Events Management: Supporting Great Ormonds Children Hospital - Business Plan Example

Events management: Supporting Great Ormond’s Children Hospital BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE TABLE OF CONTENTS 0 Introduction............................................................................................................... 2.0 Aims and objectives.................................................................................................. 3.0 Scope of activities..................................................................................................... 3.1 Expected deliverables.................................................................................... 3.2 Timescale and schedules................................................................................ 3.3 Costs and budget............................................................................................ 3.4 Roles, responsibilities and resource levels required....................................... 4.0 Risk assessment and QA measures............................................................................. 5.0 Progress report............................................................................................................ 6.0 The team structure....................................................................................................... 6.1 Leadership and delegation............................................................................... 6.2 Success metrics................................................................................................ 7.0 Critical reflection of the event..................................................................................... 8.0 Conclusion.................................................................................................................... References ABSTRACT To assist in fund-raising for the Support Great Ormond’s Children Hospital charity, a musical event held in Greenwich Park has been planned. The project involves establishing a managerial oversight team, establishing an appropriate budget, and delegating responsibilities to each support team member against an established life cycle model and cost index. The Greenwich park maintains a budget of $110,000, inclusive of all activities related to supervision, construction, outsourcing, recruitment and procurement. At a ticket price of $61 per customer, the 10 hour festival is intended to bring the charity funds of $500,000. The report highlights the planning processes for the event and proposes changes to future event management. Events management: Supporting Great Ormond’s Children Hospital 1.0 Introduction The charity, Supporting Great Ormond’s Children Hospital, procures funds so as to improve patient care and to create innovative cures and treatments for illnesses affecting children (GOSH 2014). The charity has utilised several events to raise funds, including the 2011 Bake it Better event, urging supporters of the charity to bake and sell cupcakes alongside celebrity chef Simon Rimmer (MFR 2011). The organisation has also invited supporters to race in the RBC 5k event, an event inclusive of jogging, face painting and arts and crafts. However, in order to gain more interest from disparate social segments in the UK, the charity requires a more contemporary and wide-scale approach to procuring important funds for childhood illness research. As a result, a more publicised and attention-grabbing charity event is required to ensure that the hospital is equipped to provide world class care and innovations throughout the next two years. A one day charity event, Musicians for Child Disease Prevention (MCDP), will ensure substantial fund-raising capabilities that will appeal to a wide variety of London citizens, rather than being a niche market event like those of the charity’s history. The charity will be working with leadership of the Royal Parks to gain access for a one-day concert spotlighting famous and local musicians at Greenwich Park. The park sits on 183 acres and sustains a capacity of 10,000 visitors (The Royal Parks 2012). The event is scheduled for Saturday, 28 June 2014. 2.0 Aims and objectives The aim of the event is to raise £500,000 for the charity which will sustain advanced research and development capabilities of the hospital between June 2014 and May 2015. The Musicians for Child Disease Prevention event maintains three distinct objectives: 1. Realise experiencing attainment of full capacity of the park, ensuring that all 10,000 tickets are sold. 2. Spotlight children on-stage that have been effectively treated by efforts of the charity and the hospital to create a sense of community empathy for children’s illness needs and challenges. 3. Create brand recognition for Supporting Great Ormond’s Children Hospital to ensure greater marketing presence throughout London and other regions of the United Kingdom. 3.0 Scope of activities Project scope is inclusive of the special work activities that are necessary to accomplish a finished product or service that will, holistically, result in effective achievement of all project objectives (Nokes 2007). Scope is the underpinning aspect of planning a project that includes deliverables, tasks being delegated, deadline considerations and goals of the project (PMI 2008). 3.1 Expected deliverables Ensure that an appropriate 45 x 45 metre soundstage is constructed consisting of standard raw materials (aluminium, stainless steel and reinforced plywood). Provision of ten portable restroom facilities to provide supplementary services to existing toilet facilities maintained by the Park leadership. Provide construction of two 10 x 12 metre information services kiosks that maintain informational pamphlets about the charity and the hospital, including a map of upcoming performances for all booked musical acts. Create a variety of promotional products, such as coffee mugs, keychains and themed posters that promote the charity’s brand and its mission to improve marketing visibility. Ensure that 14 different local and nationally famous bands are booked to fill out the established 10 hour festival. 3.2 Timescale and schedules Obtain appropriate permissions and support contracts from leaders at Royal Parks 15 April Obtain relevant permits from London government councils 25 April Production of promotional merchandise with local graphic arts organisations 1 May Maintain contracted commitment from portable toilet providers 1 May Manufacture of tickets and online virtual tickets 5 May Complete procurement of food, beverages and construction raw materials 10 May Construction of temporary stage and informational kiosks 20 May Complete production of promotional merchandise and other marketing tools 1 June Ensure stage and kiosks are inspected by appropriate authorities 5 June 3.3 Costs and budget The total budget for this event is £110,000 Activity Cost Ticket production and sales website development $1500 Promotional product manufacture $5000 Construction of sound stage and kiosks to outsourced contractors $20,000 Portable restroom facility contract $2500 Permits and legal $1500 Billboard marketing in London region $8000 Digital and viral marketing online and targeted at mobile devices $5000 Procurement of food and beverages inclusive of one-day rental on food trucks $21,000 Payments to recruited local and national bands $22,000 Labour costs for one-day service kiosk support, stage assistance, food and beverage sales, and other support positions $4000 Security Services $3200 Management team salaries $13,000 Post-event cleaning service contract $3300 Total Expenditures $110,000 3.4 Roles, responsibilities, and resource levels required The event will require a project manager, sales manager, marketing manager, human resources expert for labour recruitment, and project architect. The role of the architect will be to design a functional stage and kiosk service station that can facilitate effective service delivery. The architect will design appropriate blueprints and will be responsible for all raw materials procurement necessary to achieve construction deadlines. The project manager will ensure that the event if facilitated according to expectations, serving as coordinator between food and beverage labour, stage support labour, kiosk services, and security service personnel during the tangible event as it occurs. The PM will also serve as general management of all managerial support personnel to ensure compliance and goal attainment. The sales manager will take responsibility of selling ticket to London citizens, ensure procurement of food and beverage products, work with local businesses to sponsor in-store advertisements of marketing communications and also work with local council government for permit procurement and other legalities. The marketing manager will handle ticket production and website sales development, work with local manufacturers to identify appropriate promotional materials are produced, determine an effective billboard and local newspaper marketing strategy, and also facilitate real-time communications on social media to promote the event effectively and to capture the attention of a wide range of citizen segments of varying socio-economic demographics. The human resources manager will be responsible for procurement of labour resources, for outsourced contracts with security personnel and post-event cleaning services, and coordinate the training process prior to the event to ensure that all recruited employees understand expectations, procedures, and compliance measures. The event will require access to graphic arts designers in the region, to coordinate with billboard ownership in the city, work with information technology experts to design and facilitate sales through a small-scale, temporary website and work with electronic payment acceptance organisations to ensure that funds are properly collated and distributed into each budgeted portion of the project. 4.0 Risk assessment and QA measures The most primary risk to the event is going over-budget. The Project Manager, therefore, will develop a cost performance index, a method of calculating the total expected earned value of the project by the tangible costs being incurred by marketing, HR, supply chain, subcontractor contracting, construction and general administration. All expenditures will be recorded using receipts procured by each management team member and given to the PM who will maintain an adequate electronic record of actual versus expected costs. At each meeting, any over-budget issue will be discussed and solutions for controlling costs determined. At the first scheduled meeting, the PM will develop a risk register, a graphic illustration of all determined risks that classifies each risk by the potential threat opportunity level to the event and the potential consequences that might occur if each identified risk is recognised. The register provides a quantitative, numerical representation for each threat, creating opportunities for statistical evaluation of the threats to build appropriate contingencies for each risk (Heldman 2005). 5.0 Progress report To obtain proper coordination and collaboration between disparate management professionals for the event, there will need to be a decentralised control hierarchy that facilitates team-working. The theory and strategies associated with a collaborative organisational culture will be facilitated by the expertise of the outsourced human resource manager who maintains the knowledge and expertise to accomplish a team-focused culture. According to Boke and Nalla (2009) leadership is critical to the establishment of a cohesive and unified organisational culture and this provides greater motivation and satisfaction of employees to facilitate a more productive event (Schultz and Schultz 2010). The HR manager will moderate all meetings, which will occur weekly, in which all managers will report to the Project Manager their successes for each obligation and their hindrances impacting deadline achievement. The meetings will consist of using the Delphi Method, a system in which managers brainstorm potential solutions to known problems, discuss these alternatives, and ultimately determine the most viable solutions collaboratively (Rowe and Wright 1999). The team will also be expected to communicate via email systems and mobile devices to update on weekly or daily progress. Email communications will be compiled by the Project Manager and discussed, when relevant, at each weekly meeting, a form of knowledge management system that ensures a hard copy record of communications and an accessible electronic database by which all managers can readily access at their disposal through remote log-ins to the temporary website. Gantt Chart of activities Activity Description 15 April 25 April 1 May 1 May 5 May 10 May 20 May 1 June 1 June 5 June 28 June 29 June Royal Parks Permissions   Licensing and relevant permit procurement   Promotional merchandise completion   Commitment from portable restroom providers                         Manufacture of tickets and online sales models   All procurement                       Complete construction of kiosks and stage                       Other marketing tools       Kiosk inspection completed               Management of tangible event             Oversight of cleaning crew activities Administration of the event 6.0 The team structure The decentralised team structure will be modelled against UK corporate governance Board systems, consisting of the PM, the sales manager, and a leadership client of the charity. This governance system will discuss strategy developments, how best to motivate recruited staff labour in key positions, how to establish a brand identity for the charity event, and how to enact effective customer service (critical to the event’s long-term and future success). Tricker (2009) indicates that governance is vital to achieving success of an event and provides an opportunity to productively align the needs of external stakeholders with internal structure and delegation. Marketing effectiveness and success in creating relevant integrated promotional communications is crucial for ensuring that the total park capacity is achieved through ticket sales and establishment of an exciting brand identity for the one-day event. Board governance, through consultation with the client, will ensure that the charity’s brand values are aligned with the marketing structure of the event. One of the most fundamental roles, therefore, to the event is the responsibility of the marketing manager. It has been iterated by Zhang and Chan (2009) that when a service is able to provide customers with a sense of social self-expansion, customers will create very powerful emotional connections to the brand. The music event must establish perceptions that it can improve community unity and allow customers of the festival to not only support the charity, but to expand on their unique sophistication and diversity of musical knowledge. Therefore, the board system will sustain disparate knowledge experts in business and marketing, along with an external stakeholder, to ensure effective marketing strategy that can engage and interest a variety of different customer segments. Effective events marketing creates the opportunity to establish a mini-utopia that allows for individual customer reflection on the communal nature of the human species (Jones 2010, p.63). If the charity is to be successful, the PM, marketing manager and the client need to align the event with charity needs and stakeholder (customer) needs to give them a perception that the music festival can genuinely improve their social position and expand on their musical refinement. 6.1 Leadership and delegation The marketing management will be responsible for engaging with musical acts and their promoters whilst also coordinating the distribution of tickets for sale. The PM will establish appropriate control systems to ensure that this role adheres to set budget restrictions and ask for weekly reports on follow-up activities aligned with contemporary customer relationship management models associated with ticket buyers. A control metric for this position, developed by the Project Manager, will include a transactional leadership strategy that establishes a fundamental reward for staying under-budget and achieving appropriate marketing success milestones determined by the board governance team. Transactional leadership, often referred to as management by objectives, details (in advance) the expectations and goals of the manager and the specific incentives they can obtain by meeting or exceeding these established objectives (Antonakis, Avolio and Sivasubramaniam 2003). This same methodology of reward as a motivational tool will be applied to the HR manager and the sales manager as pertaining to their obligations in the event. The leadership of the event will also be utilising contemporary business-to-business (B2B) strategies to gain the support of local businesspersons to sponsor in-store advertising, local council government, the Royal Parks leadership, and a variety of subcontracted organisations. In the B2B environment, trust establishment between business partners is the most fundamental aspect of gaining commitment and compliance with business stakeholders (Moment 2001; Burkert 1994). Stakeholders involved in sponsoring the event and other outsourced administrative leaders will be given personalised access to the sales website, an IT-generated log-in identity, that will allow them to track event activities, track their invoices, and make inquiries for customer support with any questions about their role in the event. This follows the model of customer service developed by the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, which builds trust in collaborative relationships with business stakeholders by giving them a variety of self-service opportunities (Pfizer 2013). It will also provide invaluable data collection opportunities to assist the board system and support management on the team to understand what is concerning stakeholders to adjust strategic development to better align the project with business customer needs. Leadership of the team will also consist of providing autonomy to the management team, a system that is known to provide greater motivation to meet established business goals, build job satisfaction and generally enhance productivity (Merriam, Caffarella and Baumgartner 2007). Though granted autonomy, it is critical that the Project Manager establish metrics that are able to measure productivity and performance. Hence, the PM will establish a critical path flowchart illustrating the most priority activities along the entire project as well as timelines for completion for each individual team member. This flowchart will be posted in appropriate office environments for reference to each management team member so as to ensure proper time management. Achievements of meeting deadlines will be discussed in the weekly meetings as well as providing appropriate chastisement for those who fail to meet milestones along their job roles. It is becoming increasingly commonly-known in business theory that engagement quality (communications) between leader and follower are critical to building loyalty with followers. Hence, the meetings serve as an excellent opportunity to herald achievements of top-performing managers in the team to enhance a sense of social belonging and self-esteem development; fundamental and universal needs to gain high productivity (Maslow 1998). During the actual event, the Project Manager, the sales manager and the client will be physically present to facilitate management and control of all labour activities, inclusive of security, food and beverage services, stage support operations, and the informational kiosk labour systems. All associated supervisors will utilise hand-held communications radios that will allow management to have instant response to any problems or hindrances that might be occurring throughout the park. The PM will periodically audit the customer service and productivity of subordinate labour personnel, dealing with such issues as potential shortage of food and beverages or perhaps problems with security and patrons that could become threats to the event. Any recognised problems, such as procurement problems, will be handled by the sales manager (serving as stock manager during the event), who will immediately seek local procurement options to ensure smooth operations of service delivery. 6.2 Success metrics One of the most fundamental activities that will ensure that the event operates effectively and without incident is security management. It will be the responsibility of outsourced security administration to provide detailed maps of the park, its important and critical access points, and provide the company with a plan for properly distributing the security personnel to achieve maximum efficiency. A risk evaluation will also be expected from outsourced security leaders to deal with contingencies such as productive emergency medical assistance for customers, patron behavioural concerns, and ensuring no blocked access to entrance and exit points. In addition to these control methodologies, the Project Manager will be developing a life cycle model of the event which clearly identifies the specific start and completion dates of the project. By 5 June, all activities associated with the project, other than post-event cleaning and direct management and facilitation of the event, should be completed. The Life Cycle Model Chart will show each individual responsibility for all management team members with pre-established timeframes by which each obligation is to be completed. In each weekly meeting, the tangible tasks completed will be compared with the life cycle model and contingent activities to place the project back on schedule determined when appropriate. 7.0 Critical reflection of the event Upon reflection, the event planning did not take into consideration how to measure customer satisfaction to ensure that ticket buyers would attend future events. As a post-measurement metric, the management team would be developing an online satisfaction survey using relevant virtual business organisations that support these surveys (i.e. SurveyMonkey.com) that maintain low-cost survey opportunities. Consumers exiting the event should have been given links to these surveys to discuss, using a ranked order scale, their quantitatively-measurable opinion about service delivery competency, the enjoyment of the concert and recruited musical groups, and other fundamental aspects related to customer relationship management. As the charity is dependent on procurement of fund-raising to maintain adequate care operations and innovation production in treatment options for children, it would be important for another similar, future event to understand fully what customers felt about this event to provide more effective planning systems, milestones and governance. The most fundamental problem in the event was that there was disagreement about the relevancy of knowledge being disseminated. Some members of the team felt that knowledge was relevant to the social systems that drove team membership whilst others believed it should be based on fact and quantitative data. Hence, knowledge management became a political issue. Hislop (2009) iterates that an effective knowledge system requires development of a committed knowledge culture. There were disparate personality differences that led to conflict about how to effectively define and disseminate knowledge that was deemed relevant by group members. More emphasis, therefore, should have been placed on having HR management act as mediators in team meetings and focus, initially, on establishing an effective definition of knowledge. As the team focus involved discussions about business relationships, meeting tangible deadlines, marketing theory, and other disparate communications, there were many that felt these discussions were wasting their time and not relevant to their job roles. Building a knowledge culture would have been beneficial for enhancing communications with internal support management. Furthermore, the board governance, consisting of Project Manager, sales manager and the external client should have been developed differently. The talents of the three selected board members were not sufficient for discussing issues of marketing, strategic development, and risk evaluation. The board should have consisted of an additional member with advanced knowledge of business theory, marketing theory, and strategic leadership; even if necessary to outsource an external consultant. The governance team did not maintain the appropriate experience to formulate every contingency that could impact the event and therefore over-looked a variety of fundamental planning strategies that would have provided better contingency alternatives. Prior to launching the event, additionally, the HR manager and the Project Manager should have taken labour support subordinates on a tour of the park and provided hands-on training in food services, stage operations, and kiosk service support. Though training was conducted, it did not prepare staff for contingencies such as sudden demand increases, inquiries from engaged consumers, and how to handle conflict with customers. There were some service-related failures as a result and labour was unable to effectively handle difficult customers who had issues with pricing structures and other minor factors of service delivery. As a result, the support labourers were in constant contact with the PM and other on-site managers to resolve very simple customer-related crises, thus taking away from the more important responsibilities of supervisory oversight of the event. In the future, for a similar event, on-site preliminary training would be viable for more productive and self-managed support labourers. Additionally, the sales manager should have been assigned oversight responsibilities of food and beverage labourers and the marketing manager assigned supervisory over kiosk services and stage hand operations. Rather than having a holistic system, giving immediate job role supervision with each manager would have improved responsiveness and allowed these managers to focus on critical issues with each support area of the event to improve customer perceptions of service quality and competency. 8.0 Conclusion Outside of the aforementioned changes that should have occurred, the project managed to achieve its objective of expanding brand presence for the charity and attainment of its goal of $500,000 in fund-raising. This was accomplished by establishing a pricing structure of $61 per ticket for the 10 hour event. With a budget of $110,000, and not going over this, profitability was achieved equal to the expected $500,000. Through effective leadership, a board governance system, using marketing strategy and B2B theory, and effective delegation and control system development, the event was generally considered a project success. References Antonakis, J., Avolio, B. J., and Sivasubramaniam, N. 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