Boosting Meeting Value and ROI with Interactive Response Technology

In the current challenging economic climate, organizations are increasingly requiring that employees and partners spend wisely and justify expenditures. One area in which organizations need to be sure their investments provide real value are group activities such as company meetings, training sessions, focus groups, sales meetings, entertainment events, and industry conferences.

In a blog about his article "Focusing on the Value of Meetings" in an October issue of Association Forum, Option Technologies President Mark A. Fite states, "Today, a significant percentage of meetings are poorly designed and lack even minimal assessment. These events rightfully draw criticism from both inside and outside the organization." He adds that measuring technologies can help meeting professionals alleviate such criticism by proving the value of their meetings to concerned stakeholders. 

Audience response system technologies can improve the effectiveness and therefore the value of meetings and other events by engaging audience members in interactive activities such as:

• pre and post-meeting knowledge assessment
• measuring learning or knowledge transfer
• automation of meeting evaluations (smile sheets)
• measuring the use of new skills or information after the meeting
• measuring meeting outcomes and organizational impact
• interactive polling 

The data that these measuring systems provide can help event planners and presenters prepare and execute meetings that drive change and create value. Event organizers can also better target their presentations to the specific needs and challenges of the audience members.

Interactive audience response systems provide the tools and technologies to measure meeting effectiveness and subsequently improve and measure meeting ROI. These response systems normally consist of several components:

• wireless keypads to transmit audience responses
• audience response software which receives the audience input and integrates it into a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation in real time
• some interactive response systems offer add-on modules to help you customize your audience response solution to your specific application needs

In addition to measuring meeting effectiveness, many companies continue to turn to interactive response systems for the following reasons:

• Quick preparation of interactive presentations. This means you can be up and running quickly with minimal training. You can instantly create interactive polling slides or convert regular PowerPoint slides to interactive slides. Interactive PowerPoint slides are simply standard PowerPoint slides to which you add polling objects.

• Easy-to-use software and hardware. PowerPoint presentations run normally with no additional steps. Polling slides are integrated into the regular PowerPoint slides, and you navigate through them as you would a regular PowerPoint presentation. Interactive keypads are durable and simple to use and polling results are instantly displayed.

• Easy and reliable data analysis. Polling can be displayed according to age, gender, or other demographics and in a variety of formats. Data is stored in a relational database and easily exported to Microsoft Excel or Access for analysis.

You can learn more about improving the ROI of your next meeting by clicking the button below.