Case Study - Microsoft & Cadplanners

Microsoft Commissioned a Case Study on CADplanners:

Event planners around the world face similar challenges: they need to maximize the use of their spaces, visualize how an event will work, and accommodate last-minute changes.

In Sydney, Australia, event planners have replaced pencil and paper drawings with floor plans created by CADplanners drawing and diagramming software to ensure that functions—such as those associated with the Olympic Games

 ...Comment by Meg Foster of Sodexho
Accurate floor plans reduce event setup times. “The plans we create in Visio make it possible for us to turn a room around in a couple of hours which is really important when back-to-back events are scheduled,” notes Meg Foster of Sodexho.

Foster has even found that the cost savings are quantifiable: the use of CADplanners diagrams reduced setup time for an average banquet seating 500 from 16 labor hours to 9—with resulting cost savings of $140 per event, or 28¢ per person. “We served over a million banquet-style meals during the Olympics, and reducing setup times alone saved us over $280,000 during a single six-week period.” In addition to reducing costs, the diagrams they created in Visio helped make the daunting logistics of staging so many important events in a short time more manageable.

Using CADplanners can also improve communication with clients and event staff, as it has at Stadium Australia. “When we meet with potential clients, we can create a detailed drawing that helps them to visualize their event. Handing them a customized plan with their name and logo at the end of a meeting gives us a real competitive edge.” Sodexho’s event planning team manages 15 different function rooms at the stadium; Foster notes that often a client can’t decide which one would be best for their event. “With Visio, I can draw plans for two different rooms and the client can compare them.

This really helps them to make a sound decision.” Accurate plans also help to ensure that client expectations are realistic and make it easy to experiment with different room setups or unique requests. Because the plans are able to capture quite detailed information, Foster and others at Sodexho now use Visio diagrams as part of the contract they sign with clients. “Once a client has signed off on a final floor plan, we can track last-minute changes and charge appropriately for them.”