Serenas Group has been offering its services since its inception in 1999 by means of its specialized project groups for Meeting, Incentive, Congress, and Event by boosting technology investments and improving its standards while constantly welcoming change and development and never compromising on ethical values.
Serenas Group merged with GL events, a global event organizer operating in 24 countries on five continents with 4.298 employees and a turnover of over €1 billion with an aim to broaden the scope of its current fields of activity and collected its investments and operations under the roof of GL events Turkey in 2011.
The Need?
Serenas, as part of GL Events, is the leading congress and events company in Turkey. Running hundreds of events every year is a huge operational hassle. Improving customer satisfaction becomes ever more difficult due to the saturation in terms of possibilities in terms of hosting, catering, intellectual and entertaining activities.
Therefore, Serenas turned to digital to improve operational efficiency and at the same time advance the customer experience. They needed a comprehensive digital transformation strategy, roadmap, and organise for it. Luckily, they found Digitopia.
The Solution
Digitopia entered the customer at a very luck time. It was end of 2019. After several interviews with teams, management, owners, business partners, Digitopia also conducted a “Digital Maturity Index” study to define where Serenas is on their journey, where and what they should aim for.
The compilation of all the analysis resulted in a very comprehensive digital transformation strategy, objectives, and roadmap. Timely enough, that Serenas was able to invest in a digital (virtual) events platform before the pandemic hit. Operations digitalised rapidly thru integration, RPA projects, and thru collaboration with start-ups on various fronts.
The Benefits
Serenas was superbly prepared for the pandemic. The digital transformation served for improved operational excellence; it also advanced the customer experience. But most importantly, they were caught prepared when Covid-19 hit, and were able to switch to virtual events, conferences, and such basically over-night and enabled business resilience, as much as possible for this heavy-impacted industry.
Next Steps
Digitopia has become the indispensable companion for Serenas’ digital transformation. Continuous program and project management, participating in the steering committee meetings, and annual repetition of the “digital maturity index” helps and will continue to help Serenas to succeed with their digital transformation.
We were lucky to have Digitopia as our digital transformation partner. It has been a strategic partnership based on independent and objective advice. No other company could have won the minds and hearts of our employees in such a short time and gain their support for digital transformation. We owe the program’s success to this initial buy-in and alignment.
ISIL GURBUZ
CEO & Chairwoman
