A2Z Rocks!
Rating: 9 out of 10
July 23, 2018
BS
Vetted Review
Verified User
3 years of experience
We utilize A2Z for our Annual Conference and Exhibition. It is used by the Meetings department primarily but since we are an association and each member of our staff is responsible for an area or facet of the conference, we have numerous people working within the A2Z platform. We use the floorplan and maintain our Exhibit contact database for past and current exhibitors, sessions and events/agenda and various areas of the Financials from sponsorship to invoicing. As A2Z offers the ability to customize areas of the session and event data, we have been able to also add items such as Audio visual needs as well as Food & Beverage and Session Room set-ups as well, which speaking as a planner is huge to have those all in one place and not be entering them into an Excel worksheet which is what we used in the past.
For our organization currently it replaces the more costly versions of Meeting Management software as well as floorplan/mapping software for exhibits. This platform also provides a way for us to track historically our exhibits with relationship to booth size, number sold, marketing opportunities they bought and sponsorships, as well as key contacts who may change from year to year or region to region. The ability to pull the reports based on numerous options is great, and being able to save them for future use is a huge timesaver.
Thank you for making my life easier!!!
For our organization currently it replaces the more costly versions of Meeting Management software as well as floorplan/mapping software for exhibits. This platform also provides a way for us to track historically our exhibits with relationship to booth size, number sold, marketing opportunities they bought and sponsorships, as well as key contacts who may change from year to year or region to region. The ability to pull the reports based on numerous options is great, and being able to save them for future use is a huge timesaver.
Thank you for making my life easier!!!
- Tracking from year to year - history provided on the Exhibit side is huge and helps when you have new people working within the platform.
- Ability to replicate certain areas from year to year which is a huge timesaver.
- Templates! Templates are huge timesavers, but you still have the ability to brand them and change them if needed.
Cons
- Coming from software where I had a huge amount of access to the "backend", it would be nice to be able to manipulate areas of the Exhibit Floorplan a little easier with regard to items like tables, chairs, stages, etc. Maybe add some icons that could be pasted into the floorplan for faster success?
- The agenda within A2Z does not give you the ability to host on your own conference site.
- The agenda view is sometimes perceived as being too long, there's a lot of extra "white space".
- Positive - it provides one place from which primary players in the conference could pull information. A2Z maintains consistency and lowers the discrepancy issue when everyone tries to keep their own little database.
- Positive - Time Saver.
- No negative that I can recall.
I've used Map Your Show, as well as ExpoCad. Each has their own redeeming qualities, and the success of A2Z is also based on the support you receive from the provider. Customer Support and being assigned to one support team player from A2Z has been huge and we have greatly appreciated it.