Planning as a success factor: Efficient participant planning for events at Dr Falk Pharma GmbH

The Congress App was developed to optimize internal support for employees and subsidiaries. Previously, organizing these events was a tedious, manual process using various Excel spreadsheets. Event information was sent via email, and registrations also had to be processed manually through email. Managing registrations and attendance was done in Excel, making changes and cancellations difficult to handle and often leading to errors.

To make future event planning and organization more efficient and less error-prone, the company sought a solution to streamline the entire process. The new solution needed to offer greater automation, reduce the workload for employees, and seamlessly integrate with the existing Microsoft 365 products.

Efficient Congress Management with a New App

Dr Falk Pharma GmbH chose the Microsoft Power Platform to take advantage of its seamless integration with its existing M365 products. Customized applications and workflows can be quickly created using the Power Apps and Power Automate services. The combination is cost-effective and ensures efficient, error-free event organization.

Power Apps enable user-friendly applications across various platforms and devices to interact with data from multiple sources. Power Automate establishes automated processes and actions that respond to specific events or triggers, such as emails, forms, messages, or calendar events. Both services are part of the Microsoft Power Platform and are helping streamline congress management.

SoftwareOne also assumed overall project management to ensure a smooth process. Among other responsibilities, the agile project management team coordinated the harmonization of the various individual services, managed tasks, created meeting minutes, organized meetings, and reported to the steering committee.

The new web application can efficiently manage participation in congresses and organize information for participants. The main functions are:

Congress Management

• Create and edit conventions: Administrators can create new and edit existing conventions.
• Scheduling: The app sets start, end, kick-off, and dinner dates.
• Location details: Enter the congress, kick-off, and Falk Dinner locations.
• Program details: Enter and edit the scientific program and industry exhibition details.
• Check hotel bookings: Checklists verify hotel bookings.
• Dinner options: Enable a selection of dinner options.
• Logo Upload: An option is included to upload a convention logo.
• Automation with Power Automate: Automatic reminders are sent for upcoming exams and appointments.

Attendee Management

• Attendee registration: Enter attendee information, including name, institution, country, department, and registration status.
• Congress assignment: Assign attendees to specific congresses.
• Confirmation management: Manage attendee confirmations, hotel reservations, and dinners.
• Badge management: Select attendee badge type.
• Arrival and departure dates: Record attendee arrival and departure dates.

Automation with Power Automate

• Automatically send confirmation emails after registration and deregistration.
• Send reminder emails to attendees for upcoming confirmations and appointments.
• Generate status reports on registrations, hotel bookings, and event attendance.