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Bottom-line management for event planners

Business in Vancouver - Meeting Places

2001/2002

By Christopher Pollon

Two hours before the product launch, the executive walks into a theme-décor-rated auditorium and stops in his tracks. "This is wrong," he tells his shaken underlings. "Where are all the roses I wanted?"

For most event and meeting planners, such last-minute crises are part of the job. But while sudden on-site crises are beyond their control planners can still do many things to ensure everyone - including themselves and suppliers - leave the event happy. Almost all of those involve budget management...

"Budgeting (success) comes from experience dealing with your suppliers and knowing your pricing so you can create ballpark figures for a client," says Denise Dickson, president of Vancouver's Create Your Own Events.

In addition to planning corporate events, Dickson conducts seminars for corporate employees on how to plan and budget their own events.

"Having really good communication with the suppliers, so that they understand exactly what they must do and for how much, helps you not go over budget," she says.

Dickson presents a budget to a client only after she has tentatively booked every supplier needed, ensuring the client knows exactly what they will get and for how much. This way there are no unpleasant surprises when the master bill is tallied for such expensive services as catering, AV or lighting.

When it comes to last-minute add-ons, Dickson tries to be accommodating. "That's my job. We try to accommodate everything the client needs before and even during the event, if it's humanly possible," she says.

A dramatic example of the client accommodation is Dickson's planning work for Bentall Capital's employee/family picnic last August. Two weeks before the Egyptian-themed event was to occur, the number of expected guests ballooned30 per cent. Faced with vastly expanded labour, food and organizational needs, the task of keeping the event under budget seemed unlikely.

"We originally based our budget on the estimated number of people we thought would attend," says Bentall Capital's manager of human recourses Michele Ng.

"Within two days Denise scrambled and gave new figures. She was very honest with us and that was what I was relying on her for, to be honest and forthcoming about what the costs are realistically going to be."

When the revised budget was still too high, Dickson had to scale back the event plan to accommodate the cost of more people.

The planning skills that made the Bentall Capital event a success are the most important skills for any event planner trying to control a budget, says event management instructor Ted Wykes of the University Colege of the Cariboo in Kamloops.