Sharing our insight - Running a virtual summit for thousands worldwide
- Article
- Mar 27
- 4 min read
Imagine a global company launching a ‘once in a generation’ programme to embed a new single enterprise resource planning system (ERP) with new global processes to support it.
Imagine that global company has thousands of employees across multiple time zones.
Imagine being asked to tailor a virtual event to engage those employees on the forthcoming changes and celebrate the achievements.
No mean feat, but when Marlowe was asked to do this, we came up with an innovative, efficient and sustainable approach.
Getting to the heart of the challenge
Across six months, hundreds of subject matter experts (SMEs) and stakeholders from across the business got together to design the global processes that would support largest single investment the organisation had made into an internal system. The new ERP would provide a new ‘digital backbone’ across the organisation – helping to underpin ambitions for business growth and improved financial performance.
The programme team wanted to celebrate reaching the milestone of completing the global design with those hundreds of SMEs who had participated in the design process, as well as business stakeholders and programme team colleagues. But how could this be achieved when this meant sharing the design outcomes and decisions with over 1,500 colleagues across more than 18 time zones? And how could it be done in an engaging and interactive way?
Clearly, with the geographic spread of attendees and the importance of meeting the company’s sustainability targets, this needed to be a virtual event. The Marlowe team set about designing a week-long summit with content tightly targeted at the right groups of colleagues. A key outcome was that the attendees understood the outcomes of Global Design, as well as the benefits the programme would bring to the business. It was also important for those who had participated in this stage of the programme to feel a sense of pride in what has been accomplished and feel confident and optimistic of about the next stage of the programme.
Creating the agenda
Given the global reach and large number of participants, face-to-face engagement was not an option. We all know that keeping people engaged during lengthy virtual events can be challenging. Therefore, our core objective was to make this summit feel as close to an in-person experience as possible, tailoring the content, and providing lots of opportunities for attendees to get involved.
To achieve this, we designed a week-long agenda using SpotMe, a specialist video conferencing platform that enabled attendees to self-select and explore both pre-recorded content and reference material, as well as register to attend live sessions.
The live engagement included a mix of plenary and spotlight presentations, as well as specialist clinics that participants could sign up for in advance. The live plenary sessions were scheduled at lunchtime GMT to ensure participation from attendees in the Americas and APAC regions. For those who couldn't attend all sessions (some of which were delivered in parallel), recordings were made available on the platform within 90 minutes. Questions could be submitted throughout the week via the conference platform and there were a number of set-piece Q&As during the live sessions to address the questions coming in from participants.
The pre-recorded content was accessible throughout the week and continued to be available for attendees to drop in and listen to the topics that mattered most to them.
The content needed to be engaging, exciting and relevant
The programme team had clear objectives for the content of the summit:
To clearly articulate the end-to-end story of the programme and bring to life the benefits it would bring to the business and end user.
To create a sense of excitement through using demos and other highly visual assets.
To make sure that those who participated in the global design felt they’d made a valuable contribution.
To fully integrate the summit into wider stakeholder communications and engagement.
So, with the help of Marlowe’s experienced consultants we worked with almost 70 speakers to create over 30 hours of content which we delivered in a variety of formats over the course of the summit.
This was a one-off opportunity to share a wealth of information, some of which would be relevant to all, other parts tailored to specific groups.
Outcomes
The summit exceeded expectations with over 1,500 people attending (more than double the number we had than planned for). Following our detailed evaluation of the summit we found that 93% of participants would positively advocate for the new ERP and 90% understood the benefits the programme would deliver.
In addition, much of the summit content has been reused multiple times and has helped to create a library of assets which are now being used as part of the Deployment phase of the programme.
And don’t just take our word for it… the summit participants loved the event…
“These high-level business outward facing comms sessions are really useful for those not fully assigned to the programme – last week’s was very digestible, slick and informative. Hope they’ll continue.”
“This was a very well organised summit considering the volume of information delivered.”
“It has been a well thought out and precisely planned summit – highly appreciative of the leadership team to share their knowledge and keep us well informed of the decisions made and the path ahead of us.”
About Marlowe
Change can be complex but the approach to it doesn’t need to be. At Marlowe we partner with organisations to deliver large scale, complex transformation and change. We deliver business change solutions, change capability, assurance, training, leadership effectiveness and cultural change.
Our focus is on your people to ensure your change is delivered practically, successfully and sustainably. Please contact us if you would like to know more about delivering exceptional business change.