The Turbomachinery Laboratory, a center of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and a member of the Texas A&M University System, makes a substantial impact on turbomachinery and related industries through three pathways: research, education, and workforce development.The Turbomachinery Laboratory’s flagship event, Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia (TPS) has 4500 attending annually with 360 exhibiting companies.Martha Barton & Stephanie Hidalgo’s primary focus is exhibitor services, creating a floor plan, selling booth space, exhibitor communication/registration & contract negotiations.
TPS had a unique need in that they are part of the Texas A&M University System. The University has regulations that do not allow them to collect & house certain information.TPS needed the ability to approve booth purchases quickly. TPS has international companies purchasing booth space worldwide, working in different time zones, making for a cumbersome process of applying & getting approved. TPS needed a seamless and efficient system to manage this process.TPS needed a system integrated with their registration system, user friendly, and had robust reporting.What’s more, Martha & Stephanie work in a fast-paced, hospitality centric environment where they know the companies they work with have a choice as to whether to spend their marketing dollars with TPS or other events. The need to find a system that can provide speed & efficiency, all while not losing their white-glove approach, was paramount.
Martha continued working with their outdated, inefficient exhibit booth sales system before mentioning to their ATS contacts the pain they were looking for relief. Martha was comfortable mentioning this pain as they had a great relationship with their ATS contacts, having worked with them for many years on other aspects of their event.ATS team of project managers & programmers quickly drafted and executed a custom-built online exhibit booth sales system based on the unique requirements provided to them by the TPS team.ATS fully integrated the Online Exhibit Booth sales system with the already in place online registration software and the custom merchant accounts provided by the Texas A&M University.Best of all, the custom system ATS provides only the info needed, nothing else, provides a user-friendly client-facing interface, and allows Martha to monitor activity with the robust built-in reporting component easily.[cs_gb id=299]
Selling exhibit booth space is only a part of Martha & Stephanie’s rolls at TPS. Providing TPS exhibiting companies access to easily purchase booth space has allowed Martha, Stephanie & the team to focus on other tasks and not stress about this vital component of their event.Since adopting the ATS exhibit booth sales system, TPS has decreased the amount of time spent on this part of their event exponentially. A process that used to take days/weeks on the phone is now managed in hours with the ATS system.