# Rebuilding a platform behind 20 years of conferences

Source: https://jonleverrier.com/case-study/white-paper-booking-engine-design-development
Client: The White Paper Conference Company
Role: Logo Design, Information Architecture, Wireframing, Prototyping, User Interface Design, Front-end, Automation, Craft CMS, Server Setup, Support
Year: 2013 – present
Sectors: EventTech, E-commerce

The White Paper Conference Company asked me to rebuild the platform behind their conferences. Booking a place took too many steps, the business ran on four disconnected systems, and those systems couldn't support on-demand.

## At a glance

- 90% of bookings that used to end in a phone call now complete online
- Booking administration cut by 75%, and the back office went from four staff to one
- On-demand now brings in 35% of total revenue, from a product that didn't exist before

## The problem

Getting from a conference programme to a finished booking took eight interactions, on one long checkout page where mistakes were hard to fix. People who gave up phoned or emailed instead, and that work landed on customer support.

A large team kept conferences and bookings up to date across four platforms that didn't talk to each other. That made mistakes more likely, and nobody could see which conferences sold, which didn't, or why.

Demand for recorded CPD content was also growing fast. On-demand was the obvious next step, but the old stack meant copying content and media between platforms by hand.

## The solution

### 1. Checkout for who actually books

Interviews and surveys showed that the person booking is often not the person attending. PAs book for executives and team leads book for their teams, but the old form assumed one person did both.

Booking is now split into separate tasks: company details, payment, and delegates where the conference has them. Each conference page also works as its own landing page, with everything needed to decide at the top and the case for attending below.

### 2. Four systems into one

Conferences, programmes, speakers, documents and video all live in one repository. Each is created once and used everywhere, and the historic booking data was imported so the records still go back to the start.

Each booking saves a snapshot of the conference as it was sold and links to its invoice. A record from three years ago shows what was actually bought.

### 3. A booking cycle that runs itself

Bookings run through a workflow that sends confirmations, reminders and attendance certificates. Programmes, brochures and evaluation forms are generated as PDFs from the same source as the web pages, so the page and the file always match.

### 4. On-demand, on the same foundations

A recorded conference reuses content that already exists. Passcodes are generated when someone books, and CPD certificates are issued automatically.

### 5. Accessible data

Directors can ask an AI copilot questions in plain English, such as how many people watched a recording. Power users can connect their own AI tools to the system via a MCP connector.

## Outcomes

- **90% fewer phone bookings:** nine in ten bookings that used to become a phone call now complete online
- **50–60% fewer steps:** about half the steps it used to take
- **85% less time to process a booking:** most bookings arrive complete and correct
- **75% less booking administration:** that time has gone back to the business
- **35% of revenue from on-demand:** a revenue stream that didn't exist before

> Jon reinvented our website and booking system, creating huge efficiencies, which allowed us to reduce our back office from four staff members to one. Moreover, he is integrated with our business, continually suggesting improvements which keep our systems bang-up-to date and give us a competitive edge.
>
> — James Hirst, Managing Director, White Paper