The business events sector is leveraging software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies to overcome the pandemic’s limitations and foster human connections. It is estimated that the share of digital offerings in companies' portfolios has accelerated by a staggering seven years.
Until the pandemic, the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions (MICE) sector – which supported more than 34,000 direct and indirect jobs – had been deeply dependent on face-to-face meetings.
With new Covid-19 restrictions in place, event organisers had to search for creative avenues to overcome these challenges in a very short period of time or risk losing $3.8 billion, or close to 1% of Singapore’s GDP. The solution was SaaS virtual events platforms, which mirrored in-person interactions by creating immersive and exciting event experiences.
Transforming the events industry with SaaS
Many businesses were already on a digital transformation journey prior to the pandemic but the pandemic has highlighted the merits of SaaS platforms and the value of SaaS businesses to a more resilient events industry.
At Hubilo, we were quick to recognise the opportunity of SaaS solutions, in part because we had already spent five years in the event technologies space. This allowed us to develop an innovative platform to bring people together when social distancing was/is a norm.
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In this complex landscape of Covid-19 regulations and critical industry shifts, Hubilo pivoted to the SaaS model to aid digital transformation in the events industry across different regions.
Virtual and hybrid event platforms now integrate various technology stacks, ensuring an excellent and holistic top-tier event experience for participants. These solutions bring event-specific data from registrations and ticketing to create a more seamless event experience, and one-way integrations with customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to enable organisers and sponsors to leverage event data and reap measurable ROI.
Additionally, marketing tech (MarTech) solutions generate insights that can increase the quality of business leads and effectively drive marketing conversions. All of this is supported by a base of customer technology platforms at the core of a virtual event platform, guaranteeing always-on support for participants before, during, and after the event.
Eliminating the roadblocks to digital transformation
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For many in the industry, costs and concerns around the complexity of integration continue to be common barriers to digital transformation. However, we are seeing a trend where enterprises are overcoming these challenges with the help of a series of SaaS solutions.
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A significant advantage of SaaS platforms is that most can be set up for rapid integration, enabling enterprises to get value from them instantly. There is therefore an incentive for businesses to seamlessly digitalise their processes by replacing outdated legacy systems in IT infrastructure with enterprise SaaS products.
Increasing cloud migration and integrations between SaaS platforms has made it much easier to build or pivot entire businesses using SaaS platforms. The exceptionality of the SaaS market is in the fact that there are numerous providers offering similar tools, allowing enterprises to trial new tools without financial and technological obligations.
Furthermore, a good SaaS provider will offer enterprises their platform on a pay-as-you-go or usage-based model. No large investment is therefore required at the outset and enterprises can pay a fair and manageable amount that is commensurate with the value they are getting from the platform.
Events of tomorrow
The unpredictability of the Covid-19 situation makes the business events industry vulnerable. However, it also presents an opportunity for event organisers to creatively pivot towards virtual and hybrid events, and more significantly, rethink their business model with digitalisation, personalisation, and technology at its core.
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Other industries have found themselves at similar crossroads and have thrived despite the challenges. Think of Netflix for instance, when they confronted movie rentals. Ultimately, the shift to a completely digital offering that is personalised and tailored to the viewers’ desired content experience helped scale the business to what it is today.
Events are no different and may even have the advantage that Netflix never had at the beginning of its journey: a completely digitally transformed audience. No convincing is needed as the things we have traditionally done in-person can now be done online. People buy their groceries online. They exercise and find love online. They visit their doctors online. Do we really believe that events will be any different?
Despite the pandemic, we have managed to be productive and to connect people. I firmly believe our ability to adapt and innovate technologies will lead to not only the survival of many industries and our communities through this crisis, but also create new opportunities for connection and knowledge sharing than we ever had before.
Vaibhav Jain is the CEO and founder of Hubilo.
Photo: Hubilo
