As an event manager, you know the specific function you play in event management. From organizing the event to operating the function, your goals are clear.
However, what if we took a step back and looked at your business as a whole? The business you are involved in has primary functions. In the case of event management, the business’s primary function would be to provide stellar events for clients.
Knowing the process of providing these events can be less clear. In this article, we delve into the five crucial business functions that will help your business grow and succeed.
Integrating Business Functions for Optimal Performance
The five basic business functions have been known for centuries, proving their time-tested worthiness. Let’s explore how you can incorporate them into event management.
As an event manager, you may be having issues with your business and are unsure why. By focusing on business processes, you can examine your business from the ground up. The key responsibilities in any business should focus on these core business functions to ensure base-level organization.
1. Finance
Now obviously keeping a close eye on your finances is critical in any business. As an event manager, your accounting skills need to be top-notch. You’re in a business that heavily relies on budgets and financial restraints.
We’ve all been there: a client has asked for the most over-the-top event and given you a tiny budget to work with. Sigh. When it comes to fiduciary duties, there are a lot of elements involved.
Yes, you’ve got a big budget from the client, but as a manager, you have to delegate that budget. How much is going to the staff? How much is going to catering? Knowing the specifics of budgeting becomes a useful skill.
2. Marketing
Oh, marketing. On top of managing events and ensuring your business is functioning at its highest level, you also have to do marketing.
Marketing for restaurant spaces can be tiring, but it does become very worthwhile. Consistent marketing ensures brand loyalty, engagement with new customers, and potential new clients. As an event venue manager, you should know your target audience and focus your marketing on them.
For example, if you’re managing a bar and you want to focus your bar on being a celebration space, shift your marketing towards that. Perhaps tap into the birthday party market or bachelorette party market by advertising on social media. You could even stick flyers in bathroom stalls for foot traffic.
3. Sales
When it comes to business functions, nothing works alone. All these functions are integrated, and each enables the other to achieve success. Sales is a business function that undeniably goes hand-in-hand with marketing.
With event management, the sales process is highly dependent on engagement with the client and offering them the best event possible. Now, as an event manager, you can sometimes get caught up in managing all your responsibilities. This is why we want to suggest using an event management software system to help streamline your sales.
Using a software system like Perfect Venue helps keep your business processes in place. Let’s say a potential client wants to work with you. By using Perfect Venue, you can create a contact sheet with personalized branding. This page will also include basic client information, desired date, time, and guest count.
Once a client has filled out the contact form, they will receive an automated email with packages they can potentially use. On your side as the event manager, you will be able to see the event on your dashboard and it will automatically sync to your calendar. Yes, it’s that easy. This function vastly improves sales as the potential client doesn’t have to jump through any hoops to get in contact with you. You will get all the basic information needed and can continue the sales process with ease.
4. Strategy
Having a strategy in place for your company services is a no-brainer. Strategies on all levels help keep consistency across events, as well as internal departments and production.
One of the strategies that we like for event management is event proposals. Having a standardized proposal plan that can be easily personalized for each new client's needs is incredibly helpful. The template you use will be tweaked so you know it works for your company perfectly. For example, you could have a template that includes an event theme, budget, and timelines.
Strategy impacts all functions of your business. Having a strategy for engaging new clients, an event-day strategy, and even an internal organization strategy. When you have a clear business strategy, you should see growth and success in your business.
5. Human Resources
Human resources is all about building a strong set of employees who want the best results from your business. Sharing the same goals, being clear on all the business functions, and having a skillset that benefits the company are crucial for human resources.
When it comes to event management, you will need a trusty team behind you. Let’s say you manage a restaurant. As the event manager, you want to identify your fellow team members who are passionate about their job and put the effort in. These team members will also value your business as they will want to start taking on more responsibility and gain higher positions. Similarly, you also need to find the stragglers and give them development training to better their value to your business.
Event management involves a lot of moving parts, and if one element is off balance, you risk it all.
Understanding Business Functions in the Event Industry
Now that we’ve gone over the basic business functions, we will give some more in-depth examples for the event management industry. Because the core functions are business functions, you can have some wiggle room to adjust them to your event business.
Let’s take finance for example. As an event manager, your day-to-day operations might not include crazy financial needs. However, when an event rolls around you’ll need to engage with other service businesses. Perhaps you need to hire a band, which would include an artist fee, tech fees, set-up costs, and time.
What if your client hasn’t budgeted for all the extras? As the manager, you need to ensure that the budget has been discussed upfront and the client is aware of costs. Transparency is key here. You also need to be keeping track of costs and see how and where the money can be delegated.
Similarly, when we look at marketing and sales they often go hand-in-hand. In the event management world, marketing tends to lead to sales. With targeted marketing, your business should appear to people who need an event venue.
In this case, your marketing would lead them directly to your sales page. From here, as discussed earlier, it’s then quick and easy to develop a contract and begin the event planning process.
Finally, with human resources, it’s all about building trust. As an event manager, you need to have great people skills and the ability to maintain strong relationships. Think about it: as an event manager, you will likely be outsourcing a few elements for every single event.
With repeated elements such as floral arrangements, you should ensure a healthy relationship with one trusted florist. So even though the florist is not directly part of your team, they feel involved and trusted.
Conclusion
Maintaining the five core business functions and ensuring they’re all working harmoniously together will keep your business steady.
Using a management software system like Perfect Venue will hugely assist in maintaining the balance. Perfect Venue offers a 14-day free trial if you want to check them out. Similarly, take a moment to watch their demo video where they go into even more detail about the services they offer. Happy managing!
