Experienced corporate event planners know all too well the multitude of things that can go wrong at any event, no matter how well planned it is. To minimise any damage, they know to create contingency plans, and the main way that they do that successfully is by using their experience to anticipate what can and might happen at every stage of the event, including in all the planning stages. 

Here are some examples of common things that go wrong at corporate events that the most skilled planners will prepare for: 

1. Sudden Venue Problem

Sudden problems with a venue that you’ve already booked are a common occurrence, which is why most planners will look for corporate function venues, find several suitable candidates, and keep at least one on a kind of standby throughout their planning process. Venues can be impacted by all kinds of problems, including bad weather, internal problems with electrics or plumbing, an accidental double booking…there are many possibilities. 

The worst scenario is one where an event has been planned and organised to happen at a venue, and was in fact designed specifically to happen at that venue. If the place is suddenly unavailable, then even moving your event to a new location won’t solve anything because you’d engineered it to happen at that venue. Therefore, having some flexibility in planning is a good thing since you can quickly adapt your event to new locations. 

2. Not Enough Food

A classic and nightmarish scenario for corporate event planners is discovering that all the specially planned items for catering have run out before everyone gets one. It could be a simple miscommunication or miscalculation on numbers, or that the caterer did the ordering wrong, or that more people than you were expecting showed up. 

The general solution to such an issue is to discuss a contingency food option with your caterers, perhaps bringing extra frozen food that they can quickly heat up and serve in the event that the main food runs out. Considering services like mobile bar hire can also help ensure that drinks are always available, adding to the contingency plans for refreshments.

3. Not Enough Tables or Seating

You can bring enough seating and tables for the numbers of people you know for sure are going to attend, and you can add a 10-percent contingency to that just in case, but still you may end up in a situation where your tables and seats are insufficient for who actually shows up on the day. It’s frustrating, but you have to be ready for anything, which is why the best event planners will work closely with their venue to ensure that there’s an almost limitless contingency for such things. 

4. Guest Speaker or Entertainment Fail to Arrive

Another tricky situation that can arise is when your keynote speaker and/or entertainment acts fail to arrive or get stuck in traffic and are running late. When you’ve planned the schedule of events so carefully, it can really throw a spanner in the works when one of the key elements is running late. 

Flexibility in the schedule is the best solution here, being able to move things around to accommodate people being late. This can also give you time to find replacements for no-shows, or to expand other events to fill up the additional time. 

5. Budget Spirals Out of Control

Finally, and perhaps most common of all of the corporate event planning mistakes that occur is budgets going way over their limits. When you’re new at corporate events, the expense of it all can really get away from you, especially in the earlier stages when you use your full budget almost at whim, booking speakers, venues, entertainment and food, but then forgetting about some of the smaller details that will also cost money. Costing everything out to the last detail and planning the entire budget from start to finish are the only ways that experienced planners get around this issue.