MCI USA

MCI USA is a global marketing and engagement agency that provides strategic solutions and professional services to corporations, associations, and nonprofits through event management, strategic planning, marketing and communications, housing and registration services, and technology. “MCI has been around a little more than 35 years, and we’re a global engagement company with 60 offices in 31 countries around the globe,” offers Chris Williams, Senior Vice President of Registration and Housing. MCI’s offers end-to-end services for events of all sizes, from small meetings to large-scale conferences and trade shows. 

Chris also makes note of how current macroeconomic factors are shifting how businesses operate. “Priorities have changed,” he explains. “Many of us have had to do more with less and technology allows us to do that.” He credits the partnership with Cvent in helping to support MCI’s continued growth through the use of technology. “By and large, I feel like the results speak for themselves and we’re heading in the right direction,” he says.

GOALS

In fact, MCI’s partnership with Cvent helped power their most recent technology innovation, OneSystem Plus. “The development of this system has been an ongoing effort working in conjunction with our partnership with Cvent,” explains Chris. “We are offering our clients all the benefits – all the features and functionality – that Cvent offers, and then we have built a layer of software that sits on top of the Cvent platform.”

He identifies three areas where this solution was designed to support critical requirements. First, they needed to shorten the turnaround time for a registration site to go live by more than 50%. In addition, they wanted to enable clients to manage parts of their events themselves, such as adding discount codes, modifying schedules, and sending email communications. Last, they needed to provide their clients with a cohesive platform that could support events all of sizes and types – all within one system.

In addition, Cvent Passkeyprovides important opportunities to automate processes and drive internal efficiencies. The room block management solution supports complex requirements while saving valuable man hours. Passkey can be mapped to the hotel to ensure all reservations are automatically synced, taking work off of MCI’s team and creating a single, unified process for registrants.

With the use of a Cvent-developed Software Developers Kit and API integrations, OneSystem Plus is able to support complex event management functionality for their clients’ unique needs. “This partnership has allowed our development team to create features and functionality that are very specific to the things that are needed by the clients we service, and it’s just been fantastic,” says Chris. The combined solutions together allow MCI to manage complex group registrations, multi-tier allotments, attendee and exhibitor portals, and complex session “access control.” They can also handle more specific continuing education functionality and empower lead retrieval using AI. In addition, they’ve added a customizable business intelligence feature. “We’ve built this functionality in a way that it can be reused from event to event or client to client,” Chris explains. “Nobody is doing this in the marketplace that we’re servicing.” 

These enhancements have allowed MCI to scale their event management processes for clients without requiring technical expertise. “Using the tools in Cvent’s core platforms, we now set up and maintain registration sites and reservation sites without technical employees, unless an integration is required or the client wants a feature or functionality that does not exist in the core platforms or our proprietary technology layer,” Chris explains.  

The results have been impressive, saving hours of manual labor across more than 250 events. Within those events, they’ve managed more than 190,000 registrations. In addition, they’ve overseen 100 housing events featuring 43,000 registrations. MCI has also successfully reduced event launch timelines by 58%. Chris adds, “It’s rare for an organizer of a large, complex event to be able to set up and maintain significant portions of the registration and reservation sites, so our partnership and the technology we’ve implemented have revolutionized the registration and housing industry.” 

Shaping event management technology development

Chris maintains that MCI’s work with Cvent has been important to the success of the business. “The partnership has been critical because we work with the C-suite, we work closely with our partner team, and then we’re fortunate to have access to the product developers who are shaping the software at Cvent,” he says. MCI is now transferring multiple complex housing events into Passkey, working closely with their dedicated team at Cvent to provide feedback and suggestions. Recently, they managed 31 city-wide events with complex room types and attendee types in Passkey. They have a projected 50% increase in Passkey events and have helped influence features like the custom widget framework. “Having access to the right people at Cvent is an invaluable piece of the partnership,” notes Chris. “We don’t take it for granted, and we try to nurture and grow that partnership to maximize it the best we can.”

MCI also relies on several other Cvent tools to help support their portfolio of client events. Chris notes, “You have access to an entire suite of tools with Cvent that is bigger than any other suite of tools you can get anywhere.” For example, Cvent’s Meetings Management solution allows MCI to help organizations more seamlessly manage meetings and events. Within Meetings Management, they’re able to leverage features designed to automate planning, workflows, budgeting, reporting, and implementation. 

Moreover, leveraging the Budget Module ensures clients can track costs per event, across events, per vendor, and so on to provide visibility into cost savings and event ROI. MCI is able to use the Access Portal to house event reports, survey reports, MRFs, event calendars, and more. They can set visibility parameters to ensure stakeholders see the data that is most relevant to them while enabling access to real-time reporting. This means stakeholders can self-serve to view the data they need without waiting on MCI’s team to manually pull and send reports.

Chris notes that the integrated nature of Cvent’s product suite is a key differentiator. “To have all of these tools available in an integrated fashion is gigantic,” he says. For example, registration data is automatically synced with Cvent’s Attendee Hub platform. This means if an attendee’s information is updated in registration, it automatically updates in Attendee Hub with no manual list pulls or data syncs required. This saves invaluable time for the MCI team by empowering attendees to self-manage their own registration.”

RESULTS & LOOKING FORWARD

A future of innovation: MCI and Cvent

Chris notes MCI’s partnership with Cvent has not only resulted in business success, but also contributes to the future growth of the agency. “We feel like we’ve got the best offering of anyone out there, and we see nothing but upside, growth, and expansion,” he says. By combining Cvent’s robust framework with custom solutions, MCI has achieved their goals of streamlining operations, improving analytics, and crafting experiences that exceed client expectations. 

In looking at the near future, Chris points to Cvent’s own product roadmap as evidence of what’s to come. “Cvent continues to have a very well thought out roadmap by adding features and functionality that provide opportunities to bring efficiencies, and that’s exciting for everyone,” he says. He adds that new AI-driven solutions will collectively inspire the industry to push the boundaries of event technology forward. “That’s an area I think we’re going to see some really fantastic improvements that we can all take advantage of,” he notes.

As he reflects on MCI’s continued partnership with Cvent, Chris emphasizes the importance of the reciprocal nature of that relationship. He explains, “Cvent is listening and asking what the partners need, and how they can continue to improve the platform as a whole so the partners can get more success.” This in turn positively impacts MCI’s clients. “Partnering with Cvent allows us to grow the relationships with our customers, grow revenue, grow stickiness…do all of the things we need to do in order to be successful and grow our own business,” he insists. “And as a result, that’s exactly what we’re preparing for – heavy growth.”