How to Form an Event Management Company

Are You Ready?

Want to start an event management company? Wish to earn those great bucks? First make sure you know where you are You are heading into event planning business where you will need solid social networking and business development skills to survive. Your success in this business will depend upon, not only on your experience and knowledge level but also on your contacts (public relations), negotiating, marketing and entrepreneur skills. Here I should assume that you have been working in the event industry (or sales or marketing industry) for the last couple of years (at least 2 years) and that now you are confident you can find clients for yourself. Just like in any other business, there are certain skills which you must have in you, if you wish to succeed in the event planning business: 1. -You manage people effectively and get the job done. 2. - You know how to manage time and prioritize your tasks. 3. - You can find new and innovative ways to solve problems. 4. - You are good in decision making. You first evaluate your options and then decide. 5. - You know how to talk to clients and close sales. 6. - You have the ability to sell your ideas. 7. - You have the ability to market your services. 8. - You know how to manage cash flows and keep track of financial transactions. 9. - You understand team formation. 10. - You have leadership qualities. 11. - You know how to motivate yourself and others. 12. - You have strong analytical ability and eye for detail. If you wish to excel in the event management field at as faster pace, then get certified. There are many event planning certification which can prove helpful in becoming a certified event planner. Such event management certificates demonstrate competitive distinction and that you have the skills, knowledge, experience and ability to plan and manage a successful event.

Good ideas for starting an event management company:

Step 1: Decide the services you wish to sell

A service is something which is intangible like: wedding planning, party planning, organizing music concerts, fashion shows, conducting MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) etc. Choose those services in which you have a strong hold, in which you have majority of your experience and expertise and which can generate maximum revenue for you. Don't try to be jack of all trades and sell all event planning services one can think of. If majority of your experience is in wedding planning, then wedding planning is best for you. Don't try to get into corporate meetings, just because the market is better. Corporate meetings are different from the weddings in terms of planning, implementation and evaluation. In fact every event is planned, executed and evaluated differently and therefore you can't organize all type of events.

Step 2: Do market research, competitor's analysis and SWOT analysis.

Market Research for Event Management Company Market means your target audience i.e. people who may be interested in your events. It also includes those clients who may be interested in hiring your event management services. If your target audience are least interested in the type of event you organize, then you won't get any audience. Say you want to organize a rock concert in the country of Oman. But people there are least interested in such type of events. It means there is no market for your event in that country. If you organize the event there, it will fail for sure. Similarly if you wish to organize a Christmas Carnival in an area where majority of people are Muslims, then you can't expect many footsteps. Therefore it is very important that you find out in advance who are your target audience (i.e. their age group, sex, qualification, profession, lifestyle, income, liking, disliking, customs, religions, traditions etc), where there live and what are their desires and expectations from your event. To do market research you will have to do survey in the area (town/city/state/country) where you wish to organize the event. If you wish to open a wedding planning company and there are hardly two or three weddings in a year in your area, then selling such type of services is not commercially viable.

Competitors' Analysis Find out:

- who are your competitors - Where they live? - What are their employee base (i.e. number of employees) - Client base (i.e. number of clients) - Market value (i.e. what is their reputation in the market) - Market share (i.e. how much business they have occupied) - Turnover (i.e. annual sales)? - How many events they organize in a year? - Why people attend their events? - What is so special about their events? - How do they get clients and sponsors for their events?

All this will help you in developing a better business plan for your event management company.

SWOT Analysis for Event Management Company SWOT analysis is used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in your event planning venture. In SWOT: 's' stands for strengths, 'w' stands for weaknesses, 'o' stands for opportunities and 'T' stands for threats. Strengths Determine your resources and capabilities and how they can be used against your competition and in favour of your target audience. What advantages do you have? What you can do better than the others?

Weaknesses Determine the resources you lack. Determine the advantages your competitors have. What could you improve? What you should avoid? Opportunities Look at your strengths and determine which opportunities are opened for you. Determine how you can open up even more opportunities by eliminating some of your weaknesses. Threats Changes in external environment (like changes in economy or market trends) or any unfavourable situation can pose threat to your company or business. Determine all present and possible threats to your business venture. It can be the presence of a very powerful competitor or new or innovative ways of organizing events or a heavy tax on entertainment.

Step 3: Prepare business plan for your event management company

You will develop your business plan on the basis of market research, competitors' analysis and SWOT analysis of your event management company. Before developing your business plan, you should keep some points in mind: 1. Be realistic and avoid optimism while estimating capital requirements, sales and profits. 2. Don't ignore developing strategies which may come handy in case of adversities in your business.

Following steps can be adopted for developing a business plan for your event management company: 1. Outline your business objectives. What do you want to achieve in short term and in long term i.e. what is the mission and vision of your event planning company? However don't stick too much with long term objectives as they may become meaningless after a long time or changes in market situation. 2. Determine your staffing needs and what should be their skill sets. Develop the organizational structure of your event management company. Outline your own skills, knowledge and experience and determine how they can be used to achieve business success. Prepare resume of yourself and all of the people who will be involved in your business. These resumes will come handy when you will look for partners/investors later on. 3. Determine how exactly you will find clients? How you will approach them and how you will sell your services. How you will expand your business? What will be your rules, regulations, policies and procedures regarding payments, reimbursement, penalties, cancellation and behaviour? 4. Estimate your capital requirements for one whole year. How you will manage the cash flow? 5. Prepare a contingency plan i.e. what strategies you will adopt in case of capital loss, economic crisis or market downturn.

Step 4: On the basis of your business plan determine your operating cost
i.e. the cost to run the business.

Step 5: On the basis of the operating cost, decide your own fees and the staff salary.

Step 6: Get investors/ business partners for your event management company
on the basis of market research, competitors' analysis, SWOT analysis and your business plan.

Step 7: Decide name and logo of your company and its status
i.e. whether organization will be a company, firm or establishment.

Step 8: Premises, recruitment and marketing your business

Hire office. Buy office stationary and recruit staff. Launch a new flashy website which effectively describes your business and services in great detail. Hire an internet marketing professional to promote it. If you won't promote your website, then nobody will visit your website. So in that case your website will be as good as nothing. Through your website, your business will get global presence, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. You can also expect to get lot of clients once, your website becomes popular.

Step 9: Register your Company

If you have opened a company then get it registered under the Company's Act'. If you have opened a firm in India then get it registered under the 'Indian Partnership Act'. If you have opened an establishment in India, then get it registered under the 'Shops and Establishment Act'.An event management company is just like any other company. So whatever rules and procedures are required to start a company in your country, also applies to an event management company.

Step 10: Register to pay tax

Following taxes are to be paid by an event management company. Income Tax, TDS (Tax deducted at source), service tax, entertainment tax and taxes related to moving goods and merchandise from one destination to others. Get PAN card to file Income Tax return. TAN card to file TDS return. Get registration for service tax. The service tax on event management companies in India is 12.36%

We have worked in various fields and industries, among them:

Events Below the line marketing Change management Product training psychometric assessment Recruitment Performance management and assessment

EVENT MANAGEMENT Multi-lingual RSVP Management Specialists

OrangeXtreme are specialists in the area of Event and Conference RSVP Management, with a particular focus on Event and Conference Vernaculars (multilingual). In the past 5 years we have successfully provided RSPV management Services in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, for events inviting their delegates from up to 192 countries around the globe. Our services include, but are not limited to the following:

Planning and Preparation Mailing of invites, mail shots/teasers and communiqus Event micro-site (mini website for delegate information and registration purposes) Pre-event registration management and delegate support Dedicated call-centre for delegate support (24/7 service when required) Database management and maintenance Accommodation, Flight and Transport facilitation Delegate invoicing On-site registration/accreditation On-site delegate support hosting Reporting

General Event Services

OrangeXtreme is able to manage whole events or be part of a bigger project team managing only certain elements/workstreams.

Market Research events Product Launches Conferencing

Meetings Roadshows/Promotional events Fun days/Team Building events

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
OrangeXtreme has more than 10 years experience in the management of any type of project, from Information Technology to Event Management.

Prince2 qualified practitioners Management of resources Management of project activities and outcomes Reporting Staffing (recruitment and management) Planning and logistics management Budget and costing management Monitoring and management of efficiency and quality across workstreams Project implementation

PROJECT ADMINISTRATION

General administrative tasks Client support and management Diary management Scheduling of meetings, events and project activities Invoicing Reporting

MARKETING
OrangeXtreme has experience in the following Marketing activities:

Promotional/Experiential Marketing In-store Fore/Centre Court (Malls) Schools Clinics Taxi Ranks Church Groups Ladies Clubs/Community Gatherings Stokvels Burial Societies Road Shows (big & small) Customised Target Groups Invisible Theatre

Tactile marketing Emailing Campaigns

OrangeXtreme will set up and send out all your newsletters and other email communiqus to your database of clients and or delegates.

Development of htmlL mailers Event invitations Communiqus to registered delegates/participants Newsletter development

GRAPHIC DESIGN, DTP & REPRODUCTION

Conceptual design - bringing your ideas and brands to life Corporate/SME branding & identity development

Graphic Design & DTP

We will DTP any content into any document format (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, htmlL) Logo designs Design, development and final product delivery for (but not limited to):

Banners Pamphlets Brochures Stickers Magnets Business cards Newsletters Websites (logos and graphics) Electronic mailers Invitations (hard and softcopy) Inflatables Document templates (presentations, letterheads, invoices, and reports) in Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats Electronic signatures File covers, spines and tabs Workshop/conference/presentation documents, packs and materials Training Manuals

Reproduction
OrangeXtreme offers you a one-stop full service, from concept to delivered

materials in completed format - no longer do your staff need to run to the printers and stationers, punch holes and staple documents or collate them into file packs, we will do all of this for you. From concept to final product we will take the hassle out of preparing conference/workshop/meeting materials.

Conference packs - filed or bound; hard and soft copy Training Manuals - hard and soft copy

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT Database Design and Development

Full database design for systems in selected database engines (Access, Excel, SQL Server, etc.)

Systems Development
We work closely with our partner, Applications4Me to design, develop and maintain:

New systems Existing systems Conversion from current systems to new systems

We do the full Project Management (Time, Cost, Quality Control) on these projects

ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Project management Project administration Balanced Scorecard development and design Scheduling of staff for: - Training - Psychometric assessment - Psychometric feedback sessions - Team-building

We are in the business of making the impossible possible! Being a small company, we offer our clients personal attention, and passion for their job/project. Attention to detail will not be lost in huge layered corporate structures and teams. We are driven and determined which means that we always meet our deadlines and

client expectations. We see every challenge as an opportunity to grow and to prove over and over why we are the service provider of choice for our clients.

Being an outsourced resource, we can lighten any company's load - big or small. By using OrangeXtreme, you only have one resource doing the whole job, which avoids confusion, loss of information and misunderstanding. We always strive for transparency, excellence and job satisfaction for both client and our team members. No job is too big or too small - provided we are able to work from our own premises, as this enables us to manage resources for best job delivery. We will do any job from typing up your petty cash slips to project managing large projects and events.

http://www.orangextreme.co.za