Bean Counting Mastered
Author: Carla Breer Howard
July 2007
Techno Files
I’m the daughter and granddaughter of engineers and yet I can’t do math. So even with my gene pool going for me, I need lots of help to keep ongoing track of the flutter-flow of money. And so do you, because an event is a living thing; it has a lifespan during which it’s growing, breathing, contracting and changing. Money is truly the event’s blood, and you, as the planner, must continuously track the ebb and flow of that circulation. In other words, you must function as a very proficient and hyper-diligent bean-counter or the whole thing might just curl up and die on you.
The words “Event Budget module” stayed with me after reading the announcement at the beginning of the year of Cvent’s release of a new Application Programming Interface (API)... OK, maybe I’ve just lost you completely, but all that those letters mean is that your own in-house systems can be synced up with Cvent’s Web-based software for Event Management. The budget feature is part of the mix.
And so, why would you want to do something like that? Well, because this nifty budget management and reporting tool helps you save your precious time while enabling you to sort and look at your beans (I’m channeling Jelly Bellys here) by color, shape, size, flavor (try the sour Lemon Lime, mmmm), etc.; you get to decide and then customize how you want to look at them.
In less tasty terms, you can track your bean-spend by category and subcategory (for example, Food & Beverage/Liquor) across multiple events—a great way to spot places to trim your costs. Or you can count the number of beans you’ve sprinkled faithfully on a single vendor over those 400 sales-training meetings at the same hotel chain—and demand a little more love (and some discounts) for your demonstrated loyalty. Also, when you prepay for things, it’s essential to know how many beans are in the jar and how many you can take from it.
And there’s more.
THE CREATORS
But first, it’s time for a parade of Cvent’s credentials: they are a leader in Web-based event management, event registration, Web surveys, e-mail marketing and group housing/travel solutions, according to their own pronouncement. Their Contact Intelligence Product Suite lets you do surveys, events and data management all in one so you don’t have to go back and forth between multiple systems, especially if you’ve got a high-volume operation.
You might already be familiar with Cvent if you’re working at one of the more than 5,000 corporations and associations that have purchased their products. “Last year we did over 100,000 events, surveys and e-mail marketing campaigns in our system,” reports Eric Eden, Cvent’s vice president of marketing; their systems have been road-tested in the heat of the battle, to say the least.
YOUR ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT
So what’s the problem with your organization’s own well-entrenched bean-counting method? “The main issue is that finance departments track expenses in a way that’s good for accounting but that doesn’t mean anything for a planner,” says Eden. They are fully satisfied looking at lump sums of multicolored beans all thrown together in the glass jar. In other words, they don’t break it out by event. They don’t organize it into categories; it’s “Travel” instead of car rentals and taxis.
SPILLING THE BEANS
As Kate Slonaker, senior marketing associate at Cvent says, “We have about 400 seminars a year. At first, we built it for ourselves, but then we did some more research with our clients and general research in the industry to adapt it wider.”
Slonaker shares some experience. “What we would do is typically go back to the Marriott in Hartford, Conn., or use the same A/V company. I had all of that track, so when I went and negotiated, I could say, ‘Look, I’ve already spent $10,000 with you guys over the past year.’ There’s always room to negotiate, especially when you’ve had a history with a vendor, or you’ve been in the same city doing an event, you know what the prices are. You can say, ‘You're killing me on this room rental! Last time I was in this city at this time, I paid $1,000, but you’re charging me $3,000!’ It’s especially when you’re small, and don’t have a huge budget, that having that information is really valuable.”
Eden highlights another benefit, “I know what it will cost per person. I know 30 to 60 days out, pretty closely how much it’s going to cost, including tax and gratuities. When you get that invoice at the end of the event, you shouldn’t be surprised; you have that contract up front.”
That’s the ideal, but the problem is, as Slonaker observes, when you’re doing so many meetings, the day-by-day count on bean dispersal tends to get away from you. “You’re just trying to figure out what’s going on at that meeting,” she notes, after much experience. But with the Event Budget module, “it’s at your fingertips whether you’re staying on or below budget.” And, as she observes, you can redeploy those beans elsewhere to improve that event.
“When we realized we were spending so much on A/V,” says Slonaker, “we made the decision to buy laptops and projection for all of our sales associates and wound up saving thousands and thousands of dollars over the years.”
With multiple ways of tracking, you can see what you can cut out altogether and what you can’t. “When you see how much is devoted to alcohol—maybe 50 percent of your F&B spend is devoted to alcohol—you might want to consider a dry meeting next time,” she comments.
According to Eden, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. “If you can give your vendors that spread sheet and you break it down for them in that category, you can shave 10 to 15 percent off for doing business with you,” he says. Maybe your bonus is tied to results like these?
I’m happy to report that you don’t need to have completed your dissertation on MM-wave RFICs at CALTECH to use the Event Budget module. “You just input the data in there,” says Eden, “and it can generate reports. You can get to just exactly the information you need.” That might include the estimated vs. budgeted, or budgeted vs. actual. Or maybe you’re thinking, “I just want to see the January events.” You can get that report. “You can do this in Excel, but here, you don’t have to write all these complex formulas,” he promises.
“I’m glad the planners are using something; it’s better than nothing,” says Eden of Excel. “But we’re the future. Excel has been out there for 15 years.”
Meanwhile, I’m counting how many tangerine Jelly Bellys I still have left in my jar.
