Cognizant

Background
Goals
Approach
Results
Looking Forward
Products Used

70%

reduction in manual work using integrations

90%

increase in event data captured in Salesforce

65%

improvement in event data health

Cognizant is a leading multinational technology services and consulting firm that offers a broad spectrum of services, including digital solutions, technology, consulting, and operations across various industries. Clay Botkin, Senior Director - Marketing Technology, Customer Data & Campaign Operations, and Ashley Sutton, Corporate Communications Associate - Global Sponsorships & Events, help manage Cognizant’s robust global events program, which includes conferences, trade shows, and customer engagements. These events help showcase Cognizant’s offerings while providing opportunities to interact with clients and partners in order to strengthen industry relationships.

BACKGROUND

Overcoming data challenges and inconsistencies

With events accounting for 65% of client engagement through Cognizant’s global marketing campaigns, they initially faced difficulties with manual data transfer to martech platforms like Pardot and Salesforce. These events are vital for enabling lead generation as a critical requirement for marketing campaigns, so this often resulted in redundant workflows across multiple teams to ensure data consistency. “That was probably our biggest challenge in ensuring we were following procedures and guidelines to push everyone through the event cycle,” Ashley explains.

GOALS

Streamlining lead management, reporting, and data analysis became critical. “Data is not just our biggest challenge, but our biggest priority,” Clay shares. “Data is the focal point of measuring engagement and all of the high value touchpoints we have to understand what the leads and ROI are.” He notes the previous processes were prone to errors in campaign syncs and often resulted in the loss of critical data, impacting real-time reporting for their stakeholders.

Achieving data accuracy and efficiency with custom integrations

To solve for this, Cognizant leveraged custom integrations with Cvent to fully automate the end-to-end event management and data capture process. To develop advanced, two-way integrations with systems like Salesforce and Pardot, they worked in tandem with the Cognizant Sales and Marketing IT team. First, they evaluated different stakeholder requirements and touchpoints across various event types, formats, and sizes. “The challenging piece was we have stakeholders with very different needs from multiple regions on separate teams,” Clay explains. He says they relied on prioritization exercises to help determine key requirements across these teams while also accounting for critical internal processes like event nomination workflows.

APPROACH

As a result of these exercises, they created a custom integration that could meet several complex criteria. “We developed our own custom integration that married with what Cvent was already doing and the workflows they had in place that empowered their integrations,” Clay explains. This integration allows Cognizant to synchronize data from invitation lists, registrations, and engagement metrics. “It’s primarily focused on Cvent passing information into Salesforce and then Salesforce disseminating that out, whether that’s triggering workflows in Pardot, dumping it into Snowflake for that data visualization, or passing it to Salesforce Data Cloud to develop that 360 view of the customer,” Clay explains.

Salesforce integration mockup illustration Cvent

This automation includes syncing contacts collected in a custom Salesforce nomination tool to a Cvent event’s invitation list. This connects registration data to participant statuses in real time for accurate, up-to-date metrics. Since Ashley’s division works regularly with Clay’s team, she finds these processes to be integral to event success. “We work regularly to ensure our team is up to date on any new systems, protocols, or new ways of doing events,” she says.

Since Cognizant launched the integration, time-consuming manual work has decreased by nearly 70%, event data health has improved by 65%, and there has been a 90% increase in event data captured in Salesforce – with 49% of that data coming from Cvent alone. “We heavily lean on reporting to enable our stakeholders and track event progress and impact,” Ashley notes.

Leveraging Cvent to manage the entire event lifecycle

They now leverage these integrations in tandem with a suite of Cvent solutions, including Registration, Attendee Hub, Meeting Request Forms, Premium Access Portal, OnArrival, Passkey, and Surveys. All these products are fully integrated with Salesforce, enabling Cognizant's event planners, field marketers, and campaign operations team members to effectively plan, execute, and measure the success of events and webinars. “That’s where the magic happens,” Clay says. “It’s when we start to see all of that come together and derive those insights we wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Ashley outlines several Cvent solutions as being critical to her team’s success, starting with the Meeting Request Form (MRF). This automated solution provides a centralized platform for managing all global event requests in a fully branded portal. The MRF can be tailored to unique requirements with custom fields or data points. Automated workflows help streamline the procurement process, eliminating manual tasks and reducing errors. On-demand reporting offers valuable insights into the events being requested to better allocate planning resources. Additionally, Cognizant uses the MRF for reporting on events not managed by the Global Events team, such as certain Field Marketing and Healthcare/Life Sciences events. This valuable tool enhances visibility into the scope of the team's events across the globe.

Additionally, event templates within the Registration solution have improved efficiencies for the Cognizant team. They can quickly build event registration pages and sites that comply with Cognizant's policies while also offering style varieties. This enables stakeholders to choose from various design options when creating events, including customized banners and designs. Other features like data tags help improve the speed of the planning process. Ashley explains, “I love using data tags because it just makes things a lot more efficient when building out our sites, sending out emails, and so on.” Overall, this makes the event build-out process much more streamlined.

Cognizant case study site designer image

Other solutions like Attendee Hub allow Cognizant to create engaging attendee experiences, no matter the event type, format, or size. The Attendee Hub provides a cohesive experience for attendees, allowing them to build their agenda, view session and speaker details, and stay updated with push notifications. Networking features like one-to-one messaging, attendee recommendations, and discussions enable peer connections. Built to scale for Cognizant’s diverse program, both the web platform and Event App are fully customizable. They offer highly branded experiences with custom cards and pages to highlight key information and cross-promote content, thereby boosting engagement.

For example, a large global webinar was recently hosted in Attendee Hub. The Cognizant team used Cvent Studio to build and manage a fully branded digital experience. The event garnered over 140 registrations, with an attendee login rate of almost 50% – one of the most successful Cognizant webinars to date. Real-time engagement features like live polling, chat, and Q&A enhance participation. Embedded surveys also provide valuable attendee feedback and, when combined with engagement scoring, allows Cognizant to tailor their post-event follow-up more effectively.

They also utilize Cvent OnArrival to create a seamless check-in and badging experience onsite. “I’m a big fan of OnArrival,” Ashley shares. OnArrival allows event managers to facilitate a quick check-in experience, whether at the registration desk or at standalone mobile kiosks. This eliminates long lines and mitigates the need to pre-print badges, which often results in wasted badge stock that directly impacts costs. Session scanning and attendance tracking through RFID or NFC badges not only capture session attendance, but allow Cognizant to monitor capacity and track attendance in real time via the OnArrival app. “I think it’s the ease of OnArrival and how it makes it so easy for an attendee to come in, check themselves in – especially in kiosk mode – and we move on,” Ashley adds. “This enables us to do that and really just keeps the registration process onsite flowing.”

Cvent OnArrival check-in ipad being used by blonde woman

RESULTS

Cognizant’s cohesive tech stack for improved lead management

Clay says the key to Cognizant’s success lies in bringing these technologies together into a seamless tech stack. “Because of what our tech stack looks like as a whole, our ability to harmonize this data across all of our different touchpoints is immensely valuable,” he explains. In fact, Cognizant has successfully managed 14,800 registrants across various events with Cvent, including key decision-makers from elite accounts. They’ve tracked a 96% audience retention rate and the integration has significantly improved the quality of their marketing qualified leads (MQLs). “For an organization heavily focused on relationship development, that engagement rate is so important and it really helps with our ROI,” Clay adds. “As far as the whole lead to revenue process, it’s much easier with the integration and not having to rely on a process that takes weeks.”

"Being able to integrate Cvent with our CRM or Salesforce has really given us a unique understanding of our customers that we didn’t previously have. Being able to have close to a 360-degree understanding of what that customer looks like and how we’re influencing pipeline through these events is immensely valuable."

This is largely because the Salesforce integration and campaign details provided sales and marketing teams with detailed member status of prospects, along with scoring and campaign attribution. The end-to-end integration enables Cognizant to build better customer segments and profiles for global marketing campaigns, enhancing existing client engagement for the sales teams. Clay notes, “Being able to have close to a 360-degree understanding of what that customer looks like and how we interact with them, and how we’re influencing pipeline through these events, is immensely valuable.”

With on-demand reporting, stakeholders can now make fully informed decisions in real time to maximize and prioritize event commitments, while sales teams have access to the data needed for timely and more personalized follow-ups. Clay reiterates the importance of actioning this data through the right integrations. He says, “When we look at Cvent and all the things they’ve been able to offer – from Meeting Request Forms to insights post-event – being able to integrate that with our CRM or Salesforce, or pushing it into Snowflake for that data capture and visualization, has really given us a unique understanding of our customers that we didn’t previously have.”

LOOKING FORWARD

A look at the future of Cognizant and Cvent

This integration and associated Cvent solutions have had a profoundly positive impact on Cognizant's business. Ashley notes they’ve also increased visibility and engagement with senior leadership as a result. She explains, “It’s especially helpful because it allows us to be able to submit that information from the events back into Salesforce, and that information goes to leadership and a number of different stakeholders so it’s a great way for them to be able to measure and look at ROI.”

Ashley and Clay look forward to further enhancing Cognizant’s use of Cvent solutions to power their global events program. “What’s next for us is continuing to leverage the Cvent platform and enhance our integrations,” Clay says. He also mentions looking forward to exploring how to maximize usage of new features and solutions within the Cvent product portfolio. Ultimately, events are indispensable for Cognizant, allowing the company to build and nurture valuable relationships while fostering collaboration within the industry.