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EVENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

    Executive Summary

Being the nation’s largest Catholic University, DePaul needs to be as flexible as possible for its students, staff, and guests. DePaul’s campus Student Center mirrors the flexibility in the way that the Student Center is not just a place for students to grab their daily meals, but for people to be able to have large or small, private or public, meetings and events. EMS, or event management software, facilitates the coordination of event planning.

EMS was first brought into play in 2002 at the Student Centers, as it was a newly built building with a variety of operations. It offers an array of meeting and event spaces with the option of requesting audiovisual and catering. Meetings and event spaces are usually requested through the online system, and as mentioned, it facilitates event planning for the client and the employee, who will further assist with any complications.

       EMS is not in a super competitive market and it is not a global tool. It is mostly used locally through universities for the acquisition of event planning, student and staff records, and many other uses. Brian Holifield, an operations manager who also administered the software, explains in detail the benefits and downsides of EMS. Although he is in favor of the system, he offers great feedback on how it could be well improved for the person, or worker, who ultimately does the finishing touches on the reservations made by the client.

       Brian details on how EMS ultimately saves time and money by preserving paper and diminishing the cost of communicating with clients. Competition is slim due to the lack of event planning systems, furthermore, increasing its opportunity to grow since it has been running for a little over a decade.

       EMS was the first system used when DePaul’s Student Center was opened and it has been running event planning since. Its most recent upgrade incorporated the consumer’s ability to virtually see conference rooms in 3D. As EMS continues to grow, the more difficult it becomes for new entrants to enter the market and compete with EMS.

Interviewee and Company Information

Brian Holifield is a former DePaul alumni with a bachelor’s degree in Communication and Master’s Degree in Counseling Education. Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Brian has spent the rest of his career life in Chicago. He was born on June 3, 1979. Brian Holifield started working at the Student Center as a crew member in 1997 when he started as a freshman at DePaul University. He was then promoted as a Student Building Manager and worked as a building manager for his last three years of college. Brian Holifield graduated DePaul with a bachelor’s degree in Communications in 2001. In 2002, a year after graduating, Brian earned a full-time staff position as a Night Operations Manager at the Student Center which allowed him to continue to pursue his Master’s Degree in Counseling Education. He began his master’s program in 2008 and received his master’s degree in 2010. Brian Holifield continues to work at DePaul’s Student Center as a full time staff Night Operations Manager. As an operations manager, Brian Holifield oversees all of the event management, floor, and building operations during the nighttime and weekend hours at the Student Center, Cortelyou Commons, and Munroe conference rooms at the Lincoln Park campus.

The Stuart Center was a student union built in 1971 for the Lincoln Park campus and was later demolished in 2001. Meanwhile, a few months earlier before the Stuart Center was demolished, the Student Center was up for construction a couple blocks down from where the Stuart Center once stood. The Student Center was completed in December 2001 and opened to the public in January 2002.

The Student Center at DePaul is what the Director of the building, Joe Markowski, likes to call the “home away from home” or the “living room of your home.” It’s a three-floor building that is usually opened 18 hours during the school year and hours vary in the summer time due to the population of students being less.

Moreover, the building has conference rooms that can be reserved by students, staff, or guests who would like to hold meetings and/or events. There are 10 conference rooms in total that could be reserved. Most conference rooms are located on the third floor, as well as many other offices that provide a variety of Student/Alumni support services.

The second floor is mainly a dining area but also holds one of the conference rooms in the buffet inner dining area. Last, but not least, is the first floor, where most patrons reside. The first floor holds a cafeteria, a couple areas where students can hang out, and most importantly, a multipurpose room that holds about 600 guests. Larger and/or more important events are usually held in the multipurpose room. Furthermore, operations managers are also in charge of operating and managing 3 small conference rooms at Munroe, and a ballroom building called Cortelyou Commons.

Cortelyou Commons accommodates banquets, receptions, presentations and other large events. It was built in 1929 and remodeled in 2006. There are usually about 8,000 patrons in the buildings and this includes students, visitors, guests, and staff. Customers are referred as “clients.” Clients that building managers work with are those who make conference room reservations.

Introduction

The planning and managing of large meetings and events often requires a lot of coordination between the many parties involved, and more often than not, these many parties will be using many different systems.  This can lead to a miscommunication which can result in expensive and wasteful errors being made when it comes to putting an event together.  However, the process of event planning can run smoothly when all the required information is in one system, as it is with EMS.  

 EMS, or Event Management System, is a multi platform meeting, event, and room scheduling program.  It can be used for anything from booking a room for an event in the Student Center to planning a conference at a hotel and even for academic planning at a university.  It is a very flexible system that allows users to do everything when it comes to planning how to use a space.  It makes it easy to fully optimize a meeting space which saves time, staff resources, and money.  This system has been used at DePaul’s Student Centers since 2002.  It is also currently being used by other universities in Chicago, including Loyola University, UIC, and Columbia College.

EMS is a fairly simple system to use, even for first-time users.  The user can pick the location by filtering through available rooms in specified buildings.  There is also an option to select certain resources needed in the room, such as a whiteboard, a computer, or a data projector.  Another option is that of what services you would like to offer during your meeting.  The user can request things like catering services or have additional audio or visual equipment brought into the room prior to the start of the event.

Analysis

Like with anything else, there are some advantages as well as disadvantages and challenges with EMS.  Quite possibly the biggest advantage with this system is the availability of all the needed information in one system, from location to resources to services.  EMS has some great tools, such as the EMS Web App, which  allows the client to be involved by having them input information, which alleviates some of the workload from the staff.  However, this specification can also be a disadvantage because it can cause some confusion to the people in the backend.  It is a client-driven system and allowing the client this much freedom to input information regarding their event can make it harder for those putting together specifics the client is requesting.  When it comes to event management system software, it is either really bad or really good. There is no real middle ground, and EMS is incomparable to any other system in the competitive market.  It is a forward thinking company that is there for its consumers so in return they can be there for their clients.    

EMS makes it faster to book rooms in comparison to programs like Microsoft Outlook.  It helps increase employee satisfaction.  The service can filter available rooms by size, location, services available, etc.  It has the ability to view and observe current meetings.  All of this is a big advantage because of the organizational benefits.  The convenience of these makes it a very appealing program.  The person can make room-specific reservation templates with varying levels of information or approvals to be able to reserve a room.  Can set up user specific reservation templates to customize the rules and process for being able to reserve a room.  Being able to set rules for a room reservation and the customizability of it is a big advantage.  Another perk of EMS is being able to schedule a meetings room, resource services, and those attending without leaving Microsoft Outlook.  

Since the implementation of the EMS in 2002, structure at Depaul has become more balanced and organized. In regards to the EMS specific to depaul university, the device is easily accessible and as mentioned before, easy to use. In order to gain access to this management system, you must first be either a faculty/staff member at depaul. Students may also access the system with authorization from a staff member at the university and after completion of a short training manual. Once access is granted a password and username are assigned to the individual, then the system becomes attainable on any standard or mobile device. The layout after logging in is easy to maneuver through, with convenient tabs located at the top of the screen to take you to whichever option suits your specific need. For individuals that prefer more of a visual aspect, there is a 30 minute presentation on youtube solely to cater to the needs of those students/staff members.

As far as Event Management System, EMS ranks amongst the greatest. Although it may not be amongst the most popular used in the United States, it’s easy-to-use technology sweeps away many other scheduling systems used today. The market for scheduling software is a lucrative one. Since adding the software, Depaul was able to save money that would have instead gone towards excessive paper/paperwork, communication methods to decipher a way to organize rooms and meetings equitably, among other things. Adding convenience to meeting times/locations eradicated the excessive time and money lost prior to EMS being added to the student center.

The threat of substitution in a market such as this one is very slim and unlikely. Although there are many scheduling softwares being used as we speak, companies and schools such as depaul tend to stick with what works, and EMS seems to work very well according to the accounts of interviews conducted in the student center. Many of the software available are very similar, but not all as easy to use as EMS. The thing that separates this from many others on the market is the capability of students/faculty to provide specific instructions to cater to what direction they want to meeting to steer towards. With the right amount of “heads up” time, any and all requests are met to the best of the availability of materials. This helps things run more smoothly. Although this feature seems standard, only a select amount of software actually allow the freedom and ability to be as open with requests for the meetings and locations prior to the activity date. Because of this freedom and convenience, substitution by another product is very unlikely.

Event scheduling systems have been around for many years. New entrants are unlikely in a market such as this where there is already an abundance of available high quality products being used nationwide by numerous businesses and schools. Typically when a customer finds a high quality product that they can use without a hassle, they tend to stick with that product long term. In the same sense, Depaul has been using EMS since 2002, which is a long 14 years of commitment. When measuring whether or not to join a market, businesses will often measure the quality of what is already there and determine if they can offer something that is not already out there. In this case, there isn’t much that isn’t offered already so new businesses with often take that into account. Not only is the market replete with features and convenient opportunities, but it is also difficult to enter at this point because of the quantity offered.

The fact that there are so many different types of scheduling software available means that in this market there is a lot of buyer power and very little supplier power. If the price for EMS for example were to rise significantly, Depaul would simply switch to whatever else on the market is reasonably priced and equally as easy to use. There aren’t many options that are as easy, but price selection wouldn’t be a difficult task to find. Because of this fact, EMS as a company has to be smart with the way they price their product and maintain reasonable features and abilities offered to who uses their product.

In order to gain more information about EMS, my team and I turned to a staff member at depaul named Brian Holifield. He was a great candidate because of his past experience with the system and his time at the school as part of the staff. Brian has a vast amount of knowledge of the subject, so he was able to give us qualitative information.