- AI amplifies existing inefficiencies, it doesn't fix them.
- Prioritizing 'painful, repeatable, measurable' tasks is key to real impact.
- Dedicated AI champions with protected time drive sustainable adoption.
- Measure AI success across people, process, and experience, not just activity.
Cvent, a leader in event technology, embarked on an ambitious journey to integrate AI into its event programs. What began as an overwhelming flood of ideas quickly evolved into a strategic, disciplined approach, proving that true AI transformation requires a fundamental rethinking of existing workflows.
Initially, Cvent's marketing team was inundated with over 1,500 AI ideas. While this generated excitement, it exposed a critical prioritization problem. The core insight? AI doesn't automatically fix inefficient or broken processes; it amplifies them. The real breakthrough came from asking a different question: "If we were designing this work on purpose today, what would it look like?" This led to the development of a 'painful, repeatable, measurable' filter, narrowing down ideas to those that truly warranted a full redesign.
Applying this filter, Cvent identified key areas like event reporting, travel and housing, and attendee support as prime candidates for AI-driven redesign. For event reporting, they built a "shared brain" – a single, trusted context layer of data, definitions, and templates. This ensures every recap starts from a consistent foundation, producing uniform flash recaps, post-conference decks, and executive summaries. The result: hours saved per event lead, allowing for more strategic analysis and better decision-making, and consistent KPIs for program-wide comparison.
To ensure sustainability, Cvent established a formalized marketing Center of Excellence with dedicated AI champions. These champions, from core team members to role and team-specific leaders, have protected time allocated to AI initiatives. This commitment prevents AI from becoming a "side project" and empowers those closest to the work to redesign it effectively, shaping guardrails for quality, data use, security, and tone. Their tool-agnostic operating model, encompassing intake, roadmap, standards, and impact measurement, provides a flexible framework adaptable to the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Measuring AI's true impact goes beyond tracking activity like prompts or tokens. Cvent focuses on three lenses: people (time shifted from admin to strategy), process (cost savings, reduced rework, improved cycle time), and experience (attendee satisfaction, pipeline impact). By connecting AI to tangible business outcomes, Cvent builds a defensible story of value. The ultimate goal is not just broad AI usage, but deeper, transformative usage that compounds over time, making each successive workflow smarter and more efficient.
“The job was to find the work that hurt enough, repeated often enough, and mattered enough to deserve a full redesign.”
- Stephanie Sweetland, Senior Director of Marketing Systems
