Conference Company
Business Issues:
- Company had a direct marketing database designed to support direct mail and fax broadcast activities for 90+conferences annually – and the database had major operational and technical problems.
- Company had already invested over $200,000 in improvement efforts with a vendor and with a consultant – and still did not have a workable tool.
- The ability to manage and track programs and to improve overall database management was considered a competitive advantage that many players in the industry were also struggling with.
- Development effort was being driven with a technical specification document – but no formal user specification effort had yet been made. Only 1 end-user was involved in the project.
Solutions:
- Assembly and management of interdepartmental project team.
- Development of end-user specification document, user-interface design and review, and beta testing plan.
- Coordination of data conversion and data cleaning of the entire database.
- Establishment of data entry standards and database maintenance procedures, including training of all data control personnel.
- Creation of text and online user guide.
- Launched an automated bug reporting system.
- Developed a launch plan and schedule resulting in going live on time and on budget in six months.
Benefits:
- Ability to measure actual mailing list performance in generating event registrations.
- Refined and improved marketing manager productivity in producing targeted event campaigns.
- Allowed coordination and automation of other production efforts (logistics, inside sales, web production) so that events were handled consistently and efficiently by all company functions.
- Generated additional registration revenue through better-targeted campaigns, as well as software revenue from licensing the tool to other companies in the industry.
Sample Projects
