Case Study
Conference Registration SaaS Platform
Bringing America Back to Life, a nonprofit organization based in northeast Ohio, hosts an annual 2-day conference welcoming approximately 1,000 attendees each year. After a decade of managing registrations manually through Excel spreadsheets and email coordination, their conference manager, Joe, approached Honeyguide for help. The result was a digital transformation that has evolved over four years, ultimately enabling BABTL to transition leadership while maintaining operational excellence and real-time decision-making capabilities.
The Challenge
Joe was overwhelmed by a completely manual registration process that had become a full-time job for three months each year. A team of 10 registrars managed group registrations (75% of attendees) while individual registrations (25%) came through their marketing website. Everything was coordinated through Excel spreadsheets sent over email, creating a nightmare for change management, frequent human errors, and a single point of failure. After researching existing solutions and receiving a $200,000 proposal from an established agency, Joe needed a custom solution that could handle their unique complexity within their nonprofit budget constraints.
Our Solution
We proposed an iterative approach designed to transform the greatest areas of opportunity first, at a price point the organization could budget for. Step #1 was to centralize the registration system, creating a single source of truth with a single point of entry. We developed a multi-tenant web application on cloud infrastructure, accessible by each team member with oversight controls for comprehensive management.
We successfully rolled out the new system in time for the 2021 conference and provided comprehensive training for the team. As we used the system over the following months, we identified opportunities for enhancement. We added an activity log for detailed oversight of every change and enforced rules and limitations previously impossible with Excel spreadsheets.
Step #2 addressed name badge printing management. Previously, this required maintaining a separate system and duplicate registration data. We created intelligent functions to alert when badges needed reprinting as changes occurred and automatically produced new badges for printing, eliminating manual tracking during the critical pre-conference period.
The Results
Over four years of continuous improvement, the system evolved to include external registrar access, intelligent duplicate detection, master switches for sold-out items, and one-click import of individual registrations from their marketing website. Most importantly, Bringing America Back to Life gained real-time data-driven decision-making capabilities with all historical and current data accessible through a single interface.
By 2024, the system supported 29 registrar users managing 1,043 unique attendees with 2,465 registration changes throughout the year. The platform successfully maintained the 78%/22% split between group and individual registrations while dramatically reducing manual overhead. Registration management was no longer a full-time job for the first quarter of each year.
The transformation's ultimate success was demonstrated when Joe felt confident stepping back after 15 years, successfully transitioning responsibility to Bringing America Back to Life's executive director and team. The system had codified the entire process into a largely automated solution, enabling seamless leadership transition while maintaining operational excellence.
"Working with Honeyguide transformed not just our registration process, but our entire approach to conference management. Their iterative methodology allowed us to build a solution within our nonprofit budget that exceeded our expectations. What started as a way to reduce manual work for Joe became a comprehensive platform that gave us real-time insights and data-driven decision-making capabilities we never had before. After Joe managed this process for 15 years, we're confident in the transition knowing the system Honeyguide built will support our organization's continued success."
