ARQ 2025: A faster, simpler conference experience with Zoho Backstage
- INDUSTRY Healthcare & Education
- EVENT TYPE In-person conference
- ATTENDEES 2,500+
The organization
Sri Ramachandra University is a leading institution in healthcare education and research, bringing together medical professionals, researchers, academics, and healthcare leaders through conferences and academic events. One of its major conferences, ARQ, brings together distinguished delegates and speakers from across the globe to share knowledge, exchange ideas, and discuss developments in healthcare.
The challenge
Managing a large healthcare conference involves much more than getting attendees into a venue.
"Initially, we didn’t have a proper plan for managing registrations. We relied on manual calls, messages, WhatsApp, and emails to bring people in. While registrations did start coming in, we soon found it difficult to manage and consolidate all the registrations in one place. It became very time-consuming for the team."
The organizing team needed to coordinate registrations, attendee information, event communication, agendas, speakers, sessions, and on-site operations while ensuring that attendees could easily access the information they needed.
With 2,500+ participants attending ARQ, the team needed an event management platform that could bring these activities together and simplify the overall event workflow.
The goal was to have a centralized platform that could support the event from registration through the conference itself without making the organizing process unnecessarily complicated.
The solution
Sri Ramachandra University chose Zoho Backstage to manage ARQ.
Backstage gave the team a centralized platform for managing the event website, registrations, agenda, speakers, attendees, and other aspects of the conference.
"It took just a few hours for Zoho Backstage to get our website live, and registrations started flowing in within minutes—something that took us over a month while organizing our previous conferences."
Building the event website
The ARQ team used Zoho Backstage to create the event website and make key conference information available to attendees.
The website provided a central destination for information about the conference, including its program, speakers, and registration. Instead of spending weeks getting the event website ready, the team was able to launch it within hours.
Managing registrations at scale
With more than 2,500 attendees, registration was one of the most important parts of the ARQ event workflow. Backstage helped the team manage registrations and attendee information through a centralized system, giving organizers a clearer view of the people attending the conference.
"We had just two to three months before the event and were aiming for around 1,000 registrations. As the chief organizing chairman, I could simply ask my core team for an update, and they always had the latest numbers ready because everything was up to date with Zoho Backstage."
This helped the team move away from managing different parts of the registration process separately and provided a more connected event management experience.
Managing the conference agenda
ARQ brought together a large number of sessions and speakers. Backstage's agenda and session management capabilities allowed the organizing team to structure the conference program and present it to attendees through the event platform.
This made it easier for attendees to discover sessions and understand what was happening throughout the conference.
Managing speakers and delegates
ARQ featured distinguished delegates and speakers from around the world.
"Once we started promoting the conference, registrations and speakers started coming in. We had around 15 different ticketing categories, including student delegates, staff delegates, alumni delegates, and many more. What made it really easy for us was that we could add these different ticket types directly to the website in just a few seconds."
The conference website provided a centralized way to showcase speakers and communicate information about the event program. This was particularly important for a conference of ARQ's scale, where attendees needed access to information about the people and sessions participating in the event.
Supporting the on-site conference experience
For a conference with thousands of attendees, the experience on the day of the event is just as important as the registration process beforehand.
Zoho Backstage helped Sri Ramachandra University bring attendee information and event operations together, allowing the organizing team to manage the conference more efficiently on-site.
The event footage shows the scale of ARQ, with large audiences attending sessions and the organizing team managing a busy conference environment.
The Backstage features Sri Ramachandra University used:
- Event website builder
- Event registration
- Attendee management
- Agenda and session management
- Speaker management
- Event communication
- On-site event management
- Event analytics
Benefits & ROI
By moving ARQ onto Zoho Backstage, Sri Ramachandra University was able to simplify the management of a large-scale healthcare conference and create a more connected experience for its attendees.
2,500+ attendees managed
ARQ brought together more than 2,500 attendees, making efficient registration and attendee management essential to the event.
Website launched in hours
The event website was launched in just a few hours, compared with the significantly longer timelines the team had experienced with other platforms.
Registrations started flowing in quickly
Once the website went live, the team began receiving registrations within minutes.
4–5x increase in productivity
After adopting Zoho Backstage, Sri Ramachandra University reported a four- to five-fold increase in productivity compared with its previous conferences, helping the team attract more delegates.
"Compared to our previous conferences, I can confidently say that our productivity increased by at least four to five times after we adopted Zoho Backstage for event management, and that helped us attract more delegates."
One platform for event management
Backstage brought key event workflows together, giving the organizing team a centralized platform for managing the conference instead of relying on disconnected systems.
A smoother experience for a large-scale conference
From registration and event information to agenda and speaker management, Backstage helped the team simplify the operational complexity involved in delivering ARQ.
A simpler way to manage large-scale healthcare events
For Sri Ramachandra University, ARQ demonstrates how the right event management platform can simplify the operational complexity of a large conference.
With Zoho Backstage, Sri Ramachandra University was able to bring key aspects of ARQ management together on one platform, from launching the event website and collecting registrations to managing the conference program and supporting the event on-site.