Is Your Event Spreadsheet Limiting Your Career?

When we developed FFAIR, one of our goals was to eliminate the reliance on manually updated spreadsheets for managing events.

Event management is an incredibly complex and nuanced project to deliver on. Managing multiple sponsors, exhibitors, partners, venues, and suppliers involves 000s of tasks and deadlines. The convergence of which takes place in a short time frame.?

So many event professionals still use spreadsheets to project manage their events. However, with 2025 on the horizon, it’s time to really ask ourselves whether Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and similar software, is really the most efficient way of managing exhibitors, sponsors and speakers at events.?

Ultimately, no matter how many technical functions you've mastered, most event managers still face common headaches.

These include:?

• Version Control "Exhibitor List V4. FINAL FINAL"—sound familiar? With so many different file names and documents, it can be difficult for anyone other than the event lead to know exactly which document is the ultimate source of truth. This is not only a frustrating time drain for team members but also a source of stress for event managers who might be onsite at other events or away from their desks on leave. There’s also the risk of exhibitors and partners having access to outdated information.

One FFAIR client once told us that prior to using FFAIR, they manually updated their event’s exhibitor manual PDF file in over 35 Dropbox locations to ensure their exhibitors and sponsors had the latest version—and then had to email everyone to notify them of the update.

• Internal Update Sharing Dilemmas - "Where Did We Save That Spreadsheet Again?" It takes a village to organise an event, and from the team on the ground to the upper echelons of the C-suite, anyone might need to access event information at any time. Whether it’s the CFO compiling a report, or a marketer ensuring sponsors logos are correct on the signage, finding a place to store the event spreadsheet that’s accessible to the entire team—without someone accidentally deleting key information—can be a challenge in itself.
• Distributing Crucial Information to External Suppliers The weeks leading up to events are critical for operational delivery. It’s imperative that accurate information is available to all the event suppliers to meet deadlines and ensure everything is ready for the event open. Often, suppliers need event professionals to provide information in a particular format, requiring event managers to either maintain multiple spreadsheets or heavily edit the ones they already have—each and every time, for every supplier.
• The Mind-Numbing Task of Manually Entering Exhibitor Order Details Many exhibition operations professionals and corporate event managers manual update spreadsheets on a daily basis. In fact, many can hardly imagine a workday without the need to update spreadsheets. There’s a nervousness around letting a system do this for you. Will it be accurate? Where are the fail-safes??

Spreadsheets can be an unreliable way for a team to manage events and, arguably most importantly, consume incredible amounts of time and energy. Beyond the practicalities of spreadsheet event management, it’s the lack of automation and smart, event-specific functionality that is holding event professionals back, stealing their time.

More time = Better events

Budget is often cited as a reason why events aren’t better. "If only we had more money..." But arguably, if event managers had more time, they could deliver a better experience for attendees. With more time, event managers could invest in their own skill sets, which would, in turn, benefit the events they oversee.

Event professionals would also have the capacity to build and strengthen relationships with internal and external stakeholders. According to a recent survey of corporate event managers, managing and exceeding stakeholder expectations is an ongoing challenge for event teams. The research shows that approximately 45% of event professionals manage between 1 and 20 internal stakeholders, while 39% oversee 21 to 50.*

But it’s not just internal stakeholders that event professionals have to manage. Stronger relationships with suppliers can also lead to better events. If event managers had more time to manage those relationships with event suppliers, they would arguably be able to build a better supplier support system that delivered on company objectives. Find suppliers that could help deliver more accessible or sustainable solutions for example.?

Spreadsheets are killing event professionals’ long term development?

Spreadsheets also have the unfortunate effect of pigeonholing event professionals into administrative work. It’s not just that manually updating a spreadsheet takes time—it’s the perception that this creates within the wider business: that event operations is simply administrative work, diminishing the strategic relevance that events (and those who work in them) can have on businesses.

Lou Kiwanuka - The Ops Nest of The Ops Nest and a seasoned event professional shared how the perception of event operations as ‘the back office’ impacts the industry: “All the while operations professionals are drowning in sub-standard tech investment, companies are missing out on the great insight OpsProfs could bring to the table from their proximity to customers’”

But to change these perceptions and to build the case for event management takes time—time that event professionals often don’t have as they’re caught in the perpetuating cycle of delivery.

This pressure doesn’t allow event managers the breathing room to be strategic, preventing them from engaging in key tasks such as analysis and development and sustains a toxic career of busy work rather than smart work.

How can event professionals free themselves of event administration in order to be more strategic??

While adopting technology to streamline operations is an essential first step, the more significant issue lies in recognising the impact that excessive administrative work has on career progression. For many event professionals, the constant demands of manual tasks and spreadsheet management are not just a drain on their time and energy; they’re a barrier to professional growth.

The reality is that the time spent on mundane tasks could be better used to develop strategic skills, build meaningful relationships with stakeholders, and contribute to the broader goals of the organisation. Event professionals who are bogged down by administrative burdens often miss out on opportunities to showcase their strategic value, to innovate, and to lead.

This administrative overload doesn’t just stall individual careers; it diminishes the perceived importance of event management within the wider business. When event professionals are viewed primarily as administrators, their potential to influence the strategic direction of events—and by extension, the organisation—is overlooked. This is a disservice not only to the professionals themselves but also to the companies they work for, as they miss out on the full value that these individuals could bring.

In essence, the spreadsheet has become more than just a tool—it has become a symbol of limitation. It’s holding event professionals back from promotions, from recognition, and from climbing the career ladder. By breaking free from the constraints of manual processes, event professionals can reclaim their time, elevate their roles, and step into the strategic positions they deserve.

The question now is, how long will we let outdated methods dictate the future of our careers and the events industry as a whole?

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this article either by dropping us a line - [email protected], or DM'ing our CEO Adam Jones or CMO Katie Whatley .

Find out more about @FFAIR's multi-award-winning online exhibitor manual and ecommerce platform. https://www.ffair.io/.

*The State of Corporate Events in 2024: Insights from the 4th ICE Benchmarking Report