SB Expos and Events is a convention and trade show management company led by CEO Jennifer Kerhin. Established in 2009, SB offers full-service convention management and tradeshow sales to membership associations.
Jennifer only hires the best of the best, so it’s no wonder how her scrappy team of nine managed conventions and tradeshows across the United States. However, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. Each SB team member had individual Excel spreadsheets for budgeting, project tracking, and more. The siloed information made it nearly impossible to have accountability, let alone get the team on the same page. Three-hour weekly production meetings became the norm. With the dream of scaling her business, Jennifer knew SB needed to make big changes.
The Goal: Embrace a Platform for Accountability
Jennifer’s team already understood the ins and outs of project management. After all, so much of event management is project management.
Skill wasn’t the issue, but inefficient tools, techniques, and processes slowed down SB Expos’ otherwise experienced, organized, and knowledgeable team. Excel spreadsheets worked when the company was small, but as SB collaborated with multiple vendors, external parties, and new employees, they realized how messy Excel spreadsheets really were.
To complicate matters, relying on spreadsheets frequently led to misunderstandings and delays. For example, if an employee put off determining an event budget, the other team members couldn’t book venues or AV rentals without that information. “People did not understand what was a critical aspect of their job that affected other people and what could just be done on the side,” Jennifer explains.
Desperate for something better, SB Expos switched to Smartsheet. While it was better than Excel, Smartsheet still wasn’t the elegant solution Jennifer expected. The software only displayed individual tasks, so it was impossible for her as a CEO to manage collaboration or project timelines. “I really struggled to get a big overview of what was happening. I’d have to dive deep into each individual task, which wasn’t a good usage of my time,” she says.
Fortunately, a respected colleague introduced Jennifer to Teamwork.com. The milestone page alone sold Jennifer on the solution, but she soon realized that her colleague wasn’t using the platform to its fullest extent. Determined not to repeat her company’s experience with Smartsheets, Jennifer recognized the importance of mastering Teamwork. She visited the Teamwork partner page and chose to work with one of Teamwork’s most experienced and prolific partners, Beyond the Chaos® (BTC).
The Tactics: Migrating to Teamwork.com With Zero Business Interruptions
Jennifer didn’t have the luxury of time. Working in the fast-paced event industry, SB Expos needed to migrate out of Smartsheet and into Teamwork without business interruptions. She had a strict deadline for implementation, but BTC was up to the task.
BTC brought in senior Teamwork expert and Chaos Killer Andrea Stevens to lead the SB Expos migration. Andrea recognized that SB’s team already had project management skills. Instead of starting from scratch, Andrea took what SB had and elevated it to a higher level of performance.
Internal Documentation
Jennifer wanted to make the most of her time with BTC. She realized Smartsheet didn’t have tasks or milestones set up, which would make the Teamwork migration more difficult. Jennifer worked with her team to document everything internally to streamline the migration. Instead of letting this information sit in Excel sheets or in people’s heads, she documented everything in the system. Internal documentation allowed SB Expos to build a repeatable, scalable system that the team could later templatize and copy in Teamwork.
Goal-Setting
Before engaging BTC, SB Expos made a list of keys to success. They needed someone to coach them through the software and implement a new system. They thought through what they wanted to accomplish before bringing in BTC. These goals made Jennifer recognize that SB Expos needed all new features, processes, and an empowered team to execute projects more smoothly.
Standardization Through Templates
Previously, employees made up their own processes and tasks in Smartsheet. The lack of standardization made it nearly impossible for Jennifer (and other employees, for that matter) to stay up-to-date on everyone’s current workload.
Andrea worked with SB Expos to create detailed, silo-free templates with very detailed task lists in Teamwork. She showed SB how to create a template so they could continue to replicate templatization in the future instead of relying on BTC for template creation every time. Not only did this save time, but the standardization made it easy for Jennifer to understand employee workloads, support accountability, and improve follow-through.
Operational Efficiency
Instituting Teamwork templates impacted other areas of the business, including business development. SB Expos prices projects based on the complexity and customization they require. By templatizing their proposals, SB soon realized how many unpaid customizations they accepted for each client. This oversight led to lost revenue opportunities. Realizing the mistake, SB Expos reworked the business development process to align with their Teamwork task lists. This improved the accuracy of their business proposals and made it easier for the sales team to have matter-of-fact conversations with clients about their pricing tiers.
The Results: Fewer Headaches and More Growth
SB Expos is thriving after two-and-a-half years of hard work and two engagements with BTC. Three-hour meetings are, thankfully, a relic of the past for the now 27-person team, which managed its first international show in Dublin last year. Thanks to its success with BTC, SB Expos went from offering two services to five. With Teamwork in place, SB has reduced scope creep, saved hours of time, and created a data-driven work culture centered around success. “I don’t think that would’ve been possible if we didn’t have Teamwork project management,” Jennifer says.
The process was worth it in the end, but Jennifer confesses that switching to Teamwork wasn’t easy at first. However, she knew something had to change, and fast. “It’s impossible, in my opinion, in professional services to scale up without a project management system now,” she says. Fortunately, the partnership with BTC quickly assuaged Jennifer’s misgivings. “I would’ve spent months trying to figure things out when I should have been better spent as a CEO planning a vision and inspiring my team instead of doing something where I could have hired an expert to help us get to the next level and explain Teamwork to me,” she says.
If you’re ready to build a scale-worthy business without the growing pains, schedule a meeting today!