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Jamie Belkin Events

Acteva delivers Online Registration Solutions to 700+ healthcare professionals

Challenge     Registering attendees had become a slow, time consuming process

Solution        Centralizing registrations for attendees from around the world

Results          Multiple registration options and "anywhere, anytime" access to data

Background

As the healthcare industry continues to evolve, mergers, acquisitions and consolidations have become a way of life. For many years an independently operated facility, a Cleveland-based hospital became world-renowned as one of the best places for patient care and innovation. Throughout the 1990's, the hospital continued to expand and consolidate forces with numerous other healthcare facilities and systems in the greater Cleveland area.

For Jamie Belkin Events, a professional events planning firm based in Cleveland, this created a great opportunity for new business - helping the hospital's Innovations Department securely manage attendee registration and payments. With potential attendees in many different locations worldwide, Jamie Belkin wanted to provide them with a more efficient, cost effective and all-inclusive solution to better manage their registration process.

Business Challenge

Registering attendees had become a slow, time consuming process

"For this particular program, we needed a system that included a functionality that would enable people to register, order online, print out their bar-coded receipt and be easily checked in onsite by barcode scanners," says Michael Benedetti, Web Designer, RA Performance Group. "It's something we couldn't handle on our own. We don't do online credit card processing and MINI wanted attendees to be able to print out order confirmations after they registered for the events. Bar codes were an essential element."

In 2005, Belkin added Acteva to help Innovations Department manage the annual Medical Innovation Summit - an event that draws high-level attendees and speakers ranging from medical device executives to venture capitalists. In previous years, the responsibility of collecting and manually entering all of the credit card data from conference attendees fell to one individual in the department. This was a workable process but problems continued to escalate over time and a new solution was needed. These problems included operational inefficiency, limited registration options for attendees and concerns about the secure collection of payments. In short, it had become a headache. The department needed a way to sift through the bureaucracy - to register and pay for the event in a matter of minutes in a secure environment.

"It was not a smooth process to get people registered in a timely manner," says Belkin. "It was a real hassle because people would have to go through a lot of channels and problems would always come up." The hospital is a large, multi-site facility and with that are layers of people, departments and sometimes a time consuming bureaucracy. The need to manage and centralize data, personal information and preferences was essential when dealing with 700-800 attendees at their events.

In addition, the Medical Innovation Summit's core attendees - senior level directors, venture capitalists, CEO's - had severe time limitations. They needed an online registration solution that was available anytime, anywhere. "What they really needed was 24/7 access so they could register at their convenience," says Belkin.

The department had also lacked customized, a-la-carte registration options - such as early bird registrations and one-day passes - limiting key attendee options and reducing overall attendance and event revenue. "Basically the department wanted to provide a simple, efficient way for a wide range of attendees to sign up, pay for the events and move on. And the more registration options available to them the better," says Belkin.

Acteva Solution

Centralizing registrations for attendees from around the world

Acteva enabled the Innovations Department to customize and set up their account, publish their hosted registration page, and begin accepting registrations in less than 30 minutes so that no registration or sales opportunities were missed. Implementing Acteva also gave Belkin instant access to data. "The fact that I can pull up all of the information I need at the click of a button is great. Someone could call me and I've got registration data and preferences right in front of me," says Belkin.

The customized registration page provided a one-stop-shop and delivered all the answers attendees needed - when they needed them. "In the past, they couldn't get answers to their questions when registering. The process is much smoother now. Time isn't being wasted,"says Belkin.

As secure credit card processing has become a major concern in recent years, the ability to securely collect online payments from event attendees has come to the forefront. In the past, one individual in the department had the responsibility of collecting and entering all of the credit card data manually. Adding Acteva eliminated the liability exposure involved in collecting attendee credit card data. An additional benefit was Acteva could handle any fraud, chargeback, charge inquiries and refund requests - resulting in lower costs, time savings and mitigation of risk.

The Innovations Department at the hospital now uses Acteva to collect online credit card payments for their events immediately - at a rate better than PayPal - from a centralized location.

Acteva Delivers Additional Benefits

Another issue the department faced was the lack of an efficient solution for processing refunds. "It was a long process. For refunds, it was a process that could take 30-40 days for someone to receive a refund," says Belkin. However, since adding Acteva, the turnaround time for refunds has been reduced to 24-48 hours. "It's now a much more user-friendly process for them and we've received nothing but positive feedback," says Belkin.

Belkin adds that the department was without a systematic service or support team other than the part-time event organizer who responded to issues on a case-by-case basis - and only during regular business hours. They lacked any type of attendee-relations personnel and were left with a situation where attendees would send an e-mail or voicemail to the organizer and wait for a response. "Acteva's service has been great for us. They've always had the answers I needed, when I needed them," says Belkin. With Acteva, she now has personalized service and support throughout the registration process - available at no additional cost. "I don't think I ever heard the word 'No' from your service team."

Results

Multiple registration options and "anywhere, anytime" access to data

Belkin says Acteva's Plug & Play solution was just what they needed to solve their online registration issues. A task that was at one time daunting has now been made all-inclusive and user-friendly. "I've received a lot of positive feedback on how easy the registration page it is to use. The ease and flexibility are exactly what they were looking for," says Belkin.

As an Event Planner working closely with healthcare professionals, medical executives and other senior-level professionals, Jamie Belkin has managed to grow her business - and create more satisfied customers - with the help of Acteva. Attendees from the U.S. and abroad now have a quick and easy way to sign up and pay for events. "Basically, since we started using Acteva, we've achieved all of the goals we set out to achieve in the last year," says Belkin. "Building the customized page, automatic notifications, the flexibility it offers - it's all been great."

Experience that counts

Acteva is the trusted leader in online event registration, ticketing and payment management services. Since 1998, over 14,000 customers have used Acteva to manage more than 260,000 events and process more than 4.6 million registrations. Acteva's customers include Bausch & Lomb, Pfizer, SAP, Girl Scouts of America, Whole Foods, Craigslist Foundation, BMW/MINI, NASA, VMware, Apple, DHL, PG&E and thousands of small to large-sized businesses and organizations.