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 White Papers Internet Strategy for the Event Manager Communications Accounting Technology and The Emergence Of On-Premise Service Providers Much ink has been spilled (and products developed) regarding the impact of the Internet on meeting planning and assembly management. But relatively little has been invested in how the Internet might transform the experience of visitors during an event. This is an important and emerging topic since there is considerable cost and revenue involved in providing event Internet and technology services. This white paper explores one aspect of this subject by asking some basic questions: what services might be delivered during an event, what are the strategic technologies in delivering on-property Internet services, and who should operate or control those technologies? Congratulations on Your Leading The Way In Internet Services! Congratulations! Considerable digital Internet amenities are available to event participants and visitors at your facility. Access to high-speed Internet access, content, and services are now a competitive advantage in your attracting events to your community and your property. Here’s why you have that advantage (from a visitors point of view): Imagine that you are a convention vendor showing at the “Extreme Golf” Annual Convention. You just finished booth setup. Almost, anyway. You ordered both in advance of the event and the network hubs and telephone ports are on the floor. You plug your laptop into the network port. You start your Internet browser. Up pops a welcome message from the convention center manager. The browser display also points you to several facility based services and a couple local restaurants. One service offers you unlimited Internet access at $129.95/day at 128K of speed. You can upgrade to 1MB speed for $299.95/day or at an additional $19.95/hour. In honor of the conventions golf theme, you are offered a streaming video golf lesson from Tiger Woods at $4.95 per viewing. You can also read the local newspaper for $.75 per day. You click. You read. Then you surf the Internet. Then you call your mom to wish her Happy Birthday.The Emergence of the On-Premise Service Providers So what really happened here? Answer: a communications accounting system was billing event participants for technology services, network access, and digital content as visitors consumed them. This system connected to the network equipment on your property. The system was able to integrate telephone, network, Internet content, labor, and a cable purchase into a single group invoice (pretty quickly too since an event-to-date invoice was showing up each morning in that booth). A couple other things were also in place to make this work.
But You Don’t Get The Credit! Oops. We left out one detail from our “Extreme Golf” convention story. You received little or none of the network revenue generated during the convention. This in part was because you actually provided few of the digital services described in our “Extreme Golf” story! Those services were provided by a national third party network provider (or maybe even an event planner). More importantly, you had very little or no claim to a percentage of their Internet revenues collected during the event. Nor did you have significant control over the content they might present to visitors. Alas, your reputation was still tied to the success of these organizations in successfully deploying their services. Hence you even carried reputation risk with limited reward. Network access has become for you just another utility, not unlike electricity. It is simply expected by visitors and meeting planners. “Give the visitors a plug in the wall and then stay out of the way”. Internet is a utility cost that you will attempt to recover in your space rental. Besides, the value of the Internet has shifted to what information, content, and services are delivered over the Internet and onto your local network. But you don’t offer such services to your visitors. Network access being like electricity may be fine for properties that operate with a basic facilities rental strategy. But in outsourcing technology and digital services, is there an opportunity lost when trying to establish your facility as a preferred destination? Have you exported the ability to differentiate your facility or provide a unique experience to visitors by ignoring Internet services? (Could property managers and event sales leverage digital customized services to theirs and their community’s advantage?) How much control should a property manager retain over Internet technology, content, and services? Event spaces need not own every piece of technology nor employ staff for every network and technology skill. But which technologies and talents might the property management retain control in order to consolidate services to visitors and create value for their customers and their communities? Should it be routers, and hubs, and other components of the “digital plumbing”? Should it be the technology services staffs? The answer is uncertain on these things. Increasingly however, one strategic technology may be the technology services business system. It is the system that allocates controls, and bills groups and visitors for use of services. That technology is the communications accounting system. It is the customer and financial control point of an on-property network. The Emergence of Communications Accounting Systems Communications accounting systems create on-premise technology service providers. These systems identify billable activity on a network as it occurs, they apply local pricing policy, and cut invoices or post charges to financial and property management systems. They operate at the boundary between the on-property network and the broader Internet or the telephone network. They are like a toll-booth on a freeway. If you use the “digital highway” then you will pay a toll at the on-ramp. Their position allows billing to occur on the property, at the Internet’s edge, and not from distant Internet service providers and web sites. With event-based communications accounting systems, convention and show managers become local resellers of communications bandwidth and network based content and services. Their communications accounting system enables the independent aggregation and reservation and delivery of a number of digital services to visiting groups and individuals.
The Event Manger’s Strategic Technology Question Property owners and managers have a unique opportunity in Internet communications and broadband access. Here’s why: they own or control the local real estate and its network infrastructure. They therefore own or heavily control the final “yards” of a visitor’s access to telephone and broadband Internet. They therefore have choices about which technologies to control and which content and services to aggregate for their visitors. They can choose to independently aggregate and locally provision and bill for Internet content and services. They can choose to own or outsource technology components and services. They can choose to control communications accounting systems and billing. The property managers first important strategic decision is the decision to control the event communications accounting system and therefore directly control network and Internet related revenues, profit margins, and cost allocations. About the Author: Ron Tarro is President/CEO of SDD, Inc. SDD is a telephone and Internet communications software provider based in Delray Beach, Florida. (www.sddsystems.com). Mr. Tarro was formerly a senior member of Ernst & Young Management Consulting’s Internet and telecommunications strategy group. |
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