British Columbia Medical Association

The Client:

The BC Medical Association is the professional association representing more than 95% of all doctors currently in British Columbia. With an 8,000 physician membership BCMA is the voice of the profession on medical, political and advocacy fronts.

The Challenge:

BCMA had used online registration before, but like many organizations had built an application using internal resources. “We had something our IT department set up in-house that our members could use to register online, but had some glitches, was not aesthetically pleasing, and was relatively cumbersome both for the end-user as well as internally to make changes to, and extract information from. It was something we had struggled with year after year.” said Lorie Janzen, Executive Assistant.

The Experience:

“Effective Registration has greatly helped our organization save an incredible amount of time and money through the lead-up and execution of our event. We’ve eliminated many repetitive and manual tasks and streamlined the handling of payments by credit card. For previous events, I have relied on five colleagues to update website information, run reports, ensure data integrity, process receipts, etc. Now I am able to accomplish everything myself, and have immediate access to review up-to-date information, with the added ability to download reports instantly into Excel.

“The busy lead-up to our event was made so much easier, and eliminated the use of several other colleagues time, some of whom are consultants.

“I always felt that this was a shared effort to help make all aspects of my event registration a success, and simplify the work required by the registrants to make online registration a positive and easy to follow process.”

Lorie Janzen
Executive Assistant, BCMA

Mills Basics

The Client:

Mills Basics is a member of a national network of dealers with each one being 100% Canadian owned and operated. Since 1976 Basics dealers have been servicing the office product needs of consumers and corporate buyers. Some of the largest organizations in Canada are served by Basics Office Products and with the national network of dealers they can serve Canadians from coast to coast.

The Challenge:

Each year, Vancouver based Mills Basics hosts a trade show and catalogue launch for their corporate clients. Managing the registration process for this event had proven to be time consuming, expensive and inefficient.

The Experience:

“It was a different experience working with Effective Registration. They listened to our needs, were responsive to our suggestions and worked closely with us in making our registration successful.

“The benefits of using their service were significant. We eliminated printing and mailing costs for paper based invitations while issuing 50% more invitations using the email RSVP feature. With the expanded reach of invitations our overall attendance increased by 20% and, by using the automated pre-event reminders, our expected to actual attendance improved from 58% in 2006 to more than 70% in 2007. Also, the number of clients represented in 2007 increased 50% compared to the previous years.

“By electronically collecting and storing registration information we were able to easily monitor the process and plan our event accordingly. And, by asking targeted business questions we were able to understand our clients’ needs and ensure our sales-force was prepared in advance.

“Overall, our net cost of managing the registration process was lower than prior years – with higher attendance from more clients and more detailed information to plan future events – a success on all fronts!”

Jenny Garden
Manager, Marketing, Mills Basics