American Society for Surgery of the Hand (ASSH) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization focused on advancing research education and outreach of hand and upper extremity surgery through education, research, and advocacy on behalf of patients and practitioners.ASSH’s annual meeting serves as their largest educational event of the year, where the primary purpose is to exchange academic information through various sessions. The Annual Meeting also serves as a networking space for surgeons and industry partners to connect.Bill oversees the registration process both before the meeting and onsite. “Before print on demand, I would organize the printing and stuffing of badges and envelopes with tickets, etc. which was a very long manual process.” He is also heavily involved in the overall budgeting for the Annual Conference.
Before the transition to Print on Demand, Bill and his team were pre-printing thousands of badges in their office basement. They would manually tear 3x4 paper badges off the six badge sheet and stuff them into envelopes along with tickets for sessions that had any additional fees. “It was a very antiquated, manual process.”
With the ability to collect data that was useful in forecasting future meetings, cutting time spent on pre-printing, and upgrading the overall badge aesthetic to a more modern look, ASSH transitioned to using Print on Demand for their Annual Meeting.
“We felt like we were moving into the 21st Century”
Once switching to Print on Demand, Bill and his team saw results immediately. Those who registered for the meeting but did not attend are recorded as “no shows,” so they cannot receive CME credits. Instead of manually going through the stack of badges that were not picked up at the end of the conference and cross-referencing to those scanned into the meeting, Bill could pull a report directly from ATSReg after the conference to see who did and did not attend. “With this, it was a simple report at the end of the meeting.” They were also able to see trends when people were picking up their badge and schedule temp staff accordingly. “If there’s not a lot of people during this block of time during the day, why do we need to have a lot of people working here?”Attendees were also quick to respond to the updated look of the badge. ASSH transitioned from a 3x4 paper badge stuffed in a plastic badge holder to a 4x11 vinyl badge that hung directly from a lanyard. Bill said, “People were commenting right away on how much better they [the badges] looked compared to what we used to have.”A couple of Bill’s team members were on the fence about the transition to ATSReg before seeing the system in action at their Annual Meeting. “Once they saw the data we got out of it, they knew we made the right decision.” In addition to the data, the badge's upgraded aesthetic was so significant they knew going back to their old badge was not an option. “We can’t go back; it just looks that much better.”[cs_gb id=299]
“Everyone was overjoyed when we didn’t have to stuff badges”
Since adopting ATSReg, Bill and his team have eliminated preprinting for their Annual Meeting and now have over 100 hours dedicated to other tasks. “Badge printing has gone from a big scary elephant in the room to a minor process.” A process that was a burden is now efficiently managed with behind the scenes exports from their registration reporting system to on-demand badge printing with ATSReg. ASSH likes to be on the cutting edge of technology, but their previous badges were a relic from prior decades. “ATS took the entire meeting into the 21st century.”
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