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CONTACT ADVOCATE
www.contactadvocate.com
Case:
Contact Advocate (CA) offers event planning and management services for businesses spread across various industries.
The events can be held locally, regionally or nationally and can be business meetings, events or conferences.
With a large number of events to be managed, Contact Advocate required an all-inclusive & secure event planning and
management system that would help the company meet event specific requirements in real time.
The company was looking for a custom online application that would address its business needs within limited budget.
In short, the requirement was for an innovative and still a cost effective user-friendly system.
Solution:
MachroTech totally believed in what Contact Advocate was bringing to the marketplace and thus MachroTech partnered
with CA as the technology provider. Keeping in mind the system requirements and CA’s interest to have a cost
effective solution, MachroTech opted to develop the system in coordination with its Offshore Development Center in
India. Our Project Manager based in the US coordinated directly with CA’s executive director and staff to understand
the user requirements. The Project Manager then liaised with our offshore development team in India that was in
charge of development, testing and deployment.
The Contact Advocate tools allow organizations, meeting planners and business owners to promote and manage events
easily and effectively. The system offers four main sections viz. Visitor, User, Organizer and Administrator.
The Administrator of the system can fix commission rates to be charged from organizers, based on the number of
registrations per event. The routine activities of creating organizers accounts and giving them permissions for
using the system are also included. The system allows the organizer to create and manage events in one place.
Along with the regular event management services of providing event details, online registration and payment
facilities, MachroTech’s offshore development team has developed some exclusive features within the system.
The system offers a proprietary event matching engine which matches events to users profile stored in the database.
It automatically sends emails to users letting them know when and where the events are held that match their interest.
Another unique feature is the InfiNet Network. This is a contact matching system that dynamically matches users to one
another based on the famous “Six Degrees of Separation” principle. It does so by intelligently finding the common link
between the users address books and determining the best path to contact the desired individual.
In this way, it bridges the gap between the users. And, all this is done securely with the users having the complete
control over who they want to help make a business connection and how the connection is facilitated. As a User of the
system, one can buy memberships, register online for events, search and contact leads and stay updated about various
events of personal interests.
Results:
MachroTech’s Global Software Delivery approach enabled CA to take the software to market in less than 10 weeks.
One event that CA promoted recently, the CT Marketing Group event in Stamford, Connecticut drew over 200 attendees
and 30 walk ups despite a snow storm! That is because the event leveraged online registration and email marketing to
promote and manage the event. Ultimately, the cancellation rates were extremely low and the satisfaction rates high
because of the user-friendliness of the system and its tools.
Some interesting statistics gathered from management personnel:
- Attendance expectations were surpassed by 100% using the Contact Advocate tools
- Actual revenue surpassed expected revenue by 75%
- The cancellation rate was less than 2%
- Walk-up represented an additional 30%
- Overall satisfaction of the online registration process was high
One attendee has been quoted as saying "I made 3 connections at one of the events that has paid for my entire membership."
Contact Advocate is one of many MachroTech’s onshore-offshore software development success stories.
MachroTech is determined to add to clients’ bottom line and help clients make the most out of their IT investments
through creative onshore-offshore development and delivery models.
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