Arranging an event is a difficult task even for the most experienced event management companies. There are many things to consider and so many things that can go wrong. Once you have planned everything, you have to send invitations to VIPs and guests, run marketing campaigns, and make it easy for attendees to register. Despite all of this, you may yet run into operational and logistical challenges on the day of the event. As a result, event management software is growing in popularity. Two major modules of event management software are event rental management software and event ticket management software.

What is event management software?

Event management software addresses the challenges that event managers face when organizing an event from planning to execution. Prior to the event, it can be difficult setting up the event website, running social media marketing campaigns, going live with the ticket booking window, or setting up the payment gateway. Or at the time of event, it could be pickup and drop, pointing the attendees in the right direction, checking their ticket without making them wait too long in line, or keeping them up to date with the latest news and updates.

An events management software system must fulfil the requirements of whatever surprises the event throws at them. It’s no surprise that an event manager is in the top five on CareerCast’s annual list of most stressful jobs.

Event management tool

An event management tool automates repetitive tasks, organizes information, enables collaboration, and integrates third party tools. For example, an event management tool’s integration with popular ticket booking portals such as Ticketmaster and Live Nation would save the team from manually filling in the same details into each of those websites. Renting is another crucial aspect of the event business. Event managers must rent furniture, equipment, security, decorations, and space. Keeping a tab on what was rented, in what quantity, and at what price is a hard task for event managers unless they have an event rental management tool.

An events management system is an assemblage of various tools and solutions working together to make events manageable for organizers and sociable for attendees.

Which event management software should you choose?

As with most software systems of today, you’re spoilt for choice when choosing event management software. You may rent, lease, or license the software from a vendor, or have it made your way from a custom software development firm like Rare Crew. When it comes to software implementation, you may put it on an on-premises setup, a dedicated remote server, or on a public cloud instance like AWS EC2. Of course, there are caveats to each of these methods.

Ready to go event management tool

When it comes to licensing or renting event management software, you may rely on a vendor. There are too many vendors to choose from even if we omit conference and event management software offered by cloud vendors like Amazon and Microsoft.

Since they are ready to go turnkey solutions, they are the first choice for event companies that are looking to uncomplicate their day-to-day operation like managing customers, partners, and marketing channels. However, vendor-based solutions are inconsistent with their feature implementation.

It’s a common occurrence for event managers to have to rely on event management solutions from more than one vendor for their requirements. Another issue consistent with turnkey software solutions is restrictive licensing agreements. What if the license prevents putting the software in the public cloud?

Built in event management software

Event management software may occur as a submodule to a larger software system such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), project management, or customer relationship management (CRM). This inbuilt mechanism may save you money since you won’t have to invest in a separate software system.

In addition, cloud-based enterprise systems like Vault ERP, SAP, Microsoft, and Oracle allow third party addons via a centralized store. You may find addons that extend your system with event management functionality.

Since they’re part of a larger system or added externally, in-built events management systems lack features that are essential to leading event management companies. They may lose features or stop working completely owing to a major release. Also, inbuilt systems are passive towards customer feedback since vendors tend to cater to core customers first.

Custom event management software

Custom event management software addresses the concomitant shortcomings of ready to go and built-in event management software. Since you’re bypassing the vendor and building your own system from scratch, you can add the features you want and implement them wherever you want. You will have no licensing terms whatsoever; you may upload the source code to a public cloud, to an on-premises datacenter, or in a hybrid setup. The upfront cost of funding a custom development project may be higher than a turnkey solution, but the long-term cost incentives are immense.

For example, when you build a custom event management software with Rare Crew, we only add the features your business needs as why should you pay for features that you’re not going to use. The end-result is a UI system that isn’t too overwhelming for your team to understand and has all the features they have expected and desired. Since you own the source code, you can add, edit, or remove features whenever the need arises.

Features of event management software

Whether you’re opting to develop your own custom event management software, buying it from a vendor, or renting it as a SaaS, there are certain features that you must look for.

Event registrations

The event management tool should make it easy for you when you’re ready to start distributing your tickets. It should allow you to come up with a ticket selling website with the right template, content, and payment gateway in a short time. As already mentioned, it should be able to integrate with leading ticket selling websites.

Moreover, it should keep a database of the people who showed interest in buying a ticket but didn’t purchase one. Your marketing team may pursue them for last-minute offers if your tickets don’t sell out.

Event scheduling

You will be renting a lot of things including a place to host the event, hiring many people, and inviting guests. They should run according to the schedule and the event management software should help not just with scheduling, but also must remind you and your team to stick with the dates or the event won’t happen on the day.

Event marketing

People must know about the event if they are to buy tickets for it. Your marketing team needs access to your past customers’ social media accounts and email addresses to channel their marketing efforts. The software should make it easy for them to create, capture, and calculate campaign results as well as improve the marketing reach and increase ticket sales.

Event ticket management and operations

Once you start selling the tickets, you must ensure that you’re not selling more tickets than you can. In addition, you must keep a tab of cancelled, reserved, and transferred tickets. The event ticket management software must make it easy for the ticket operators to do so.

Overselling is a possibility when your ticket registrations are coming from loads of ticket booking platforms, offline counters, affiliates, and resellers. The system must integrate with various systems via an API system to address the problem. Furthermore, not all the tickets you’re selling are of the same price. Ticket tiers are common at events nowadays. You need to ensure your event ticket management software can manage that.

Integration of event management features

Rare Crew is a leading firm that provides custom software development services to its vast clientele. Be sure to contact us as we can help you develop a custom event management software that will include all the features you require.