For years, event reporting has worked the same way. You plan for months, run the event over two or three hectic days, then spend weeks pulling together survey results, headcounts and badge-scan spreadsheets to work out whether it went well.
By the time the report reaches your management or your sponsors, it's old news. If a sponsor's booth was in a quiet corner, it's too late to fix. If the VIP line backed up on the first morning, those guests have already had a bad start.
Live check-in data changes that. When every scan goes into one system, you can see what's happening on the floor while it's happening, and act on it.
Why post-event surveys aren't enough
Surveys are still useful for opinions. For numbers, they're weak. People forget which sessions they went to, and response rates are usually low.
Scan data doesn't rely on memory. If attendees scan in at the gates and at session doors, you know who came, when they arrived, which rooms they went into and how long they stayed.
What the live dashboard shows
SmartEvent's live attendance dashboard puts those scans on a floor map of your venue. Busy halls show up red and quiet ones stay blue, so you can see at a glance which keynote is overflowing and which aisle needs more people walking through it.
Showing sponsors results during the event
Sponsors and exhibitors gain the most from this. Normally a sponsor pays for a good booth and hopes the footfall turns up.
With live numbers, you can walk over to a sponsor with a tablet and show them how many people have passed through their zone in the last two hours. If it's quiet, you can do something about it there and then, like moving a session break or an announcement nearby.
- Leads that are ready to use. Exhibitors scan badges, add a note and export the list for their sales team the same evening.
- Staff where they're needed. Move people from registration to food and drinks counters just before a session ends, based on the live numbers.
- VIPs greeted on arrival. Tagged guests trigger an alert to your host when they're scanned in, so someone is there to meet them.
The bottom line
You'll still want a proper report after the event. But having the numbers during the event means you can fix problems while they matter, and go into the sponsor conversation with real figures instead of "it looked busy".
Further reading: before any of this data exists, attendees have to register. Our guide on how event registration software leads to better event experiences covers that side.