Blog by Denzil Rankine, executive chairman of AMR International
How should an events organiser be structured in light of changing customer needs?
The question of how an events organiser should be structured has never been more important. As participants at events are becoming increasingly demanding, as the digital revolution encroaches into events and as competition intensifies, the time has come to think hard.
After setting corporate strategy, the C-suite needs to decide how to shape its structure according to a range of inevitable trade-offs.
These include:
• Entrepreneurial silos vs uniform, systematised approach
• Sector focus vs. geographic focus
• Centralised vs. dispersed functions, e.g. marketing
Of course there is no such thing as a perfect organisational structure and we all know that organisational change can be used as a tool to adjust behaviours or implement new working practices. On top of this, now is the right time to re-evaluate some of the basic premises of a successful organisation in the events industry.
Some of the guidelines for a successful organisation include:
• Innovation has to be a constant
• Event directors must be fully capable of owning the strategy of their events
• Data analytics should be coupled to strategy and marketing
• Marketing should be at the heart of the organisation
• Incentives should be linked to performance as well as to KPIs that indicate future performance
Denzil will be expanding on these topics in future articles in EW.
