Celebrating 20 Years of Partnership: Taylor Bennett and RefTech
We caught up with Kirsty Taylor, Partner at Taylor Bennett, to discuss their two-decade relationship with RefTech.
Q: Taylor Bennett and RefTech have worked together for 20 years. Can you tell us about how this partnership started?
Kirsty Taylor: When I joined the company 18 years ago, the relationship with RefTech was already in place. Christine (who founded Taylor Bennett) was good friends with David Hackett – a founding partner of BI and a stalwart of our industry. David knew Ken Clayton of RefTech and had worked with him before RefTech was created. David recommended RefTech to us and the rest they say is history.
Back then, Taylor Bennett was a much smaller business with only five or six employees. We primarily focused on registration services, with some concierge services and travel management. We were working on 10 smaller events a year with up to 300 delegates and a couple of bigger events of up to 700 attendees, and everything was very manual. Technology was just starting to come into play, but we still received a lot of registrations via fax! We tended to handle the more complex events, with lots of logistical challenges that corporates and creative agencies couldn't handle.
RefTech was key in helping us move forward. Around that time, we started our own online registration service and started to automate processes, while everyone else was working with spreadsheets. RefTech came on board to provided us with professional badging services, and it was a game-changer. Their technology allowed us to grow efficiently and to offer professional badges for every size of event.
Q: How has the partnership evolved over the years?
Kirsty: As our business has grown, so has our relationship with RefTech. We now handle around 200 events per year. We have a licence to use their software so we can handle badging for our smaller or simpler events, but with more complex events, RefTech supports us in much broader ways, from scanning to onsite solutions. When events have more than 1000 attendees, pre-printing badges becomes inefficient and so we call on RefTech for their print on demand tech. We do own some printers, but if we need to network them to service bigger events, we can scale up our offering by working with RefTech.
It's the same with scanning – we can scan people into one breakout area, but if there are complexities such as multiple breakout areas, we then need more support and infrastructure which RefTech provides. For example, we have a client in Madrid, who hosts events with 12 concurrent breakout rooms, and many back-to-back sessions. Data collection is key for them, so we use a combination of RefTech's ScanPods and handheld scanners to track who attends each session and provide real time data on attendees. This allows the marketing team in the USA to see live data and information and act on it immediately.
We use their badging system for up to 50 events a year, and for larger clients like the above, we now use their ScanPods, PrintPods, handheld scanners and their scanning app for events.
Q: You've worked with RefTech for so long. What keeps you coming back to them year after year?
Kirsty: RefTech delivers, and their technology works. I've pushed their system to the limits, sometimes unintentionally, and they always come through. One year, I forgot to sync the registration database before an event, so when sponsors and exhibitors tried to scan delegate badges, they got a "Delegate not found" message. But RefTech's team fixed everything remotely, and all the data synced up seamlessly. Their infrastructure is robust and reliable, and no matter what issues arise, they always sort it out.
Q: Can you give an example of where other providers didn't meet your expectations, compared to RefTech?
Kirsty: We had a client who wanted to try a different provider offering all sorts of bells and whistles. It looked great on the surface, but within the first few hours of the event, we had issues. Delegates were getting an error message stating "badge printed", but their badge had not been printed before. Upon investigation we discovered that the error message was actually to signify that the ink or paper ran out on that particular printer, but the system didn't handle or communicate these basic errors. It caused a lot of frustration and wasted time. With RefTech, we've never had these issues. Their technology just works, and I think that is because they fully test any new kit before introducing it to clients, and also because they understand the complexity of event management.
Q: Does it help that the RefTech team has been with you for so long?
Kirsty: Absolutely. The core team at RefTech has been working with us for years, and that makes a huge difference. I've known Penny for 18 years, and our sales contact, Ben, for the last 10 years. It's not just a business relationship - we know each other personally, which makes communication so much smoother. When something goes wrong, I can rely on them to go above and beyond, even if it means staying late or organising next-day deliveries. They're part of our team.
Q: What's the one thing that really stands out in your partnership with RefTech?
Kirsty: Their reliability; I know I can always count on them. Their technology is flexible, and they listen to our feedback. They've grown and evolved with us over the years, but they've also kept their ethos the same - to provide a great product, ensure happy customers, and make things easier for event organisers. It's a partnership that I hope continues forever.
Q: Do you think the relationship with RefTech will continue in the same way?
Kirsty: I hope so!
The team are really experienced and knowledgeable so problems seldom occur, but if they ever do, they are able to quickly react and trouble shoot. As our needs evolve, so does their technology, but RefTech has always been ahead of the curve. Whether it's licencing us to print badges for our smaller events or offering scalable solutions for our largest clients, they always have a solution. Their latest innovations, such as the PrintPod and ScanPod show that they're always improving. So yes, I see us working with RefTech for many more years to come.