Worldwide Business Research

Editor's Notes

1. Firstly, thank you all for joining us at this breakfast. My name is Amit Das, and I’m the Managing Director for the Americas for WBR, the organizers of FIMA, the annual financial data meeting place, and many other conferences. I’d like to explain the purpose of this breakfast, as well as set out a brief agenda. The purpose is to bring together some customers who know us well, some customers for whom this is their first experience of FIMA, with some customers who don’t do business with us, as well as some loyal representatives from financial institutions who have been attending and speaking at FIMA for many years. What I am hoping to achieve is to give you a deeper insight into how WBR goes about building our events, what we are seeing in the reference data marketplace as well as the events marketplace, and ultimately with the goal of building some deeper relationships with all of you. I hope you leave with a sense of how different WBR is to other event organizers, and how we can provide you with a total business solution versus a simple exhibition booth or speaking slot.So, I’m going to talk a little bit about FIMA, how we put it together and how we get all these folks to attend, a little bit about WBR and how we can help you meet your objectives. We’ll then take you on a brief tour around FIMA to explain what is going on, and of course answer any questions you may have.
2. So, we start our planning for FIMA approximately 7months prior to the event date. We begin by conducting primary research with over 100 market practitioners. This is via telephone interviews and face to face interviews lasting between 30mins to an hour. Every other conference organizer spends approximately 4 weeks putting together a conference program. We spend over 3 months. We use this vast amount of compiled feedback and research to develop the most cutting edge content for our programs. I’d like to share with you some of the major themes that we uncovered this year that financial institutions were struggling with were and that they were seeking solution for were:Global regulations and policy changes, driven by Dodd Frank and Basel 3 Data risk, driven by the data deluge that organizations are struggling to come to make sense ofHow to achieve concrete forward progress with EnterpriseData MgtAnd ever increasing Public demand for transparency and securityWe’ve seen a dramatic shift over the course of the last 12-18months from data governance and quality, to data science and analytics. A shiftfromrefernce data quality to how data can add real value to the business strategy.And of course, technology is the glue that is tying this all together. Or sometimes pulling it all apart!We built our conference to focus on these key drivers and challenges that the market is facing, because we know that our attendees are willing to pay good money to come and hear about potential solutions to these issues, and how market leading firms are tackling them, and how vendors can help them. It’s a fairly simple model: find out the critical challenges that a market is facing and build a program with speakers and presenters who are tackling those challenges.Over the next couple of slides you can see some of the other data that we collect from our attendees.
3. So how can all this research this help you?Well, from a solution provider perspective, I’m sure you are seeing the same things within your businesses, and from your customers and prospects.SALES CYCLES ARE GETTING LONGER AND LONGER; Access to real decision makers is getting more and more difficult, AND, those very decision makers are looking through ways to cut through the noise and target the right solutions and services for their business.Since the financial crisis we have seen a shift in the needs of our sponsoring customers. Previously, there was a greater emphasis on branding and thought leadership. Today, there is a greater emphasis on custom research on specific products, market surveys on buying patterns, a need for help in penetrating emerging markets, and help with new product launches, as well as of course pure qualified lead generation.So how can you replace your marketing machine gun with a high powered, targeted rifle? Your prospects and potential prospects are coming here to FIMA to talk about their problems, their challenges and their opportunities. Imagine yourselves addressing an audience of people who are searching for the very solutions that your provide. We can provide you with an opportunity to position yourselves and your solutions front of mind with your targeted audience.
4. So who is WBR and how can we help you? We are a global research-driven events company. We operate in many different verticals, from Financial Services, to Retail. We have a global footprint with offices in New York, London, Sao Paulo and Singapore. We research, develop and execute over 100 events globally every year.Events is all we do. We don’t have any other vested interests like an association or a magazine. That allows us to dedicate approx 3months into the research and development of each conference more than 3 times that of any other event company.We spend months researching our products so that they meet the exact needs of our target audiences. Our conferences are living, breathing, communities of professionals that are dedicated to raising their standards continually.
5. Our goal is to provide a forum where buyers and sellers can meet to discuss strategies and solutions to overcome the critical challenges that they are facing in their businesses.
6. All of our conferences are based on primary research we conduct with industry practitioners, industry experts, with your clients, with your competitors. It gives us a broad and deep perspective of the market that you may not even be able to access via your own market feedback channels. We are an independent information provider, so practitioners have little hesitation in giving us deep insight into their business strategies, because they know that the information will be used to deliver a conference that absolutely matches their most hard to address problems and opportunities. From this body of research we identify 50 practitioners that will be able to address the issues that the market is facing, and we identify key solution providers that may be able to add value to these practitioners. FIMA truly is a culmination of research done by the community for the community.
7. So, how do we get the audiences that we get? Its all very well having the most well researched, up to date and cutting edge conference, but if no one hears about it, no one will come.Everything we do is done to ensure we have the right audience here. And we have a 360 degree strategy to achieve thatSo, upstairs, we have an audience of over 250 people who are directly responsible for tackling their data challenges. How do we get this audience? Through our marketing dept. we cultivate all forms of social media, including the largest reference data linked in group, as well as ongoing podcasts and webinars. Internally, over 10 years, we’ve cultivated a database of over 8,000 buyers of reference data solutions. We have a team of researchers who keep this information up to date daily. Delegate Sales: we have a team of sales representatives whose sole job is to prospect, pitch and close relevant attendees to the conference. They reach out to potential attendees, qualify them, ensure that the event meets their needs and that they have the purchasing power to attend. They reach over 2000 qualified buyers for each conference, which is actually yet another layer of additional research that helps us fine tune our eventWe have a market leadingf website which is continually search optimized which generates tremendous traffic.Lastly, we strike partnerships with the most respected associations and publications in this field.. All of this leads to an integrated, year round audience acquisition campaign.Our objective when we build the attendance at our events is to protect the buyer seller ratio at all costs. We limit the number of vendors that are allowed to participate at the conference so that our sponsor clients will have as much opportunity as possible to meet with real prospects as opposed to many events that you go to where the audience is largely made up of solution providers and vendors. And our attendees are able to meet only with a select group of vendors that can truly add value to their business.KEEP SLOWLY PROGRESSING SLIDES
8. And you can see here a snapshot of the results that our marketing campaigns achieve.
9. I wanted to close with a couple of case studies from our clients. Most of our customers are looking for a combination of 6 things:Thought leadership: an opportunity to demonstrate their expertise and intellectual leadership on a subject area.Branding: positioning in the market place as a leaderMarket & customer insight into launching a new product,solution or serviceinto the marketplaceNetworking: meeting, mingling and developing relationships with existing clients and new prospectsLead generation: qualified leads for the sales pipelineThe opportunity to progress existing leads closer towards a saleThe value that we can provide, and that events as a whole can provide, is that we can customize a sponsorship package for you that combines a variety of activities that ultimately meets whichever combination of these objectives that are best for your business. Events are a unique way of combining pure lead generation with branding, advertising, client retention activities and thought leadership.For example, a technology company had a shortlist of 3 products that they were developing. They needed market feedback from customers and prospects as to which of these products may be most beneficial to them. We were able to set up a focus group for them of 20 prospective customers during which the customers were able to demo and play around with the three different products and the client could get real time feedback on those products. As such they were able to determine which would be the best received by the market. An extremely valuable, and unusual, solution for them that no other event company could provide.(Click For Informatica’s Testimonial)A second example is Informatica who came to us with three specific objectives:They needed to differentiate themselves versus their competition and promote their value proposition to drive consideration for RFPs. They also needed to understand from their customers which projects were being prioritized internally.They were struggling to build deep brand awareness and gain exposure to reinforce their market position as a thought leader in Financial ServicesTo drive new business development and evaluate potential new IT projects, they needed to conduct face to face meetings with high quality prospective buyers How were we able to build a custom solution for Informatica that met all these needs?To achieve the thought leadership need, as well as drive insight into potential IT RFPs, Informatica was able to host a customized roundtable around a topic of their choice in front of an audience of 80-90 Financial institutions. This wasn’t simply a speaking opportunity, but a real time survey of the market’s needs and priorities.Informatica leveraged our 22 week marketing campaign as well as our year round web presence to reinforce their brand and align it with the FIMA brandWe asked them for a “hit list” of key attendees that they would like to meet at the conference and WBR staff are facilitating introductions between Informatica staff and these key attendees. This again is something that no other events company does for their clients.
10. Its an absolutely turnkey solution. We realize that you are not an events company. Once you sign on with us, we look after everything. Our job is to execute and make your experience as seamless as possible, and to deliver the RETURN ON OBJECTIVES that you are looking for. Customer service is something we pride ourselves on. You will be hand held every step of the way with a dedicated team to ensure that all your objectives are surpassed. You’ll receive an extremely high touch experience versus some event companies which have a “sell and walk away” philosophy. Because we pride ourselves on being the annual meeting place for the industry, we value every client big or small.
11. I’d like to introduce Sandy Terry. She’s responsible for all vendor relationships at FIMA. She’ll be showing you around the event in a few minutes and is the person to talk to about getting further involved in FIMA. I’m also happy to take any questions that you may have about FIMA or WBR.