«Festival and Events Industry» - Great Essay Sample

The profession of event planning business is quite tricky and challenging. This is because planning an event requires a lot of sacrifice, dedication and commitment towards making it successful. Setting up a wedding as an event is an overwhelming task due to the presence of numerous competitors. However, for one to gain a competitive edge in business it is vital to provide excellent services, which will ensure customer satisfaction and colossal returns on investment.

Brief of the event and purpose

Junebug wedding Planners is a London based enterprise that designs and plans weddings for clients. They are planning an event to manage an exhibition to display the work of Junebug wedding planning company to customers and increase sales prospects. It is known for organizing unforgettable wedding cerebrations that exude a modern and fresh image. Its expertise ranges from upscale society weddings at special destinations to cutting-edge artistic events for celebrities in the film industry and music luminaries. Junebug wedding planners offers support to every one of the fortunate clients in the selective roster. The managing Director of Junebug is a frequent editorial contributor to a host of television shows events and wedding publications. Many competitors admire the images of Junebug wedding planners are frequently seen in leading bridal magazines.

Junebug wedding planners will have to use technology in offering some explanation on what transpires in the company in applying for service from Junebug. This will involve sales activities, and customer service. The key objectives of the event will be to find new customers, attract new clients and win new customers as well as to nurture and maintain the customers that the company already has. Managing the relationships among customers is about using information technology systems to capture and track an organization’s customer needs (Anderson & Kerr, 2001). The company will seek to entice former clients to bring referrals to the company.

Currently, customers have launched several complaints that customer issues are not solved in time. There has been a delay in answering their queries. This has resulted into loss of sales and late customer deliveries. This could be possibly a resultant of the different operations culture of Junebug wedding three departments. The difference in the operations culture within the three departments came up because of independence in their operations. This is because the head of each function was given the authority to grow to achieve rapid expansion of the business. Junebug Company has decided to improve customer service by reorganizing and putting all the customers facing activities into one Customer Service Department for the Junebug UK office. The department will have a new head in charge. The benefits of having a superior Customer service department is increased efficiency in the services offered to customers. The customers will be given extra and splendid attention, and this will lead to customer satisfaction. The overall benefit is increased profitability of the enterprise.

Key Participants of the event

The implementation of this event will involve the in-house employees. Great employees are always the backbone of any business (Anderson & Kerr, 2001). The set strategy and the tools given to them to get the job done right can enhance employee performance. The employees will have a responsibility of complying appropriately with June bug’s Customer Relationship Management system. This will be possible when they understand what information has to be captured, and why it is essential. It will also involve consultants. Consultants will bring their knowledge of enterprise-wide processes and systems and how building good relationships can benefit the company. They will also provide their skilled resources towards implementing the planned event. With help from the consultants and research analysts, Junebug weddings will come up with an enticing vision destined for transformation of the enterprises (Gentle, 2002). The firm has sufficient in-house resources for Spearheading.

A steering committee is required in the implementation of the project. The executive sponsor will chair the steering committee. It will include representatives from all the key customer service agent groups. These groups are customer support, field assistance, office coordination and customer orders. There will be people from IT and the company administration.

Timeline of the event

The event is stipulated to begin immediately and take a period of 2 weeks to completion starting 1st to 14th of September 2012 at in Drapers hall in the City of London. Drapers hall is richly adorned with works of art, and there guest will not fail to admire magnificent painted ceilings and beautiful furnishings. Performance indicators for the event will be derived from customer responses. One such indicator will be known when customers recommend the quality of weddings organized by Junebug .Besides, Customers will start showing satisfaction and praising the services offered to them in terms of entertainment and technological support. An important revelation of success of the event is when the Departments will make decisions as one unit. This is termed as decision support between departments regarding various customer issues. The project will be considered a success when there will be increased processing of customer orders and the resolution of other customers issues are given due attention. Definitely all these will lead to overall enterprise profitability indicating a success of the Junebug wedding planners.

Critical Path Analysis and PERT

Programme Evaluation and review Techniques (PERT) help to manage and schedule events .Critical Path Analysis (CPA)  also help to identify tasks which must be completed on time  and also those that can be delayed  and  for a while if resources need to be re –allocated to catch up  with tasks not done. They help to minimize the costs of running events and also help in ensuring events are completed within a minimal time possible.  Gantt Charts helps to plan all tasks that must be completed as part of the event. They also act as a basis for event preparation of a schedule, and resource planning. During the management of a project, they allow you to monitor.

Important skills in event planning

To be successful in event planning, the business requires marvelous skills such as happiness, joy and creativity (Reynolds 2002). Such skills are of the essence for any event planner, because you need to interact and create an excellent rapport with your clients. When clients are satisfied and delighted with your services, they are more likely to recommend other people to your premise. Just like any other business, the planning an event requires excellent administrative and accountability skills. You need to conduct a SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of your business. This will help you to identify potential challenges and ensure growth and development of the business. It is imperative to conduct a thorough market survey, and gather adequate information regarding the business .Besides it is exceptionally beneficial to adhere to government regulations to avoid any problems with the law.

For one to be successful in planning a wedding, “knowledge” is the key ingredient. For example, you must have information of the latest trends in fashion and be aware of all upcoming events. In addition, a wedding planner should attend all weddings planned by competitors to study their operations and capitalize on their weak areas. Furthermore, a wedding planner must be unique, and have the potential of coming up with innovative and creative ideas of making the reception glamorous, such as providing gift bags .A wedding planner must possess time management skills, exercise self control and have a high sense of self discipline. In addition, it is essential for a wedding planner to be neat and decent in their dressing code, and keep their offices sparkling with an aura of prestige and elegance. This will attract prospective customers to your business and give you a competitive edge over your competitors.

Advertising is a form of marketing communication tool that a company uses to achieve both financial and non-financial goals. Advertising as a paid non-personal message to a selected audience through mass media aimed to achieve a company’s goal .Advertisements affects the consumer behaviors. A good advert aims at attaining a higher brand loyalty, creating brand awareness and increases its market share. Currently, there are new methods of advertising such as use of audio media e.g. radio, print media e.g. magazines and newspaper, internet etc. The advertising tool used is the socio media such as Facebook and YouTube. Through facebook, many customers and their friends would be reached. The company targets a the young people in the age bracket of 20 to 40 years and in most cases this group uses face book as their major way of interaction. Nevertheless, advertising requires a high level of competence in order for the advert to have an impact on consumer behaviour. In order to impact on the consumption behaviour of the market, the management has to come up with appropriate strategies that will take care of customer interests and desires an aspect that will convince target consumers to shift towards the service provided by the company.