Virginia Tech Makes Campus Event Planning Effortless with This Software Solution

Jamie Lucero plans and hosts about 15 on-campus events each year at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Her old planning process involved taking RSVPs from emails and calls, manually inputting those responses in Excel spreadsheets, flurries of Sticky notes and lots of headaches.

As a result, Virginia Tech invested in Attend, an event management platform for business and higher education institutions.

“After years of doing most of the event-related processes separately and manually, we decided to use Attend,” says Lucero, Director of Alumni Relations of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech. “Using the platform to manage registration took the burden off of manually collecting info from all of those registration emails and phone calls and inputting them into spreadsheets.”

Since switching to Attend, Lucero says 85 percent of registrants now use the platform to RSVP. Plus, registrants no longer have to wait for a confirmation call or email from the school.

Attend has also made it easier for Lucero to research and plan for upcoming events.

“The platform enabled me to easily look up accurate data on registration numbers instantly without having to make sure all recent registrations have been added to the correct spreadsheets,” she says. “This real-time view of registration numbers has been very helpful in… making sure we have enough tables, chairs, and food based on the number of registrants.”

Lucero say Attend saves her time, and gives her a better organization structure, especially since she works solo.

“I’m a one man shop, so to me, there’s obvious time saved,” she says. “But…if you think in terms of organization, [it’s so much better] having everything in one spot. It obviously does save time because I’m not answering a gazillion phone calls and responding to a million emails. Now, you can go online and do it.”