Case Studies
Issue No. 42 - August/September 2008
Simple steps lead to the main event
Web entrepreneur Chris Herrmann has invested hard-learned knowledge in his My Booking Manager online event management service and his experience is a useful working model for software developers.
His company, Infotec Communications, spawned flagship product My Booking Manager from specialized employee registration work for Qantas Airways more than six years ago.
Chris saw an opportunity to create a more generic, do-it-yourself product to cater for wider range of clients who wanted to manage their events of all kinds - conferences, seminars, training workshops, trade shows.
Currently, 70% of MBM revenue is generated outside SA, with 30% of revenue generated internationally.
“The attraction of MBM is best summed up by a high-profile organization who said: ‘We really need to bring ourselves into the twenty first century’,” Chris says.
“Clients recognize that processing fax, phone and email registrations and payments is quite outdated. An online registration presence not only supports a progressive image, it is more convenient for customers and saves enormous administrative time behind the scenes.
MBM’s target market is organisations which attempt to manage functions themselves because they cannot justify the cost of employing a professional conference organiser (PCO).
Often, however, the in-house event manager is tied to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, manually processing registrations, payments, sending tax invoices and reminders.
“And despite increasing sensitivity to security issues, customer’s credit card details are typically processed and stored without the encrypted security offered by online transactions,” Chris says.
“By contrast, MBM manages the process automatically, freeing up administrative resources. The product is delivered as a web-based service which
means clients avoid the usual hassles of installing and upgrading software.”
Chris had a vision of how M...
