Challenge: The Registration Team was looking for a new registration and scheduling tool for a Reebok fitness event. In year’s past, they had used Cvent but found the attendee interface was too formal and notifications were cumbersome; they were hoping to utilize a new vendor for 2019. The event is held over the course of a week and fitness classes of all type are open to Reebok employees. All classes are free and attendees are encouraged to join as many as they would like. In order to employ a new vendor, the application would need to:
- Allow attendees to sign up for classes at time of registration
- Provide attendees a way to freely browse a schedule of classes
- Allow attendees to add and/or drop classes leading up to and during the week of the event
- Make it easy to quickly notify all attendees or groups of attendees in the case of schedule changes, weather delays or cancellations
- House a consent form that all attendees are required to sign upon registration
- Set class capacities and offer a waitlist option if the class is full
- Provide an intuitive backend portal for easy event management
- Send out a post program survey to all who participated
- Provide post program reporting to gauge the success of the event
Research: To begin, the IO Team started with a list of 16 vendors and did primarily online research to find if any were immediately ruled out. The main reasons vendors were ruled out were because they either were too expensive, didn’t allow for attendee customizable schedules or (and this was the number one reason) they were primarily a ticketing app or tool. A ticketing tool would require, in Reebok’s case, to set up every class as a stand alone event and the user would have to click through multiple online registration pages to sign-up for each class (think when you purchase tickets for a concert and you have to navigate through multiple screens upon check-out). The attendee would then be issued a ticket for that class which would need to be scanned at the time of check-in. If they wanted to drop the class, they would have to work with the Registration Team to retract the ticket and allow someone else that space. This process was not conducive for our purposes – it would have been too time consuming and labor intensive for our planners and coordinators. Eventually though, once our list of 16 vendors was significantly whittled down, we spoke with each remaining vendor to determine which products to demo to hopefully find a solution.
Solution: Allcal, an event schedule management tool, fit the bill. They offer a calendar based, event-branded app that provides the attendee with a schedule that is easily customizable and accommodates unlimited sessions. Allcal also provides an easy, straightforward process for both notifying all attendees or just those within a specific group. Their app has the ability to capture a waiver at registration, set class capacities, generate an automated waitlist, it employs a user friendly dashboard for admins managing the class schedules, and both real-time and post event data to gauge event success. Additionally, Allcal was more affordable than many of the other vendors we researched. Their interface is less formal than Cvent and has a more modern look and feel that the team was hoping for. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, Allcal was excited at the chance to partner with Unbridled and ready and willing to work with us on functionality to fulfill the needs of our event.
If your team has a need for a new event technology tool and doesn’t know where to start, contact us!