11 July 2018

Is the exhibition industry only doing a pseudo-digitalisation?

There are several digital initiatives that have been reported recently in the exhibition industry: IT departments are growing almost everywhere, budgets are increasing and job titles that are fairly new to the exhibition business are emerging. A "Chief Digital Officer" and a team with a start-up mindset seem to be a must-have. And it's also a must-do to talk about all these endeavours, especially with the board.

 

DIGITAL DISRUPTION AT THE UFI GLOBAL CONGRESS IN JOHANNESBURG

 

At the UFI Global Congress in November 2017 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Gunnar Heinrich (CEO adventics & Scan2Lead) gave a presentation on "Digital Disruption" together with his colleagues from the Digital Innovation Committee Stephan Forseilles (easyfairs) and Matthias Tesi Baur (MBB-Media). Various controversial and thought-provoking topics were presented to the audience, stimulating a lively debate on the pros and cons of each topic.


VIEW OF THE AUDIENCE ON THE TOPIC

 

During the presentation in Johannesburg, some arguments were heard supporting the thesis that this is a real threat to the exhibition industry:

 

  1. Many organisers (and here especially the state-owned ones) are too slow to bring truly innovative solutions to the market.
  2. We need a different corporate culture. We are not used to making mistakes. Agility is something else. We need the right organisation with the right attitude from top management.
  3. They bring in modern technologies, but forget the corresponding business model.
  4. Simply buying a new CRM system and then taking five years for the basic implementation is not really digitising the business.
  5. We can't work with big data because we don't even understand our small data.
  6. Many approaches are quite old-fashioned and have nothing to do with Industry 4.0 and modern digital business.

It is interesting to note that the entire audience felt the same way. The vast majority (around 95%) said that they agreed or even strongly agreed that the trade fair industry is currently engaged in pseudo-digitalisation. Nonetheless, it was also discussed that there are a few promising exceptions in the market that are truly leading the industry in terms of embracing modern technologies and business models.

STAY IN TOUCH WITH THE UFI DIGITAL INNOVATION COMMITTEE

 


Join our LinkedIn group ("UFI Digital Innovation Group" or http://www.ufidigital.com) or follow us on Twitter (@UFIDigital). Join your fellow experts in the event industry, become part of the community and shape the future of events together.


Join us at the next Digital Innovation Group Focus Meeting: Once a year, we invite CIOs, marketing managers, IT specialists and anyone interested in the digital transformation of our event industry to a Focus Meeting. In addition to interesting talks and presentations, the three finalists for the UFI Digital Innovation Award also present their solutions at the Focus Meeting. Take part and vote for the winner.

Munich, 11. July 2018, © adventics GmbH