Meetings-technology provider Cvent and event-production and technology powerhouse Encore (formerly PSAV) have partnered to offer an "end-to-end" virtual and hybrid solution. The strategic partnership smooths the integration and logistical concerns for customers of one company who wish to use the tools of the other, and it allows Encore to offer on-site support for Cvent customers who are taking advantage of that integration.
Planners intending to use Encore's event production on-site have the opportunity to contract with Cvent for wide-ranging technology, including the company's virtual platform, registration, and on-site solutions such as check-in and lead generation. Encore, the official in-house production partner for a large number of hotels and other meeting venues, can offer Cvent customers a range of services that includes pre-event production, show calling and stage management, and multichannel attendee management. Encore benefits from the range of meetings management and digital solutions under Cvent's umbrella while Cvent can better manage the demand for on-site management and support, thanks to Encore's global team of technicians who work on-site.
Encore staff members are currently getting up to speed on Cvent technology. "We're training their teams so they're able to support Cvent customers and their own customers on Cvent applications throughout the process," explained Anil Punyapu, Cvent's senior vice president for enterprise sales, who was instrumental in the development of the partnership.
Cvent Connect, a hybrid conference scheduled for Aug. 1-4 with the in-person component in Las Vegas, promises to demonstrate the benefits of the partnership.
"We’re proud to announce this partnership with Encore, a company that has tremendous global scale and industry expertise, and reflects our deep passion to transform meetings and events," said Cvent CEO and founder Reggie Aggarwal. "The pandemic has revolutionized the way organizations plan and manage their events, and successful organizations now offer a mix of in-person, virtual and hybrid events across their total event program. With the digitization of events driven in part by the pandemic, events can be more impactful than ever before, but that also means it’s more complex to manage an event program that drives results."
The partnership is about reducing that complexity. In addition to the aforementioned benefits around the power of combined implementation and support possibilities, Punyapu said it should simplify pricing: "This allows Encore to now scale the pricing structure so that it's based on the number of attendees or registrants; they can bundle all of the different components of what we provide into a per-participant rate."
That should also help to more clearly define which types of "hybrid technology" planners will employ for each event, which is thus far proving to be a challenge for many.
"'Hybrid' has very different flavors to it and there are many different levels of hybrid events," said Cvent's Punyapu. "Unfortunately, a lot of the solutions that you see in the marketplace today are a coupling of complex applications tied to complex service-delivery models. What this partnership allows us to do is leverage the pricing and service models that Encore has built in a very cost-effective manner."