Microsoft Canada hires Maritz to assess event strategy
By Adnews Staff
Software company Microsoft Canada has retained Maritz Canada to assist in a national assessment of its event strategy. According to the company, the goal is to optimize its investment in the 600 customer events in which it participates each year and align them more closely with overall business strategy. Maritz conducted approximately 1,000 interviews with business development managers, technology development managers, IT professionals and developers to gauge Microsoft's event effectiveness. The new approach will debut at the BizBash Toronto conference on Jan. 31. "We challenged the objective of every single event from product launches, trade shows and webcasts to seminars, user groups and hospitality events," said Kelly Smith, senior national events strategy manager at Microsoft Canada. "It is very easy to continue doing an event because it has run before and the perception is that it has been a success. What's really important is to clearly understand how all events link to business strategy. To do this, we solicited both qualitative and quantitative feedback before we started developing a centralized and sophisticated framework to guide us."