Meeting and event professionals are collecting a lot of data—from registration numbers to attendees’ ages. But the trouble is what to do with the data. How can we use it to create better events?
Enter BEAM (Business Events Analytics/Metrics), a new data tool from PCMA that provides market intelligence and data analytics for the business events industry. BEAM was created in partnership with data intelligence and marketing technology agency Infogroup.
“Today, it’s not enough for me to know people on just a few data points, like age and demographics,” said Sherrif Karamat, president and CEO of PCMA. “To really tailor experiences that will actually engage people, we need to understand the full human being.”
How Does BEAM Work?
BEAM pulls data from a portfolio of sources, including convention centers, hotels, airlines and even event professionals, to provide a holistic view of the meetings industry. The tool can then overlay individual data sets onto a pool of data to help predict behaviors and trends.
The goal is to help meeting and event professionals “deliver a more strategic, engaging and relevant experience,” according to a PCMA press release tied to the BEAM announcement.
Listen to Danielle LeBreck's Interview With PCMA CEO Sherrif Karamat:
“Event organizers want to measure more than just how many people attended a conference, were they in a session or weren’t they?” Karamat said.
“They’re actually looking at how we’re inspiring people,” he continued. “What did they get out of it? It’s much more emotional intelligence on satisfaction in order to engage.”
Karamat added that BEAM is both a data collecting and data cleansing tool that can:
- Manage big data by organizing large amounts of data to reveal patterns and trends
- Glean events insights from all industries that participate in business events, such as hotels, venues and destinations (i.e. why was this destination selected?)
- Provide industry insights that can be tailored to your needs
Use Data to Your Advantage
Karamat said BEAM can provide meeting and event professionals with “useful data you can use today, tomorrow and the day after,” not months or years from now.
“We are all suffering from the fact that we have data and don’t know what to do with it,” he added. “[BEAM] is making sense of it and creating insights.
“Data itself is useless if we cannot have valuable insights from it,” Karamat asserted.
[Related Content: Sherrif Karamat Steps Into Leader Role at PCMA]
Although data privacy concerns have created headlines recently, Karamat assured BEAM users that personal information is not being shared. Only you will have access to your data. That’s one of the reasons PCMA partnered with Infogroup, an independent body that will ensure BEAM complies with the General Data Protection Regulation and other privacy standards.
Today's meeting and event professionals have a wealth of useful information. Products like BEAM and a savvy strategy can help translate the data into meaningful attendee experiences.
Check out all of our MPI WEC 2019 event coverage in this handy article.
