Event Tech of the Week: @bepropared

Today, we’re talking about: Propared

Company/Tool Name: Propared

Website: propared.com

Twitter: @bepropared

Facebook: facebook.com/propared

What is the “problem” that your tool seeks to solve?

A single streamlined, flexible, and dynamic platform that addresses the unique project management, logistics planning, and people management challenges across the event landscape.

What is the best audience for this tool? Corporate events? Social? Other? Large? Small?

The power of our tool is really felt by event managers and production managers who are managing multiple projects at the same time and specifically responsible for the bulk of pre-planning and event logistics work. The flexibility of Propared also allows our users to float between many sub-industries. As such, we have users engaged in multiple categories though the majority are working in corporate events, large theatre companies/groups, and fashion.

What does your tool help event planners do better?

Propared is all about people and time: who needs to be where, when, and what are they doing. First, Propared introduces a better way for event planners to manage their contacts. From people, to companies, to venues, down to the individual rooms in an event space, we provide a platform for you to track everything associated with your work with much deeper insight including relationships, job history, roles, and even specialities. Second, Propared then allows you to take all that information and easily build out event schedules down to the most minute detail by simply pulling and referencing the database you’ve already imported. No more redundant data entry or manual updating of your work across multiple tools. And third, we make communication between you, your team, partners, vendors, suppliers, and clients simple and accessible but integrating directly with your email clients and calendars.

How is your tool different from/better than the competition?

There are a lot of project management tools out there. But they aren’t designed around the way event professionals work.

1. Event profs work faster. Events we plan last days or weeks instead of months or years. Propared is designed to streamline the onboarding process that can be complex with other systems and get right to building your projects.
2. Event profs do more projects at the same time. We are often juggling a few to dozens to even hundreds of shows simultaneously, often across multiple companies. Propared allows you to effortlessly navigate between projects, even entire Portfolios all from the same central platform and login.
3. Event profs work in smaller time buckets. When planning conferences, trade shows, and large corporate events, event schedules are detailed down to the minute, not the days or week. Propared is designed to understand the importance of every task, whether it lasts 5 minutes or 5 hours.
4. Event profs’ teams are constantly changing. With all the vendors, freelancers, clients, and venues, we rarely work with all the same people from show to show, making procedures and communication difficult. Propared understands this dynamic, providing multiple communication and collaboration tools to either maintain your team’s existing practices or easily adopt Propared’s.

What is the single coolest feature of your product?

That’s hard! There are three that are absolutely kick ass and you can totally pick one (or two or three!) if you need to narrow it down.

1. Import and sync Calendar feeds.As managers we must often incorporate information from many sources into the planning of our projects. With Propared’s Calendar Syncing features, you can import and sync information from non-Propared calendars right into your Project Timelines. This allows you to work with information from other sources, stay up to date with everything going on around you, and reduce redundant data entry.
2. Smart tagging. The possibilities are nearly endless with our tagging system. Tag your people with their roles or departments. Tag tasks with the team members responsible for completing them. With tags in place, you can quickly sort and filter to get at any information you need to make quick, important decisions.
3. Creating and Publishing Paperwork. How often does an event schedule change? In Propared, all your Paperwork can be quickly created right from your Master Timeline. When changes happen, update the Timeline and every piece of Paperwork reflects the change automatically and even highlights what’s new to your team. Send Paperwork emails, booking requests, and calendar subscriptions right from the program. Make it easy for your team to stay up-to-date.

Anything else we need to know?

Propared was born not just out of opportunity but real need: the needs of our colleagues and our own. In fact, every member of the Propared team is an industry veteran, with years of experience as production and event managers, electricians, stage managers, technical directors, actors, designers, and “do-it-all” crew members. We have experienced the same ups and downs, the same struggles and triumphs as you. And we want to make work better for all of us. We believe it is our mission to make event work faster, easier, and more cost effective, leading to longer careers and higher quality of work.

This weekly series spotlights a new tech tool that is designed to help make planning events much more seamless. Whether it’s using event software to track every detail from start to finish or mobile apps that deliver content to attendees’ fingertips, these technologies allow planners to divert their stress to more critical issues like deciding which napkin color looks best.