Situation
In January, University of Alberta Procurement and Contract Management (PCM) purchased Groupize, an all-in-one enterprise event management software solution. The University of Alberta was first introduced to Groupize in March 2020 through its travel management platform.
An Event Management Task Force was established in summer 2021 to review the current and future state of event management at the U of A, determine the community needs, overcome barriers, and gather valuable input from the community. This included finding a centralized solution to support an in-person, remote and hybrid delivery model to enable consistency across the institution, reduce work effort in sourcing and deploying a platform, support institutional cost savings, and enhance user experience.
Groupize was reviewed, assessed, and determined to be an appropriate solution based on the following needs: system access and set-up, event development, marketing, collection of registration, event recording, reconciliation of registrations, reporting, and system support.
“We have clients thathost the same event each year and Groupize can easily copy the entire registration process over year after year. Definitely a time saver!”
It efficiently handles miscellaneous requirements including app, ticketing, attendance confirmation, hotel bookings, breakout rooms, event surveys, calendar functionality, and the collection of donations. The solution also includes app functionality which provides a considerable cost savings opportunity.
The setup process was seamless, and as part of the implementation, the university began onboarding early users of the community who had immediate event needs. Early onboarding was deployed for the Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences (ALES), Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry (FoMD), Registrar’s Office and Conference Services. Each faculty, department and unit on campus has use of the software at no additional cost.
Results
In most departments, there are many different types of events, including award ceremonies, conferences, research days, and weekly speaker series, just to name a few.
By centralizing the investment to one system, the university minimizes the fragmentation challenges of teams or departments purchasing separate tools. It also means centralizing support to one tool. This means big savings on tech spend with Groupize.
Groupize is able to simplify and streamline the set up and registration processes. The modern system is much easier than those used in the past. Beginner and veteran planners on campus have no problem setting up and managing events of all sizes and complexity with the options included.
Built-in Function With Minimal Setup
Many event budgets don’t allow for external event apps simply because of the cost versus return on investment (ROI). Groupize has this as a built-in function with minimal setup. Event apps have the potential to increase participant engagement and make it easier to connect with attendees which will improve overall user experience. With the built-in event app, the university will save thousands of dollars by not having to contract an external company to build an app for each event.
Self-Serve Saves a Huge Amount of Administrative Overhead
Attendance is important as it is used for professional credits. The built-in search function for Administrative level users includes a user data export function which will be a huge help to many in FoMD. Users are able to search for individuals and easily distribute reportsdetailing their event attendance.
