The Dirty Dozen
Problems event planners often encounter.

1. Management via Spreadsheets and Emails
   Considered the standard way of managing events just a few short years ago, this approach now seems antiquated -- at best impractical and at worst downright dangerous. Data on spreadsheets can and does change often. Couple this with emailing stale information to associates and co-workers and the possibility for event management chaos becomes a reality. The modern and robust way to capture and process all event related data is to use a web browser viewing a single central source of information on the web. This way, event data is always up to-date, accurate and useful.
2. Communications
   Event planners must ensure that information for attendees is accurate, up-to-date, and successfully distributed to all attendees. With so much information coming from so many places, this is easier said than done. There needs to be a coordinated center of competence for attendee communications, where all information is gathered, verified, edited for style continuity, and distributed via Website and/or handouts in a timely manner.
3. Late Registrations
   For most events, walk-up registrations are a fact of life. Due to procrastination, user problems with online registration, or other factors, a non-trivial number of hopeful attendees present themselves at the registration desk to initiate their registration rather than simply pick up their credentials.
4. Housing Attrition
   With many events requiring a multi-hotel room block, significant costs overruns can occur when an event planner fails to keep a close enough watch on room pickup status. Overestimating the number of room nights needed was once a forgiveable sin, but attrition is now one of the most negative words in a planner's vocabulary.
5. Unreliable Vendors
   For most meeting planners, outsourcing is a necessary way of life, as the variety of tasks involved usually depend upon a team of vendors. All too often, however, the vendor's personnel and/or deliverables are far from their advertised promises. It's difficult to know who to trust, and where to go for reliable help. Since there's not a Consumer's Reports section for hiring the right vendor, this is often a hit or miss proposition.
6. Poor Data Management
   The initial capture of attendee information during registration is only the beginning. Beyond simply storing attendee data, it's critically important to ensure that data relationships are logically preserved, data change histories are recorded, payment transaction data is securely processed, and that the database is safely and completely backed up to prevent a catastrophic loss.
7. Difficulty Measuring Return on Investment (ROI)
   The success of an event is often difficult to measure. Yet it is exactly this metric that is so important when it comes to assessing which elements should be changed or replaced in future events. Without it, an event planner is often "flying blind". Customers want not only to see an event take place without significant problems, but to know that their money was spent wisely.
8. Poor Space Management
   Even when large-scale events require a buyout of a hotel or conference center, planners sometimes still face problems trying to find a home for last-minute meetings or classes. Smaller events typically involve hotel space which is provided during finite time periods. In each of these cases, money goes down the drain when insufficient organization and planning results in underutilization of the available space.
9. Inflexible Database Reporting
   Using an online registration system that captures attendee data to a database is a great start. Once the data is collected, all sorts of valuable information can be derived from the database, but only if there are reports available to show it. In many cases, the vendor providing the online registration service provides only a limited set of database reports. Beyond that, each additional custom report comes at a price, and may require a non-trivial turnaround time.
10. Technology Headaches
    The Internet has had a dramatic effect on the way that many people do business, including event planners. Yesterday's faxes are today's emails. Painfully slow dialup connections are hopefully gone forever. These are even sometimes replaced by high-speed wireless connections, offered for free in many modern business hotels. These types of technological advances are great when they're working well. However, when you're on-site the night before your attendee arrival day and the hotel's Internet connection is "temporarily unavailable" for unknown reasions, the days of faxes and paper registrations might not look so bad.
11. The Challenge of Delivering On-Time and within Budget
    Meeting planners and event organizers all want to deliver a successful event on-time and within budget. However, as the event draws near and problematic issues arise, maintaining oversight can be challenging. An orderly way to organize and manage an event, manage resources and track the budget can make the difference between many late night hours of tedium in a harried atmosphere or a smooth, well executed event in a relaxed atmosphere. Too often, we settle for the former when we could have the latter.
12. Payment Processing
    Payment processing can be a real headache. There are security concerns when credit card numbers are exposed, problems with refunds, insufficient credit or bad credit, phone calls and emails to reconcile matters and so on. Batch processing of payments each day has its own problems -- the extra labor involved in doing so and the possibility for mistakes -- to name just two. Even with large numbers of registrations coming in each day, payment processing should just be transparent. For most people that pay via credit card on-line, the quick efficient real-time capture, authorization and payment is just that. When credit cards are processed over a secure connection, in real-time, then payment processing will be one thing less you'll have to worry about.