How To Get Upper Management To Buy In On Your BIM Events
As our previous event blog stated, in-person events are back and better than ever! The value you gain attending an event if you are a BIM Manager or Designer is endless. From the knowledge you gain to the face-to-face action you get with clients, vendors, and even the competition, you cannot go wrong with attending BIM events or conferences. But with the fun of events comes the tedious planning before you attend the event, more explicitly creating a budget for it and getting the approval to take time off for it.
To go along with the theme of events from last week’s blog, we will cover what is essential in event budgeting, how to create your budget, and how to get your boss’s approval of the budget and time off needed to attend it. Even though planning a budget for you to attend a BIM event as a BIM Manager or Designer is not a fun aspect of event planning, it is easily one of its most critical parts. It would be best if you had a thorough understanding of where every dollar spent is going and make sure you add in the potential of overspending. Even after creating the budget, tracking where every penny is going is crucial to your ROI from the event and managing the total cost. But even more important is getting your boss’s approval to attend the event and approve your budget.
There are a lot of essential aspects that go into creating a successful BIM event attendance budget. Some of the logistics you must look at when making your budget include:
•Your company’s size
• Event attendance goal
•Scope of the event
•Location
• Looking at previously attended events and their success and funding
From there, you can continue doing your research and create a well-thought-out budget.
Once you have established the price range of your budget, you can go on to the next step, officially creating it. The first step is using an excel sheet or event planning software and making an organized event budget template. You can even use the template we created, if you fill out the form below. Then, you start filling it out with a list of needs for your event. On average, these are the items that you need to research when making your budget: travel, hotel costs, food, labor, marketing, and swag. When you are going through this list and researching the pricing, make sure you are finding options that are good quality but, at the same time, not too pricey. An excellent way to get the best price is always to call and see if they have any promotions or specials. Finally, after conducting all your research on pricing, you add the top candidates for each item on the excel sheet and ensure to include any information or links you have for each one.
After completing the budget, you go on to the next challenge: creating a list of reasons why you should attend. Especially as a BIM Manager or Designer, you are extremely busy, making it hard for upper management to approve the time off needed to attend an event. But what you gain from attending events is crucial to growing within your role and the company. The top reasons you should attend an event are networking, building brand awareness for your firm, learning about new industry trends, and helping motivate you to become a better Designer or BIM Manager.
Now that you have found all the information needed for your budget and come up with a list of reasons why you must attend, you go on to the scary part… getting approval from upper management. Even though it is frightening to go up to your boss and ask for a large sum of money and time off from your day-to-day tasks, at the end of the day, if you have been thorough with your research and know what is necessary and not necessary for your event as well as understanding why you must attend, it should be easy. Here are a couple of tips when going over the budget:
– You let them know why each item is vital to the event.
– You have multiple options with different prices for them to look over, as they may find some things more important and splurge on them. Then you need to EMPHASIZE why this BIM event is essential to attend and have a booth at and how it will bring value to your organization.
– Anticipate that questions will be asked, and make sure that you are knowledgeable about your budget and can answer any questions that come your way.
– When you are organized and proactive and set concrete goals for your BIM event attendance budget, it will be significantly easier to approve your funding.
It may seem like a lot of work to carry out a budget plan, create a list of why you need to attend, and get upper management’s approval. But it will be easier if you take your time making it and have confidence. And once it is approved, do not drop the ball; continue your hard work until the event has finished!
Would you like to stay involved with team UNIFI and even get the chance to meet us at upcoming events! Here are the subsequent two events that UNIFI will be attending. First, we will be at Autodesk University in New Orleans, LA, from September 27th-29th to learn from the best in the business, with thought leaders and innovators in each industry sharing experience, insight, and vision. Then the BIM Coordinators Summit in Ireland on September 8th to see UNIFI’s Virginia Senf speak on “How to increase your influence and technology budget by talking to management in their language.”
Need help budgeting your events? Access our budget template by filling out the form below! Better yet, are you interested in UNIFI? Follow the link to start your free trial! Get Started with UNIFI – UNIFI (unifilabs.com)