The challenge: How to handle registration fees?
Anyone who has ever organized a conference for a university knows the problem and has likely asked themselves this question at least once.
The topic of registration fees is sometimes very complex, and the strict guidelines of universities place limitations on organizers. For instance, people registering for a conference are often left with no option but to pay by bank transfer. This is extremely cumbersome, especially for events with international participation.
On top of that, there are further challenges: The more people register, the more time organizing teams spend dealing with payment reminders, booking changes, and cancellations.
This prompted Universität Hamburg Marketing GmbH (UHHMG) to go in search of new software. Because digital processes have long been standard at UHHMG, they already had a tool that allowed people to register for a congress and submit papers. However, it could not solve the problems surrounding registration fees.
Converia provides an account for the conference
Converia bridges the gap and takes over the entire payment management process for UHHMG. On one hand, this means that credit cards and PayPal now expand the payment options for participants. Organizers do not need to set up their own credit card merchant agreements for this.
On the other hand, it saves UHHMG many hours of work. Converia generates tickets and invoices and also records all incoming payments in the system. Cancellations, rebookings, refunds, and the associated communication with participants are also tasks that fall entirely under Converia's responsibility. All registration fees are deposited into an account that Converia manages in trust for UHHMG.
Once a congress has concluded, UHHMG receives a detailed final statement and Converia disburses the revenue.
The right software for every event
UHHMG manages events in the scientific-academic, medical, and public sectors, taking on a wide variety of event organization tasks for its clients. Organizers can either book the complete package or use individual services from the Hamburg-based PCO's portfolio.
Converia offers a similarly modular service structure, and like UHHMG, the team behind the conference software is well-versed in the requirements of various congress and meeting formats thanks to many years of experience.
Because it is such a good fit, UHHMG uses the Converia Academic Platform.
This represents a significant reduction in workload, especially for teams in science and research. For example, if an institute is planning a conference, they no longer have to start by searching for the right meeting software. Furthermore, there is no need to negotiate new contracts with a software provider afterward.
Thanks to the Academic Platform model, the individual Converia modules are flexible and ready to use at any time. While some of the conferences managed by UHHMG only require the participant registration and payment handling functions, others also use the program planner or manage the administration of scientific conference papers via Converia.
High-performance paper management
Converia's abstract management covers the entire process that a scientific conference paper goes through: Using the software, authors submit their abstracts before they are assigned to reviewers for evaluation. As soon as the committee has made its final decision, emails generated in Converia inform the authors whether their paper will be part of the conference.
Throughout this workflow, good communication between the individual groups is essential, which is why Converia provides the tools necessary for this exchange. The Converia dashboard also shows organizers how many reviews are still outstanding. To remind the relevant individuals of their task, they can send a bulk email directly from Converia.
The fact that Converia contains all the functions for the congress makes the work much more comfortable, because all event data converges in a single piece of software and is always up to date.
Additional benefits of the Converia Academic Platform
As an Academic Platform client, UHHMG also receives support from a dedicated contact person on the Converia team who provides tips and answers regarding the conference software.
UHHMG project manager Johanna Karger values the direct line to Converia, which helps prevent gaps in the organization:
“The support from Converia is excellent. We have a direct contact, Ms. Nebelung, who handles all our requests personally. She is very familiar with our events, so we never have to wait long for a competent answer.”
Converia is also 100% GDPR-compliant and is hosted in high-security data centers in Germany – another important technical requirement for many academic conferences hosted by universities, which not all software providers can meet.
Since 2020, Universität Hamburg Marketing GmbH has successfully implemented several conferences with Converia, including recurring events, which are set up even faster using templates. The Converia team copies the previous year's event, including all basic settings. For the new event, only the details that differ from the predecessor – such as the date or ticket prices – need to be adjusted.
In this way, organizers benefit from the range of functions that UHHMG provides through Converia, tailored to their specific conference. Furthermore, payment handling is no longer a burden on UHHMG.
This creates more capacity, allowing the agency to focus on other important organizational tasks.
