By Michelle
Bruno
All online exhibitor manuals are not created equal. At
least that was the conclusion of show managers that attended
a session titled, "Online Exhibitor Kits Head-To-Head,"
presented during the Winter Forum of the Exposition Operations
Society (EOS) www.expoops.com.
The Forum, produced by this new association of exhibition operations
managers, was held in New Orleans January 14-16th.
The Head-To-Head format pitted four service providers of
online exhibitor manuals against one another in front of a live
audience. The four participating companies were The Expo Group
Creative Data Systems, a division of Hargrove, www.hargroveinc.com,
GES Exposition Services www.ges-expo.com
and Expodite from TSCentral www.tscentral.com.
An exhibitor manual is the online version of the traditional
paper-based manual that exhibitors use to order services, equipment
and furnishings for their booths at upcoming exhibitions.
During the session four individual screens projected a
live Internet feed for each of the online manuals. Teams of
two show managers each manned computer terminals, one for each
of the four manuals. Each team was provided with an identical
list of items to order and the audience observed as the testers
clicked icons and navigated menus attempting to place the orders
using the tools and help sections of the online manuals.
Loretta Savage, director of operations for Penton Media,
Inc.www.penton.com,
organized the Head-To-Head session and described the program
objectives. "The whole idea was to have an educational
experience for both the vendors and the operations managers
to 'test drive' different online exhibitor manuals firsthand;
to see what works or doesn't, how user friendly they are and
what areas need to be added or revised to make them more complete
service tools."
Mary Ann Schestag, director of operations for SMC Events,
test drove three of the four manuals during the Head-To-Head
session. She highly rated The Expo Group's online ordering tool.
Schestag commented: "The Expo Group had a great set-up.
It was very easy to understand and had simple instructions.
It provided users with a recap of items ordered that were visible
at any time during the ordering process." The Expo Group's
manual also provided users with a section for checking the status
(updated in real-time) of shipment deliveries to the exhibitor's
booth. Other session participants praised the manual's ability
to plot electrical and telephone outlets on a grid of the booth
layout.
The online ordering kit offered by Creative Data Systems
(CDS) pointed to the desire of many show managers and exhibitors
to bridge the gap between hand-holding by customer service and
speeding through the ordering process at any time of the day
or night. Most exhibitors want the convenience of online ordering
but they aren't ready to give up speaking with a live customer
service rep when they have a question. Thus when orders for
complicated electrical configurations or intensive labor needs
are placed online in the CDs system, e-mail messages are sent
to the customer service representatives at Hargrove who then
call the exhibitors for further details and clarification.
Since all of the manuals were being operated simultaneously,
bottlenecks in some of the systems became more obvious when
users of one or more of the applications were able to perform
a task faster than in other competing systems. Steve Gross,
vice president operations for H.A. Bruno, LLC, described how
this became apparent during the session. "Part of the exercise
was to order carpet. All users had no problem placing the basic
order, although some users complained that they not only had
to enter the size such as '10 x 9', but the system required
a total square footage calculation, and the system wasn't programmed
to do the math. Later, the exhibitors (the testers) upgraded
to a larger booth and the carpet order needed to be updated.
Ordering new carpet was no problem, but with at least one program,
the users couldn't find out how to delete the original order."
A criticism of the online exhibitor manual concept has
been that some manuals only deliver access to the products and
services provided by the general contractor. In other words,
if an exhibitor wants to use a third-party contractor such as
a florist or the convention center (in the case of in-house
electrical or telephone services), they are unable to order
these services through the online manual. The Expo Group's manual
was an exception. It provided exhibitors with access to all
vendors.
An alternative to the manuals generated by general contractors
are those developed by independent companies such as TSCentral
through its Expodite product. According to SMC Event's Mary
Ann Schestag, the fact that the Expodite manual contained show
management forms as well as exhibitor forms was a plus and the
application was easy to navigate. But it was difficult to view
what you had ordered and many pages were generated that had
to be printed. Whether a program should generate many printed
pages is open to debate. Steve Gross lauded the ability of some
of the programs to generate paper copies of orders initiated
online. He says, "I think most exhibit managers want to
walk on site with copies of their orders."
Just because the online manuals exist doesn't mean they
are getting widespread usage. At least one general contractor
attending the EOS Forum commented that not more than a few percent
of their exhibitor customers are using their online manual.
Steve Gross estimates that the exhibitors surveyed in his show
are split down the middle with half wanting an online ordering
system and the other half content with the paper manual.
The next EOS Meeting is scheduled for July 11-13, 2001
in Toronto. EOS President Steve Schuldenfrei says the Head-To-Head
program was the hit of the January Forum and plans to organize
a similar session in July. They are looking at online housing
and registration systems as the subject for the July session.
By Michelle Bruno
michelle@brunogroup.com is a Salt Lake City-based
writer and Web publisher. She has worked in and written about
the international events industry for more than 15 years. She
contributes regularly to industry publications such as EXPO,
Technology Meetings and Meeting News.
Reprinted by permission from the EventWeb Newsletter http://www.eventweb.com.
(c) Copyright 2001 Doug Fox Communications. EventWeb is
a registered trademark.