The CIS Conference has been in existence for many years
and has held 28 successive conferences focused on customer
care in the utility industry. UtiliPoint performed a post
survey of the CIS Conference 26 in Baltimore and again this
year of CIS Conference 28 in Miami Beach. Periodically,
UtiliPoint will share primary research with its Alert subscribers.
We trust that you enjoy the results of the CIS Conference
28 post survey. - Best Regards, Jon T. Brock, COO, UtiliPoint
International, Inc.
Management Summary
CIS Conference 2004 held at Miami Beach, Florida
in early May 2004 attracted a large number of delegates
to its program of keynote speeches, presentations, workshops,
trade show and social activities. At a time when many industry
conferences and tradeshows are suffering low attendance
and some have disappeared from the calendar altogether,
CIS continues to be a popular and well-attended event.
UtiliPoint International's survey of conference delegates
was conducted electronically during June 2004 to provide
useful data on why people attend the show, what they find
valuable about their experience and to collect comments
that may be useful to the conference organizer in subsequent
years. Additionally, a similar survey was conducted in 2002
and can be used as a comparison.
170 delegates responded to the survey, representing a 15%
response rate. Survey responses show that CIS Conference
continues to deliver value to attendees, meeting both initial
expectations and providing value for time and money. It
also suggests that CIS Conference's ongoing success amongst
utility and energy companies can be primarily attributed
to its informative program of presentations, workshops and
keynote speeches, and the ability of the conference to serve
as a forum for knowledge gathering. For software and service
vendors, the tradeshow also has high value since the conference
and tradeshow is recognized as a primary vehicle for vendor
and product research by buyers. The survey shows that the
conference delivers a high proportion of prospects for exhibiting
vendors and that a majority of these already have allocated
budget for their software procurement.
A further indication of the conferences on going value
and importance in the industry is the high proportion of
attendees that are retuning to the show. More than half
of the respondents had attended the show in previous years,
while a further 25% were attending as a result of recommendations
from colleagues and peers.
A comparison with 2002 survey results shows that little
has changed in terms of reasons to attend, value for time
and money, and the overall demographics of the attendees.
In fact the only noticeable difference in results is the
number of respondents that are actively looking for software
and have budgets for their procurement, suggesting that
demand for software solutions is rising.
CIS Conference remains the premier conference and tradeshow
in this industry segment. Its ongoing success can be attributed
to the show's ability to deliver value for all participants
through its content rich program and full exhibit floor.
UtiliPoint International, Inc. is a leader in providing
research-based consulting services to the utility and energy
industry. Our 71-year history and over 100 utility and energy
clients worldwide have led us to currently operate as a
utility and energy consulting and issues analysis firm.
Our staff is comprised of leading energy experts with diverse
backgrounds in utility generation, transmission & distribution,
retail markets, mergers and acquisitions, emerging technologies,
investment capital, information technology, outsourcing,
renewable energy, regulatory affairs, and international
issues. With origins that date back to 1933, Albuquerque,
N.M. based UtiliPoint is a prominent consulting firm dedicated
to helping utility and energy companies, investors, regulators,
and governments maximize the value of unfolding markets.
The firm is also the publisher of IssueAlert™, the
leading source for daily in- depth analysis on the energy
sector.
INTRODUCTION
The 2004 CIS Conference was held in Miami Beach,
Florida between May 4th and 7th, 2004. The Conference was
well attended and had a large tradeshow floor with numerous
exhibitors of various kinds. UtiliPoint International surveyed
conference delegates in association with CIS Conference
organizers to assess their views of the conference and to
collect information that may be useful in organizing future
CIS conferences.
The results of that survey are presented below and, where
useful, comparisons are made with an identical survey undertaken
in 2002.
Survey Demographics
The UtiliPoint CIS Conference 2004 survey was conducted
against the CIS attendees list during the month of June
2004. The survey which was officially sanctioned by CIS
Conference organizers was conducted electronically using
an internet-based survey tool and had 170 respondents (a
15% response rate). A similar survey was conducted after
the CIS Conference in 2002 by VasMark Group (now a UtiliPoint
company) and, where useful, comparisons are made between
the two surveys.
This year's survey was sent to attendees via e-mail, utilizing
Transactmail®, a technology and mark owned by Transactis.
The respondents represented the industry segment well with
some 48% of attendees replying representing utilities of
various types. The remainder represented software vendors,
consultants, media/analysts, billing outsourcers, and energy
service companies. When compared to attendance at the CIS
2002 Conference, the survey suggests that either utility
representation has dropped slightly from the 2002 total
of 58% of attendees or that the mix of respondents has changed.
Whichever is the reason, the drop is attributed to reduced
representation from investor-owned utility (IOU) staff either
in the survey or at the Conference.
Reasons to Attend
Most respondents cited their primary reason for
attending this year's CIS Conference as the ability to build
relationships with potential prospects (about 1/3rd) and
to attend the conference's presentations and workshops (about
1/3rd). The almost equal division of responses between these
two reasons for attendance almost certainly breaks down
by type of respondent, with consultants and vendors especially
more interested in meeting potential prospects and utility
attendees showing more interest in gathering knowledge through
session attendance.
The remaining 1/3rd of the respondents cited a number of
other primary reasons for attendance including; visiting
the tradeshow, the ability to investigate software offerings,
catching up with people and events, and the social activities.
About 17% cited the ability to investigate software offerings
as their primary motivation suggesting that CIS Conference
2004 was a good place for the software vendors to exhibit
and attract interest in their solutions.
In comparison with other conferences and trade shows that
UtiliPoint has surveyed, CIS Conference attendees are more
attracted to the show for its serious content and educational
value. Often, UtiliPoint has found that other conferences
and tradeshows are primarily attended for the social events
and for the opportunity to catch up with people and industry
events generally. Over the past few years, many other conferences
and tradeshows have faded away while CIS Conference has
remained strong and well attended. The data suggests that
it is the educational value attributed to CIS that has enabled
the conference to continue to thrive.
Primary reasons for attendance are very similar to those
cited in the 2002 survey and, in fact, the top four primary
reasons are identical.
UtiliPoint also asked attendees to provide ALL their reasons
for attendance at this years show in order to get an overall
feel for attendee motivation. The majority (68%) cited the
presentations and workshops and 62% cited the tradeshow
as reasons, suggesting again that the content of CIS Conference
is important to attendees and, not surprisingly, is the
largest motivation for attendance. Despite that, large numbers
of respondents also say that the ability to investigate
software offerings, build relationships with prospects and
catch up with people and events are contributing factors
in their decision to attend. While most attend this show
for its content, many are well aware of the importance of
CIS conference as a place to conduct business and perform
formal and informal industry research.
Few attendees cite the social activities as the primary
reason to attend. Additionally, the keynote speeches are
also ranked quite low as a reason to attend the show.
Further analysis of motivation for attendance can be obtained
by looking at the order in which respondents checked various
responses. When looked at this way, the presentations and
workshops were by far the most popular first choice (68%
of first choice selections) followed by the tradeshow as
the most popular second response (35% of second choice selections),
and ability to investigate software offerings (21% of third
choice selections).
A further question asked of the respondents sheds further
light on motivation to attend CIS. When asked what they
thought was most useful about their attendance, most responded
that the presentations and workshops were the most useful.
However, the divergence in primary purpose for attending
between vendor and utility staff is once again apparent
as the second largest response was the ability to build
relationships with prospects. Again, CIS is seen to deliver
value to exhibitors at the show since the third and fourth
largest responses where investigation of software offerings
and the ability to visit the tradeshow respectively.
Value for Time and Money?
So does the CIS program represent value for time
and money for those attending? Yes. The CIS Conference scores
very highly for both its relevancy and value for time and
money. The vast majority of attendees rate the show as having
more than met their initial expectations.
The majority of attendees also felt that the show represented
good value for their time and money. The high satisfaction
rating for CIS Conference 2004 is reflected in the attendee's
plans to attend future CIS Conferences with 61% certain
to attend again in the future and a further 21% probably
planning to attend in the future.
Marketing the Trade Show
With a track record of success and a small professional
staff to organize and run the CIS Conference each year,
this is a vibrant and successful show. Some 51% of attendees
are repeat visitors having attended CIS in previous years,
and a further 28% attended as a result of peer recommendation
having heard about the show from industry colleagues. Specific
marketing by the organizers had limited impact since very
few of the respondents had initially heard about the show
through some form of specific marketing campaign (10%).
And the majority of those that did either saw CIS Conference's
brochure or received a direct mail notification from them.
However, direct marketing of the show by the organizer is
likely the most effective way to attract new conference
delegates in peripheral industry segments and businesses.
Vendor-marketing efforts around the CIS conference were
very high but perhaps somewhat ineffective in terms of drawing
additional attendees to the show itself based on the responses
in the survey. 41% of respondents had received an email
invitation from a vendor in the run up to the conference
while 30% had received a direct mail invitation. A quarter
said that they had had a personal invitation from a vendor
representative and just 3% said that they had received a
CD/DVD invitation from a vendor. However, vendor marketing
activities were least likely to be mentioned when respondents
were asked about how they first heard about CIS Conference.
Visiting Vendors
Although these marketing campaigns appear to have
had little impact on respondents' attendance at the show,
the real aim of the vendor marketing is to attract attendees
inside their own booths. In this, the vendor's marketing
efforts were more successful. Vendor's receiving the most
interest at this year's CIS where Alliance Data Systems,
SAP, and SPL World Group (42% each). However, many other
vendors were also highly visited with delegates making the
most of their opportunity to visit with vendors.
While a large proportion of respondents indicated that
were interested in investigating software offerings at CIS,
and 19% of respondents indicated that they were actively
looking, only 65% of those attendees actively looking for
software had firm intentions of procuring some software
as indicated by their positive response to the questions
asking if they had a budget already allocated for the project.
Additionally, not all the respondents were shopping for
a CIS or CRM software system. A small number were investigating
AMR, document management, and asset, outage and/or work
management solutions.
Interestingly enough, the number of respondents actively
looking for a system in 2004 was the one major contrast
to the results of the similar survey conducted in 2002.
Comparison of the data strongly suggests that there is more
demand today than in 2002. For example, of the 2004 respondents,
19% said that they are actively looking and have budget
for the purchase compared to just 12% in 2002. This provides
another data point to UtiliPoint that aligns with other
research to suggest that demand for software is steadily
increasing in the industry segment.
Once inside a vendor's booth, most attendees found their
visits useful, but specific vendor showcases (90% found
useful) and private demonstrations (90% found useful) arranged
by appointment provided the most satisfaction from shoppers.
Please send questions or comments to Jon T. Brock at jbrock@utilipoint.com
