The term ‘perfect storm’ is the perfect expression to describe what we’re currently witnessing in the enterprise meeting and event space. As we sign off on 2014 and gear up for 2015, saying that mobile is everywhere in the enterprise would be an understatement. If you haven’t been paying attention to the signs, don’t worry – the good news is we saw it coming and we are ready to guide meeting professionals through the storm.
Boiling it down to three key factors, we believe that 2015 will be the tipping point for mobile applications for enterprise meetings and events. Here’s why:
1. Large enterprises are accelerating their redesign around mobile
For the enterprise, mobile is an operational imperative, not an add-on. Ted Schadler from Forrester Research emphatically states that the mobile mind shift is the “biggest technology driven-shift we’ve ever seen.” Mobile First isn’t just a trendy platitude, it’s a strategic imperative driven by the need for large organizations to meet their employees and customers where they are: on their smartphones and tablets. This is causing companies to redesign themselves in pursuit of efficiency and productivity.
The meetings and events side of these companies is a case study in mobile transformation. The trend for consolidation among internal travel and meeting operations under the guise of Strategic Meetings Management Programs (SMMP) opens up massive mobile opportunities for two reasons: first, having a single, company-wide platform for mobile meeting apps will help the newly formed group comply with procurement policy, and second, this new group responsible for corporate meetings is perfectly placed to adopt and promote broad mobile app usage.
2. The enterprise meetings ecosystem will embrace mobile
Once an organization settles on a company-wide platform for its major events, it’s a short hop to start taking advantage of the economies of scale that come with it by using mobile apps at smaller meetings. Employees conditioned to using the mobile platform will eventually expect to use their app for other meetings as well. Not every meeting will merit an app, but as soon as you have 25 people or more gathered for a half day or longer, you start getting into a level of scheduling and content complexity where it makes sense to have an app.
3. Mobile analytics will help validate face-to-face meetings of every size
Proving the value of meetings and events is challenging. There aren’t many measurement tools available beyond an exit survey and planner’s intuition. That is, until there’s a mobile app involved.
By definition, a meeting app is a digital experience, and as such it is capable of capturing data points across a wide spectrum of user actions related to an event: content access or download, participation in polls and surveys, session attendance, and more. The app lets the meeting organizer paint a picture of attendee activity with a level of granularity never before possible. Want to know how well your sales training sank in? Use the app’s live polling to run pop quizzes. Need to demonstrate booth traffic for a key sponsor? Simply check the page views of their listing in the app, or use check-in to monitor who stopped by their booth and when.
The list goes on in terms of the power of an event app’s data analytics. Suffice it to say there has never been a more powerful tool for demonstrating event engagement.
How will you put mobile to work for your company’s meetings and events in 2015?
For more on our predictions for mobile event apps in 2015, download QuickMobile’s free white paper here. You’ll get our own seven predictions, plus more than 25 other insights from 8 leading meeting and event thought leaders.
Guest post by Jeff Epstein, QuickMobile’s Director of Product and Channel Marketing. He defines the company’s corporate and product messaging and leads the development of its lead generation and sales enablement content. He gets inspiration from playing with his kids and undressing the defense during Friday night hockey games.