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Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Live events still abound, but virtual meetings on the rise
By Bridget Botelho, Special to Mass High Tech
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Reason would tell you that during an economic recession, companies scale back their conference travel budgets. While that is the case for some companies, others have gotten creative to reduce meeting costs and some companies have actually increased their investment as a business strategy.
Here, four regional technology company executives share their strategies for meetings and conventions in 2010.
BMC Software
Houston-based BMC Software, which has locations in Lexington — where it acquired BladeLogic Inc. last year — and Waltham, is also gravitating toward virtual conferences, which make it easier to collaborate without the financial and time requirements of travel.
BMC is in the process of determining its meetings budget for 2010 and how much of a presence virtual trade shows will have in that budget.
“Depending on the experience we have with our upcoming virtual trade shows, we’ll decide what makes the most sense for BMC and our community of partners and customers moving forward,” said Vick Vaishnavi, vice president of worldwide marketing for BMC. BMC has shifted its focus from massive conferences to localized events, in part because customer focus and initiatives differ depending on regional and market conditions, Vaishnavi said.
One major example of this shift is BMC’s decision not to hold its annual worldwide BMC UserWorld conference this year.
“Our decision to forgo our traditionally large-scale UserWorld events in favor of virtual events and smaller customer gatherings was less about budget and more about the amount of individual engagement we were getting with customers,” Vaishnavi said. “With virtual events, we can provide customers more intimate, targeted interactions that address their specific interests.”
Moving forward, BMC will participate in virtual trade shows.
Copanion Inc.
The recession hasn’t had a major impact on Copanion Inc., the growing tax-document-automation company — the Andover-based software firm will increase its presence at industry conferences, seminars, and other on-site professional networking events in 2010, said co-founder and CEO Steven Ladd.
“Our goal is to maintain our leadership position in the market and continue to add large customers. Increasing our marketing budget for 2010 will enable us to attend more events and get in front of our target client base,” Ladd said.
Copanion’s growth throughout the recession is thanks to marketing: it targets early-adopter accounting firms with dedicated lead-generation campaigns, Ladd said. “Many of these users have experienced substantial productivity improvements in their operations and have generated positive buzz, which we have turned into white papers and case studies that we use to augment our lead generation efforts,” Ladd said.
That doesn’t mean Copanion is throwing money away on unnecessary meetings; there is a directive in place to invest more in webinars, e-marketing, and phone sales as a substitute to some on-site functions to lower costs.
Egenera Inc.
Marlborough-based Egenera Inc. recently transitioned from being a hardware and software company to a software-centric company, and with that transition comes a change in its meetings and convention agenda, said Christine Crandell, Egenera’s chief marketing officer.
The company will attend major partner and training events in the year ahead to educate its channel partners, including Dell, about its data center infrastructure orchestration software, but they are doing fewer mega-conferences, Crandell said.
As for internal meetings and events, Egenera has gone virtual.
“We have historically been known to do offsite meetings and corporate sales events, but now we are doing virtual conferencing and using mechanisms such as WebEx, not only for cost reasons, but also to avoid pulling people out of the field,” Crandell said. “(Virtual meetings) is the way a lot of companies are orienting now.”
Egenera’s 2010 budget for offsite events is about the same as 2009, Crandell said.
Envision Technology Advisors
Throughout the economic downturn, Providence, R.I.-based IT consultancy Envision Technology Advisors developed a more aggressive strategy when it comes to attending conferences and holding its own events to win customers, said CEO Todd Knapp.
“In a declining economy, our competitors get more conservative and shrink down the number of events they attend, so it is a great time for a company like mine to increase our presence,” Knapp said. “A few years ago, everyone was holding their own events, so it was tougher to get people to show up. But now, if we are the only guys holding shows, there is a higher chance of getting potential customers to attend.”
There won’t be any slowing down in 2010: Envision’s marketing budget for hosting events is twice what it was for this year, and the budget for sending employees to events is 50 percent higher, Knapp said.
“We tend to look outward. … We want to be aggressive, find more customers,” Knapp said. “And the shows are about more than finding customers. It is about keeping our employees engaged in the business, and educating ourselves about what’s out there.”
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