The Ultimate Corporate Event Planning Guide

Whether it’s a trade show, appreciation dinner, networking luncheon, or corporate holiday party, companies use corporate events for a variety of reasons. With the growing emphasis on staff engagement and networking, CEOs and HR managers have found these events to be invaluable.

It’s imperative to stay organized throughout the corporate event planning process to ensure a seamless day of setup and overall accurate event execution.

Here’s how to plan a corporate event and best stay organized and on top of the corporate event planning process every step of the way.

Determine Corporate Event Guest List And Budget

Establishing the guestlist for a corporate event is the crucial first step for every event planning process. While on the surface it may seem as though a guest list is only about who is invited, it serves purposes well beyond that! Having an established guest list for corporate events will keep you organized while helping to dictate how to proceed with many of the important decisions required throughout the planning process.

It’s important to know how many people will be on your corporate event guest list and how many you expect in attendance in order to determine if the corporate event venue you look to select can accommodate your needs. Some venues are larger/smaller than others. A guest list (which you easily store and manage within your Prismm account) will assist you in narrowing down your venue choices.

Within Prismm, it’s simple and efficient to manage the corporate event guest list. guest names and mailing addresses can be stored alphabetically or filtered into specific categories, such as company, region, department, and job title, for easy organization. Prismm’s guest list function also provides space to note down details specifically relevant to the event, such as speaker information and award recipients, select meal requests for each guest, track RSVPs and collaborate with the whole team so that everyone is on the same page and up to date on all guestlist details.

Added Bonus: Prismm’s guest list provides a direct link to seating, making it simple and efficient for working on your event seating chart. Learn more about designing corporate event seating charts in this article. 

The event budget goes hand in hand with establishing the guest list. Knowing your budget and the funds you have to allocate for the event will help you to determine and build the guest list. If you are operating within a specific budget, you will want to keep this in mind as you work on the guest list. You may need to keep your guest count down, or at least be mindful of the total guest count on your list. How much money do you have to allocate for the event and how much do you want to spend at the event venue? Your event budget will help you to understand and manage the money you have to work with which in turn allows you to narrow down your event venue options.

Remember to keep both your event budget and event guest list in mind when selecting a corporate event venue as they work hand in hand.

Gather Accurate Contact Information (email addresses!)

Email invites are the typical invite method for today’s corporate event invites. For this reason, ensure you have the correct email addresses for your guest list contacts so that the invite is received by the right person. Quite often emails are sent to general email addresses which may or may not eventually reach the intended recipient.

Have The Important Conversations

Who should you be speaking to about the corporate event to determine the event guest list?  It’s critical to have this important conversation with the right people internally at the start of the planning process regarding who needs an invite. You don’t want to build the guest list and think you are finished only to learn later on that you missed a few key people who need an invite.

Consider Venue Selection

Did you already have a venue in mind for the event? What is the venue’s capacity and is it within your budget? If you are dead set on a specific corporate event venue, the capacity and cost may help you to determine your guest list count. If you are open to venue selection, once you have the established guest list and budget, you can then begin to narrow down your venue choices based upon your needs.

Keep in mind, a corporate event planner must also know their set-up and audiovisual needs. This relates also to venue selection and event vision as your corporate event venue must meet your needs both for event execution and guest experience.

Take Into Account Venue Location and Accessibility

It’s critical to factor in location and accessibility as it relates to attendees. When selecting the corporate event venue, consider where guests will be coming from and consider the option to provide company transportation as needed. When examining the guest list, a centrally located venue or venue that is most accessible may prove to be the best option.

If considering a venue that’s further away from attendees, remember to consider other travel needs and expenses. Things like direct flight options, local hotel accommodations, and passport requirements should all play a role in the event venue selection process.

Outline Event Purpose and Vision

What are the event goals? What message are you looking to deliver to the attendees? Delivering information and announcements, boosting worker morale, and celebrating accomplishments are some potential goals that are suited for different event structures.

If your event team had corporate decoration ideas in mind, speak with vendors to determine costs associated with your corporate event decor ideas. You will want to identify and narrow down your decor options that best fit your budget, venue space, and vision.

Specific Needs

Aside from understanding the needs of attending guests, it’s also important to determine the specifications needed to execute the event vision. For example, if the event will be a dinner party with speakers and rewards, it might be necessary to think about the proper equipment and space that would be needed to set up a stage in front of some banquet tables.

Create Floor plan Layout

When planning for the setup and decor within the event space, it can often be hard to imagine how the plans on paper will translate into the actual live event. Even with everything planned out in detail, things might not always look as imagined in person at set up time. With Prismm, easily design corporate event floor plans to scale to ensure accuracy, efficiency, and ease of day of set up.

Prismm OPS provides floor plan and seating tools which makes it easy to design floor plan layouts to scale for corporate parties and events. The Prismm furniture library allows you to choose from a wide variety of tables, chairs, and other furniture to design and customize the space. You can also seat your guests directly from the guest list at the tables you have positioned in your floor plan layout. In addition to selecting tables and furniture for your event’s floor plan, meet the needs of your corporate event by including registration tables, charging stations, meeting room set-ups, staging, and technical requirements as well.

With the ability to view your creation in 3D and make changes in real-time, layouts are perfected through collaboration, leaving no detail unnoticed. Having this scaled floor plan ready ensures that the day of setup is seamless and accurate.

Vendor Collaboration

Having vendors, such as caterers, photographers, and rental companies, involved in an event can often mean more communication to coordinate and tedious back and forths. If you’re using Prismm to organize and design your event, collaborating with vendors throughout the planning process becomes much easier and effective.

Within the Prismm platform, you can invite colleagues and vendor partners to collaborate on the event and work together on tasks such as guest information, floor plan layout, timeline, and seating. Vendor collaboration within a vendor timeline will keep everyone working on your event updated in real-time and on the same page for your event. The vendor timeline will allow for vendors to understand the flow of setup, event details, and the timing of breakdown at the end of the night.

We hope this article provided corporate event solutions. Learn more about how Prismm can benefit corporate planning for your business by scheduling a demo.