TechFest12 Roundtable: Removing processes with technology
This is our second blog featuring another Tech-Fest delegate, Ben Fletcher from Osney Media who decided to run a roundtable discussion with his fellow TechFest12 delegates.
To recap from the first Roundtable blog post, we didn’t schedule any of the session but instead we had attendees nominating and then facilitating the sessions. The only structure we gave was that the facilitator was that they had to provide us with the collected wisdom from the discussion.
With five different Roundtable sessions being held at one time, Ben still managed to attract a full table of delegates for two 25min sessions. So here is what the outcome was and what the delegates thought:
Some General Points
1. If your process is bad, automating it will not help.
2. The personal touch can be important – make sure technology doesn’t save costs but damage the customer experience.
3. Make sure you have clear objectives and are not applying technology for technology’s sake.
4. Look at the current resource and the time they spend on the task – make sure there is a significant saving
Some areas
1. Registration (pre event) – get rid of paper, make them signup online
2. Registration (on the day) – examine use of kiosks for expos, but make sure you still have meet and greet staff.
3. Dietary requirements – try to give the responsibility to the attendees and allow the caterers direct access
4. Reducing double entry and mistakes – get rid of paper first, then make sure you have a ‘golden source’ of data (one database that is the central point) that other systems feed off.
5. Sometimes the upheaval of changing a system is just not worth it, which brings us back to clear objectives – if things work OK but are slightly inefficient, you might be better as you are rather than disrupting the whole company and paying for a new system. If you are running loads of events, it’s hard to put things on hold and transition over.
The feedback from Ben’s session are short and sweet. Perhaps obvious to some, but such simple changes and thought processes can speak a thousand words!
The TechFest Post Event Questionnaire which we recently sent out to our delegates, shows that we managed to get a good balance between technology but did not forget that all important personal touch.
