Planning a Corporate Conference from Start to End

As a business owner, you always have a million responsibilities on your plate – including managing your business’s event calendar for the year. By now, you’ll already have planned out what is taking place when (if you haven’t, you can use this link to help you get started). Organising and planning this ahead of time is the key to its success, and making a mistake can cost you time and money you can’t afford to lose. To make the process easier for you, we’ve put together a few tips to help you execute things smoothly before, during and after every conference. Take these into consideration, and you’ll be less likely to run into problems along the way.

Before the Conference

• Start with conceptualising the event and creating a single idea for what it will be on. It will help you to brand and promote the conference without going astray.

• Select a team you can rely on to assume the responsibilities for your event. It will include your planning, administration, marketing and volunteer team. They’ll be responsible for managing the venue, booking catering, setting up budgets, communicating with attendees, creating promotional material and more.

• Arrange a timeline from the planning stage to the actual day of the conference. A schedule of your planning and execution will help guide the process as well allow you to see what your progress is like currently.

• Set a budget and break it down into three sections: expected, planned and actual costs. Having a budget helps you allocate funds so you can see what you can and can’t afford to spend on.

• Look into different locations and venues for the conference. Knowing the theme and the setting you’re going for will help you choose the ideal one. Options include conference halls, university campuses, hotels or even open-plan spaces.

• When hiring a venue, take into account the facilities they offer such as lighting, audio-visual equipment, projection screens and Wi-Fi. A bonus will be a venue offering shuttle transportation and catering

During the Conference

Now that everything is on track, what are the things you’ll need to investigate during the event?

• On-Site Checks

 Checking your venue beforehand is vital. Arrange a meeting with the onsite team and go through a checklist of everyone’s duties.

• Have Someone On The Ground

You’ll need a person you can rely on to make sure everyone is sticking to their duties. They will need to manage your trusted team on your behalf

After the Conference

Congratulations on pulling off your conference without a hitch. So what now?

• Have personalised or branded gifts for attendees to receive at the end of the event.

• Make sure there’s a clean-up team to tidy up the venue and pack up things for returning to various suppliers.

It takes time, hard work and dedication to put on a stellar corporate conference that will leave attendees impressed and help your business achieve whatever goals it has outlined. If you think you’ll need additional help about conference planning with each of the above stages, get in touch with Last Man Standing Events today, we’ll bring the experience while saving you time and money!