The value of meetings for stakeholders and the delivering of return on investment has been recognised in the EIBTM 2009 Best Event Evaluation Award, which has been won by Finland’s Troi Helsinki for their F-Secure annual Global Channel meeting for their data security products.
Using Event ROI Institute methodology the event, which attracted 200 international distribution channel partners, gained evaluation feedback for satisfaction, learning and application, pre-, during and post event from both participants and F-Secure staff with a 60% response rate.
A questionnaire issued four months after the event highlighted how the knowledge gained from the conference was used within organisations in areas ranging from best practice and client servicing to products and services and internal training.
“In these hard times, evaluation is more important than ever”, said Dr. Elling Hamso, Managing Partner of Event ROI Institute. “Everybody is talking about ROI, but many don't know how to move from the rudimentary measures of satisfaction to something more meaningful, perhaps even the financial return on investment. This coveted award encourages companies that have this evaluation skill to show others how they do it, this is why I think it is such an important award.
“When event budgets are reduced or events are cancelled, meeting owners are simply not confident that the investment will give a positive return. Only proper evaluation procedures can take this uncertainty away. All meeting planners need to understand how their meetings create value for stakeholders and how to measure the effectiveness of the meeting for this purpose.
“I am very pleased to present this award to Troi Helsinki. Not only because they put forward a good evaluation project, but also because they have incorporated the ROI Methodology into their standard operating procedures more extensively than any other company I know. I don't think it is an overstatement to say that Troi Helsinki is one of the most competent event agencies in Europe when it comes to setting appropriate event objectives and measuring results.”
Commenting on winning the prestigious award, Troi Helsinki’s CEO Mika Lehtinen said: “Since adopting the ROI Methodology as our standard event planning and evaluation procedure, we have become a very different company. Many customers recognise how our mindset is much more focused on bottom line profit than creativity and participant satisfaction. We are grateful to F-Secure for recognising and sharing our approach and the planning and evaluation of the event was very much a joint effort.”
Senior Marketing Manager and the event manager for the operator channel F-Secure’s Mari Sylvia Wesantera sums up the importance of evaluating the meeting: “This is our main channel meeting and we know evaluating the event is a good and necessary investment. The evaluation planning made the meeting better, without a doubt. By defining clear objectives at different levels the meeting format and content became more focused and the post event evaluation told us how well we had succeeded in spending the budget effectively.”