any time saving opportunities are brilliant. In terms of what we really enjoy about XpoBay is we're constantly giving feedback. So you know the platform, maybe we think something else needs to happen with it, or we'd like it to do something else for us. So we're constantly giving that feedback to Ben, who's really open and often can give us a work around with the features of the platform already or if not, can you know, push that to the development team, take our feedback on board and improve the platform. So we've seen various iterations of it since we started working with XpoBay. You know, we're seeing it constantly improve. So that for us is amazing because the more the platform improves, the better our sponsor processes.
Describe your overall experience with XpoBay. How has XpoBay helped you improve internal processes and save time?
Chelsie Stott: So a few of the main ways that XpoBay has allowed us to save time within our business is - it's allowed us to create templates for the event. So we work across various sectors, but the format of each event is largely the same. By being able to create templates, were then able to clone events and not have to start from the beginning each time we're looking to, you know, create a Sponsor Portal for our event sponsors. So that has been a godsend for us. The auto chasers (Automatic Form Reminder Emails) that are sent out from the system in terms of those forms that we are asking people to complete are a godsend also because it then cuts down on the level of manual chasing that we need to do. And they're just annoying enough for exhibitors to actually stand up and listen and actually start submitting that information. So that's really good. Also we can amend the frequency at just that to not really annoy exhibitors too much. And then again just touching on the form side of things. The forms have really allowed us to collect information that we need from our exhibitors is in a really succinct, quick and efficient way. We can download the reports and we can get that information onto our systems very quickly, which sometimes - well previously was a very manual, admin heavy task. Something that we're really looking forward to as well, which I think will be an amazing time saving, opportunity is the integration with Salesforce and the API of getting that information from Salesforce over to XpoBay - massive time saving opportunity for us. Really keen to get that moving forward and definitely think that's going to be a really good benefit of the system as well.
