Business event planning is no small task. There are hundreds of tasks to take care of while at the same time plan for any emergency that can happen. You need to plan ahead and think through all the potential scenarios you may come across before and during the event. Many people turn to online software for a structured approach (check out this website for event planning software). Now, let’s look at how to plan your first business event.
What is involved in business event planning?
Depending on the type of business event you plan to host, you may have many things to consider. Below, we’re outlined a few of the more common things to bear in mind.
- Issuing detailed invites (include address, times, parking details, accessibility, local amenities, hotel options, dress code, menu, any details about what to expect at the event, and a means of responding to the invite – you need to know if people are coming or not!)
- Catering contracts
- Photography contracts
- Is there a host? Are you using event moderators? Are you hiring speakers?
- Entertainment contracts
- Venue contracts
- Venue risk assessment
When to start planning your business event?
Realistically, you’re going to need around 6 months to plan a large business event. This isn’t because that’s how long it takes for the planning to go ahead, but rather because this amount of time gives you the time and the space to deal with scenarios relating to unplanned changes. For example, where you have hired a speaker who later announces that they cannot attend (for any reason), you will be thankful for the additional time to find another speaker, whereas if you only plan and book the event a month in advance, you may not be so lucky in finding a replacement.
Stay flexible
Following on from the previous point, it’s important to remain flexible and problem solve as you go. Things are going to go wrong. For example, you may not get the venue you wanted on the dates you’d planned. You may not find other factors such as catering or entertainment don’t fall within budget and you have to switch to more affordable options. These things are a natural part of business event planning.
Don’t do it alone
Working alone on such a large project is tiresome and mistakes may creep in. You need a team to help you. Having one person in charge of venue selection and contracts and one person in charge of organising the catering facilities can instantly mean that you have more time to think about the running order and staging of the event. When you try to organise too many things at once, you may become ‘swamped’ in details and the event could suffer.
Using online software and shared documents, your team can stay up to date and communicate with each other over progress.
Always complete a run through
Dress rehearsals aren’t just for amateur dramatics. They’re for business events, too. The value of a dry run cannot be overstated. Simple things like discovering a corridor leading to the rest rooms is narrow and likely to cause congestion on the night can only be discovered by seeing these things for yourself. Or perhaps the food prep area could prove far too small for the planned amount of catering. Always run through everything before the big night.
