American College Personnel Association (ACPA)

Solutions Provided: HBP has designed an extensive data management system for the organization of ACPA's annual conference and prints the over 100+ page book for each attendee. We have also designed and currently host a "members only" area of ACPA's website that provides a searchable archive of ACPA Journal articles and provides members a secure method of purchasing and downloading copies of the articles.

Website: http://www.acpa.nche.edu/

ACPA takes full advantage of HBP as a complete information systems provider. We provide a multitude of services for them from commercial printing to web development. Our most ambitious project has been ACPA's online conference data management system. Three to four thousand higher education professionals attend the annual five-day conference, which encompasses four or five hotels. They come for educational seminars and listen to papers presented by the authors.

For several years, HBP has produced a printed conference guide that outlines each session, gives its time and location, and lets the attendees know who is speaking at each session, etc. Before this book is produced, the ACPA staff must accept proposals from prospective presenters and then distribute the proposals to a review committee for approval. Once the proposals are approved, the organization of the conference begins. Sessions must be scheduled and crosschecked to make sure an acceptable venue is available, that the speaker is not currently involved in another session and that AV equipment is available. In the past, this has been done with stacks of paper, hundreds of man-hours, thousands of dollars of overnight shipping charges, faxes, and hours of phone calls. Usually, the book was available for design and printing just days before the conference is scheduled to begin and was shipped via rush courier to the site.

CDMS Features:

• User Administration
• Program Submission and Review
• Presenter/Program Review and Approval
• Global Convention Settings
• Room and AV Equipment Scheduling
• Food & Beverage Scheduling
• Vendor Scheduling, Billing and Invoicing
• Agenda Development
• Conference Daily Newsletter development and distribution
• Printed Conference publication (programs, schedules, etc.) management
• Group e-mails

In 2000, HBP and ACPA began working on a system to collect the presentation proposals electronically and get them reviewed online over the Internet. The system quickly grew to not only encompass the submission and review process, but also the entire organization of the conference. From AV scheduling and room set-ups to food and beverage requirements to speaker scheduling, our system handles nearly all the details for organizing the conference. The approved presentation data collected online is then formatted by our database experts and flowed into pre-designed page templates to create the conference book. The system has saved weeks of preparation time for both HBP and ACPA each year. For a demonstration of this or any other of our innovative technologies, please contact your Account Manager or e-mail us.

HBP Inc. • 952 Frederick St., Hagerstown, MD 21740 • 800-638-3508 • 301-733-2000 • FAX 301-733-6586