As the business events industry returns to in-person formats, Singapore-headquartered Jublia – which sets itself up as the first hybrid event platform that focuses on audience engagement through a data-driven process – has chosen to align itself with live events.
Tan Kuan Yan, CEO & co-founder of Jublia, believes that the return to live events – largely offline and inherently more complex to manage – does not mean that all digital and tech enhancements should be disregarded, but instead, integrated into live events to improve and add value to them.
This is because no matter how advanced technology becomes, it will never replace live events.
“Event tech providers increasingly need to align themselves with either side of the industry (virtual or live) or risk diluting their efforts,” he added.
In this transition back to live events, Jublia activated its DigitaLIVE masterplan to improve its platform with tracking metrics and data-driven processes to furnish better, tangible insights to event organisers. This is in addition to the business matching, pre-event engagement, event navigation and other capabilities that the platform already provides.
“The forced digitisation of events during the pandemic left the industry with much exposure and awareness in tracking metrics. The DigitaLIVE campaign heightens awareness (for event planners) as to how (we can) improve aspects of their live event. Digital tools serve to empower the live event, and not replace it,” Tan said.
Tan recalled a period of “intense pivot” for Jublia’s technology capabilities in the first six months of the event industry disruption. It ensured Jublia’s business continuity amid event postponements and cancellations, and led to the birth of the company’s Secure, Anticipate, and Future-proof Event planning process at the start of 2021. This process allows clients to organise events with more certainty, as Jublia’s Engagement Hub is able to handle last minute swaps from live to virtual and vice versa.
“We provided this service at no extra cost amid the uncertain regulatory climate, which also assured our clients that our Engagement Hub is flexible and adaptable to any type of event,” said Tan. A client who organised AntwerpXL in late 2021 benefitted from this process, as they had to hastily switch from a live format to virtual at the very last minute.
Despite constant enhancements to its event management platform, Jublia has maintained its pricing base since it started operations about a decade ago.
Jublia’s constant push for innovation allowed the company to more than double its headcount during the pandemic.
Tan said: “We are mindful that Jublia is not at the centre of the event tech universe, and have to work collaboratively with others. We constantly look outside our domain at factors that can have an impact on our engagement.”
For instance, Jublia compiled its top learning points on registration – a vital part of any event – into an e-book, Orchestrating Registration to Infinity and Beyond to help organisers improve the process.
Moreover, in addition to the recent release of Jublia App 3.0, the company has in the pipeline two more event tech releases before 2022 is up.
The first is Scan, a retrieval platform that helps to collect data on qualified leads to help event organisers quantify and measure their event’s success. The second is AI Maps, which can render and route through multi-hall venues, providing navigation convenience to attendees and smoother venue management for organisers.
“I hope providers like us can bring collaboration to the next level for the betterment of the industry. There is no platform that can perform well in all aspects. This will ensure organisers don’t have to choose technology based on their convenience, but based on specialisation and performance towards attendees’ experiences,” Tan concluded.
