Case Studies

Exposition Services      Franchising, Legal Services

Region: North America
Industry: Exposition Services

Customer Profile

Our Client is a leading national service contractor serving more than 750 expositions and hundreds of other events held annually throughout the United States and Canada. They provide a full range of services for expositions, show organizers and their participating exhibitors. They also provide services for conventions, meeting planners, corporate events and corporate exhibit managers.

Background

Their system was running its operations on an old AS 400 system. Most if not all of the business operations communications were accomplished through emails/phone calls. Due to the nature of the communications, both phone and email, there was no accurate way to save and store the details of those communications. Further, there was no way to compile, analyze and report what had transpired. Much information was just plain lost, necessitating recalling and re-emailing. Needless to say there was no storage of the important details. This resulted in highly inefficient operations; the delivery model was unworkable and unprofitable. Working with us three key processes were identified: graphics design and delivery, carpet delivery and operations.

Graphics Design and Delivery

They manage more than 1100 shows per year and more than 80% of the shows include graphics design and delivery for the shows. Show Management and Account Executives’ communications regarding the graphics design were accomplished with numerous emails in bits and pieces and phone calls. From the graphics management standpoint information was fragmented with no way to compile, consolidate, store and retrieve the appropriate data. This caused an enormous problem in operations and delivery. For the tracking of Graphics Work Orders, central to the business, Show Management had to rely on personal communication with graphics management. Having multiple locations and deliveries, the graphics resource utilization was to say the least not optimal, highly inefficient and costly.

Carpet Delivery

Most of the shows had requirements for carpets in multiple sizes and colors. The same issues of communications as graphics design and delivery plagued the department. Critical information was received in bits and pieces and there was no means by which to compile, consolidate, store and retrieve it. There were specific requirements for carpets for certain exhibitors based on their premises layout and size. This again caused inefficient operations, wasting time and costing money. The operations for the delivery of carpet were inefficient and time consuming at the show sites.

Operations

There was no reporting on upcoming show schedules and operations had to rely on the manual population of spreadsheets for maintaining information related to shows. This caused huge issues with resource management. During peak work times the personnel were over scheduled and at other times were underutilized--terrible resource allocations. Also, the distribution of work among locations was difficult due to the lack of tracking. There were virtually no unified information flow, storage and retrieval of management and operating data.

Business Challenge

Due to no unified flow of information and lack of communication, productivity suffered greatly inhibiting profitability and causing disruptions in the delivery of services. Operations could not perform in an efficient manner nor perform the services required in a timely and accurate fashion, again adversely affecting profitability.

Solution

We worked with them and implement an initial pilot project consisting of the three key business processes. Once the pilot was successful they upgraded to SharePoint Server from the legacy AS 400 system.

The first two business processes were automated via Workflow based on Windows Workflow Foundation as part of SharePoint. This allowed a single data entry point and unified the flow of information. Tracking the work orders became possible via simple reporting in SharePoint. A complete and integrated information flow was managed via this process.

For the third business process, operations, the information was synced from the legacy AS 400 application into SharePoint and custom web parts were built for reporting and managing the show and customer Information. This enabled much better show schedule management for the operations team. Also, each show is like a separate project for the company where different teams collaborate and execute their operations. Having collaboration sites for individual shows greatly improved the performance and efficiency for different teams working on the show. Labor costs were driven down significantly.

Benefits

By redesigning and implementing these three key business processes successfully, they have the confidence to move forward with upgrading entire system and automating other processes with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Improved Efficiency and Accuracy

Having a central repository, unified information flow and automation of the business processes enabled a huge improvement in efficiency and accuracy in operations and delivery.

Improved Reporting and Resource Management

Accurate tracking of all work orders across all locations has enabled better management of resources. Managers can make informed decisions now with consolidated, accurate and timely information. Labor performance and cost reduction has been greatly increased.

Accurate and timely information storage and retrieval

Having a central repository for critical data from the business processes has helped in the reuse of that data and management of the operations. The management use of this information now actually drives the operations efficiently.

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