Every year, IEEE organizes over 1,600 technical conferences in 90 countries

IEEE

The IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization with a membership of 430,000 in more than 160 countries. As one of the world’s largest non-profit organization with a mission to foster technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. As a technology-based company ourselves, Designworks could not be more proud of our partnership with IEEE which began in 2002.

As part of their mission, every year IEEE organizes over 1,600 technical conferences in 90 countries. These events are attended by almost half a million people annually therefore conference registration, budgeting and accounting are critical functions to IEEE’s operational success. It is in these areas that Designworks has worked with IEEE to provide secure, efficient solutions.

Services Rendered

Secure Conference Registration

IEEE’s Nuclear Plasma and Sciences Society (NPSS) needed to build a customized web-based tool to automate and optimize their secure, five-step conference registration process. The goal was to allow NPSS staff members to change conference information from year to year, as well as manage registrants via a secure administration site. The NPSS had been using separate database-driven solutions for each of its many conferences and events for years, but the old process had grown extremely tedious and it was time to unify all these tools.

It was also important that the system that could handle online payment processing. For Designworks, the registration project challenge was to quickly ascertain the requirements, establish the success formula with the right technical toolset, and build something that was more customized than the event management software suites they had already discarded through years of trial and error. Applying our proven two-phase design and develop methodology, Designworks got it right. Via a three-month agile development schedule and while working closely with the IEEE and their event management staff, Designworks was able to develop, design, and test a system that was fast, easy to use and secure.

The new application had a user interface and ordering process that was intuitive enough to impress the savvy technologists within the NPSS, and its 128-bit encryption kept all the registrant data safe and sound. The system included a full administrative and financial reporting backend, which gave the NPSS and the IEEE real-time access to registration data. With this new tool, they could see how many people were coming to an event, who still needed hotels and special meals, and who wanted to participate in extracurricular activities.

A Custom Budgeting Solution and Accounting Integration

Designworks built a custom budgeting system that is currently being expanded and rolled out worldwide across all IEEE societies. The budgeting system allows conference planners, treasurers, and IEEE administrators to have a tiered and unified budgeting and approval process for all of their conferences. This secure system helps IEEE plan for every expense and income associated with a conference, including custom budget fields. The system also has an internal review and approval process that maintains a log of all critical activities, allows for commenting, and gives administrators insight into the evolution of the process via automated and manual budget snapshots. The latest area of expansion is to help them integrate budgeting data into their NetSuite accounting system so that their conference registration, budgeting and accounting systems are integrated from end-to-end.

Reducing Operation Costs, Enhancing Customer Service

These two IEEE systems combine to reduce the operational costs associated with maintaining and organizing 1,600 events every year while enhancing the organization’s customer service to their membership. The applications that Designworks developed for IEEE are strong evidence of our technical and business capabilities, while the longevity of the partnership is clear evidence of our desire and ability to build long-term client relationships based on mutual trust and success.