What’s Involved in Planning an Event and Should You Just Hire Out

Business

Written by:

Spread the love

Whether you’re looking to plan a corporate event with some big wigs in attendance, put on a conference for industry veterans to attend or deliver the social event of the season; if it’s not your main job, then it’s a tough ask. 

It’s important to know whether you’re trying to bite off more than you can chew before you make any commitment. Accordingly, here are some thoughts about what’s involved in planning an event and when it’s sensible to hire an event planner instead. 

Have You Created an Event Before?

If you have never put on any kind of event before, then it’s going to be an uphill battle. The level of project management and organization required is considerably beyond what’s needed with other tasks in the office. Unless you already work as a project manager inside the company, then it’ll be completely outside your wheelhouse.

Just thinking, “Well.. how hard can it be?” doesn’t really do proper event planning justice at all!

Is It Just Yourself or Do You Have a Whole Team?

Planning organizations don’t operate as one-person companies. They either have an extended team or they outsource a good deal of the mundane activities to third parties and then manage them. 

They have designers to get the appearance and décor right at the venue itself. A venue booker deals with the booking and other logistics. Someone might deal with the catering depending on how extensive that may be. There’s also someone who deals with booking the keynote speakers, other presenters and people who’ll appear on panels at industry conventions too. 

Whatever the event is, it’s invariably going to be one that would benefit from a team approach and not flying solo. 

Do You Have the Time Available with Your Existing Commitments?

It’s all well and good to agree to put on an industry show or a presentation or corporate event, but do you have the business bandwidth to do it?

What other commitments do you have already, and how much spare time is there in your business day currently? If you’re completely jammed up and you cannot delegate much of your existing role to other people (who also must have the spare bandwidth to take it on), how will you find the time?

Attempting to burn the candle at both ends to find the extra time doesn’t work with planning because it’s detail-oriented where even one important detail missed due to tiredness and it’ll be extremely problematic later. 

On the other hand, hiring excellent event planning companies means you’re in good hands. They have dedicated, skilled teams that are perfectly positioned to deliver on what they promise. There’s a past history of successful corporate, industry and other events that they’ve organized and pulled off successfully to give you confidence in their hiring. 

It’s important to be careful about deciding whether you can manage to put on an event in-house or you should really leave it to the professionals. Don’t make the mistake of overcommitting yourself only to find it’s too much for you but it’s then too late to do anything about it. Make the right decision as early as possible. 

 

 

Leave a Reply