Role of Event Operations Management - Essay Example

Role of event operations management Introduction Events are part of our daily lives as well as our culture. Some of these events in our daily lives are; National Day Parade, Singapore Arts Festival, Standard Chartered Marathon, Asians Youth Games among others. These events are important to the stakeholders like participants or the sponsors through creating a smooth plan and execution from the start to the end. These events all involve entertainment, photo opportunities and the logistics involved in relation the kind of the event held. Companies involved with usually gets a module defining the principles and the practices relating to planning, managing and staging of events emphasizing the kind of related events (Greasley, 2008:51). Groups of related event usually stage up the pre-event and the post event requirements, preparations, site an event management area, the impact of time frames, number of guests required, food prepared with respect to the scales and the intended target groups of events. An example of an event is the graduation ceremonies held in the schools, which require event related operations. Through this operation, a student will be able to understand what is required in the event. Guest invited, parents and any other target get to know what time is the event starting, and all the other proceedings. These events help to design the programs to be followed in a particular span of time. This program designed to help eliminate much time wastage since most of time an event that is not designed with relevant programs tends to extend to late hours hence frustrating the attendees. They also help to give the chronological analysis of the presentations in the events. Each event has a unique way to handle the running activities that have to be effectively designed and followed. Team organizer and designer of the programs is first selected to discuss on how to conduct the event in a unique way that will attract the guests and the other attendees. Logistical arrangements are then made by the event team to determine the amount of the time to be consumed by the related event, the number of the guests invited the event also helps to determine whether the site put aside for the sole purpose of the event will accommodate the number of the people require to attend the event. Some other teams are selected to formulate the branding of the event especially the event are not seasonal or they require high attention. Event operation management is basically about getting things done effectively and efficiently in an organization. They aim at delivering a product or a service to a customer in the most effective way since most of the operations require a process of manufacturing or delivering. They are keenly observed by the manager to analyze the best skills require in order to avoid physical stains to the most honored people. The banquet staffs elected help to perform an inspection of the event area through removing all kinds of the hazards. Venue operation staff also practices early preparations like cleaning, to avoid cleaning during the presentations. Hosts or the guest speakers should be vigilant for the sole purpose of motivating an event. How SWOT, PEST, Critical Success Factors (CSFs), Mission Statements, SMART targets help event managers meet customers expectation SWOT- It is a useful technique for understanding the internal factors (strengths and weaknesses) that affect your business and the external factors (opportunities and threats) that influence your business through creating a sustainable market niche in your market (Young, 2009:45). An event manager capitalizes the available opportunities through maximizing on the available talents and eliminating the threats that influence the event operations. It also helps the event managers to understand the strategic choices to face through articulating the customers want (Chary, 2009:2). Critical Success Factors (CSFs) -it is well known that some important factors compete your management and it very important to identify them. This sometimes happens when everybody in the management is pulling apart. Critical Success Factors help in creating a common point of reference that will assist the event manager to measure the success of the events operation and meet the required standards by the customers. Areas of activity should receive and careful attention from management in order to avoid mix up in the events. This ensures a successful competitive performance in the event’s operation. In other areas, some events operation managements which do not emphasize on a common goal an unity will be negatively affected towards success. (Griffin, 2011:243). Mission Statements-these are inspiring directives that clearly and concisely shows the direction of the events. It helps the event manager to define its key measures and its participants in the event operation to realize its common vision of the future. Events manager creates a clear mission aimed at attracting the required customers and motivating them through using powerful communications in the event’s operations. Events that are not mission based are likely to fail hence costing the whole management. (Bettley, 2005:121). SMART targets-helps the event manager to set the goals in the long-term event and in the short term through sensational motivation and self-confidence. This helps the manager to create a picture of the targets he intends to achieve, then break them into smaller targets he must hit in the event, finally he starts working on the plan set to impress his customer requirements. Some targets which are not wisely analyzed, are deemed to fail causing the whole process to run at a loss. Supply chain management- it involves active management of supply chain activities to maximize the customer value through achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. This covers everything from a product development, sourcing, production, and logistics required and the information system needed to coordinate these activities. An effective chain of supply that is well regulated is evident to meet customer expectations in an event operation (Loch, 2007:35). Product development- this is the process of bringing a new product in the market for other tangible or intangible products. Managers push for effective ways and parsimonious, to write more detailed plans as well as minimizing variation and waste in order to meet the expectations of the customers. Some managements lack the transparency on the ingredient used, transparency on the uses of the product hence many customers will withdraw from the using the product. This will negatively affect the growth of the company. Location – this is an earlier decision that requires precise planning, by looking at the demographics, assessing the supply chain, searching for the most competitive areas, staying on the budget, a place that is safe and with high levels of growth. A location that is near the customers is likely to assist the managers to meet the customers requirements. However, some companies are located far from the free market, which makes their products in accessible. This affects the growth of the company. Risk management- identifying the hazards that can cause serious damage to the management of the event operation will help mitigate some possible wreck of the business. The possible risks are physical, location, technology, and human risks. Managing all these risks will help the management of the event in the operation that will fit the customers requirement (Roy, 2005:125). Lifecycle- a successful events management has to go through stages that will depict its success. Those successes involve, start, growth, expansion, maturity, etc. this usually helps the event manager to make specifications that meet customer requirements (Mahadevan, 2009:100). Portfolio analysis- this is categorizing the firms products according to their relative competitive position. This is used to access the value of the events portfolio under deregulation, develop alternative strategies to build the strongest values in the events (Marquis, 2009:578) People power-an event manager effectively takes the charge in finding them, manage them, inspiring through holding onto them on the crucial event operation success (Arora, 2004:1382). A manager delivering a good service should know the team better, the strength, and the weakness through listening for a good delivery of service. An event manager should trust the staff, implement the staff through employing qualified staff, and test their honesty through delivering a good service to meet the customer satisfaction. Collecting capacity related strategies in an operational event that is fed into an aligned capacity-forecasting model. This ensures capacity related performance or the availability issues. Implementing schedules to meet the required standards, avoiding misleading schedules will deliver a good sense of success in the eventualities (Wright, 2004:249). A manager who motivates the staff in every circumstance will influence the growth of the business. An event manager will pull a large number of people on a specific product or service through a qualitative model to determine how many people will buy the product; success is usually in short term predictions. Quantitative models predict where variables like sales, these are measured in the long term. These models help the manager to focus on the extent to which will reach the customer expectations. Use of production control plan that matches the supply capacity and the demand capacity requires flexible working practice (Haynes, 2007:141). Pure chase demands are difficult to achieve and are mostly found in operations where an organization is seeking in eliminating of stores of finished goods. An event manager should try to implement the o demand management to meet the standards that will balance the production and the outputs. Performance delivery: Through evaluation, the manager collects the performance data and rewards a high performance or punishes a poor performance. Performance should be evaluated and developmental. It is used to inform people on their performance (Vedder, 2008:18). This helps the manager to seal the gaps identified and using the results to assess the conduct of the event operation and how it can be tuned to meet the customers requirements. Sometimes the growth of an event may undergo a recessionary phase and requires the use of subsidies or any other incentives that will control both the expenditure (Waters, 2006:413). An event manager should much impress on the interest of the customer’s through using controls that will flourish in the growth of the business. An event manager requires the primary sources and the secondary sources and the tertiary sources in order to conduct the performance of the business primary sources include; the original documents such as diaries, autobiographies, first person accounts, newspapers, among others, secondary sources are; review articles, biographies while the tertiary sources are; textbooks, manuals, indexes and the bibliographies (Bazargan, 2007:110). These will help evaluate the performance of the event operation. Use of benchmarking helps in determining the best. This helps value yourself test the results acquired, evaluate performances of other companies for the success of the prospective business (Great, 2007:100). Use of a balanced scorecard means an evaluation, which in other terms translates the mission and vision statements into a comprehensive set of objectives of the business. Q3 Crowd management This involves the controlling of the crowd to prevent any outbreak of disorders and prevention of the possible riot. Some of the examples of where the crowd is where the sale of goods has attracted many sellers, games, refuge control. Material such as stanchions crowd barriers, fences, and decals can be used to give directives to the crowd. The most impressing thing to control crowds with is to keep the relaxed and comfortable (Vedder, 2008:19). In entertainment sites, use of cooling fans, awning in hot weather can help manage the crowd from the possible riot as well as a demonstration. Some places use some specific products such as the retractable belt systems to fit in a stanchion post and the wall mount systems as the most improved methods to integrate in a retractable belt but surface is mounted. Use of these posts has improved crowd management. Sometimes these barriers used hinders a faster handling of activities because when integrated, means that the activities are to be slow. Some other barriers like stanchions are fitted so closely causing difficulties in movements in the queues. Transportation management Synchronizing and managing operational events along the supply chain requires many facilities that harmonize the global supply in a collaborative manner. For a specific shipment, trade manager creates an operational event sequence based on the mode of transport of the shipment. New direct transportations like port-to-port transport will have the smallest sequence and fewest numbers of operational events. In each event, the event location, the transport party, the vendor reference number, schedule date and the actual date. The is an application integrated to receive direct feedbacks, providing collaborative work flow between the responsible parties, shipment visibility down to the purchase order or the stock keeping unit through monitoring them as part of the shipment ( Robinson, 2009:97). This will allow in-transit inventory visibility and management of the customers. Inclusion of full documentation capabilities along with a large array of management reports, carriers, and business unit performance are used to control the transportation sector with the view of improving the damages or theft in the shipment area. Some of the operational sequence is more complex than others, while others take a lot of time to implement hence causing delay of delivery to the customers. Others are very expensive to acquire and might require a lot of money to implement hence raising the costs which in turn affects the customers (McMahon, 2004:323). Catering An event catering involves cooking and serving food in a food service industry. It also encompasses, cooking, delivering, and serving food to an outside area. This event requires the caterer to serve food with a waiting staff or the sets up a self-serve buffet. In this field, technology has negatively affected the management because of the invention of micro waves which some of those who uses them lack the knowledge, fridges and other equipments that have health problems, hence affecting the whole management Conclusion Invention of the new technology in some event operation managements has positively boosted the operation while in some other cases technology has negatively affected the whole event. Event operations requires critical evaluation, setting targets, having a common goal, defining the weakness of the event success and maximizing on the strengths of the business. Event manager who calculates on the prospective risks due to affect the event operation will likely arrive to a common success of the event. Bibliography Arora, K. 2004. Comprehensive production and operation management. Bangalore, Laxmi Publications. Bazargan, M. 2007. Airline operations and scheduling. Aldershot [u.a.], Ashgate. Bettley, A. 2005. Operations management: a strategic approach. London [u.a.], SAGE. Chary, S. N. 2004. Production and operations management. New Delhi, Tata McGraw-Hill. Chary, S. N. 2009. Production and operations management. New Delhi, Tata McGraw-Hill. Greasley, A. 2008. Operations management. Los Angeles, SAGE Publications. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10285245. Great Britain. 2007. Service operation. London, TSO. Griffin, R. W. 2011. Management. Mason, OH, South-Western Cengage Learning. Haynes, R. 2007. Operations management. Cape Town, Pearson Education South Africa. Khanna, R. B. 2007. Production and operations management. 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