Event Management System

Background

Innovate UK Business Connect brings together businesses, researchers, investors and partners to accelerate innovation across the UK. As part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and a strategic delivery partner to Innovate UK, we connect organisations to funding opportunities, partnerships and expertise to help ideas move from concept to scale.

One of the key tools for making these connections is events. We deliver a diverse portfolio of in-person, virtual and hybrid events, ranging from webinars and workshops to large-scale conferences and exhibitions.

To support the effective planning, delivery and evaluation of these events, we are seeking proposals from suppliers who can provide a modern event management system that streamlines event operations, enhances the participant experience and supports data-driven decision-making.

Description of work

Innovate UK Business Connect is seeking tenders from providers who can supply a single event management system that supports the end-to-end event lifecycle, including event creation, registration management, attendee communications, speaker and exhibitor management, networking, reporting and post-event evaluation.

The system should integrate with existing business systems where required and provide a single source of truth for event delivery teams. This aligns with the organisation's wider objective of ensuring events are outcome-led, measurable and supported by efficient registration, communication and reporting processes.

The event management system should:

The platform must support multiple user roles and permission levels to reflect different operational needs across the organisation. As a minimum, the system should accommodate the following user groups:

We deliver a large and diverse portfolio of business-to-business events. Historically, this has included more than 300 events per year and generating approximately 60,000 delegate registrations annually.

The event management platform must be capable of supporting a range of event formats, scales and audience sizes, including:

The proposed solution must be capable of supporting this volume of activity while providing robust registration management, attendee communications, data integration, reporting and analytics across all event formats.

Timings

This is a two-stage evaluation process. We will do an initially score of each supplier bid with the top two or three scoring suppliers invited to provide a demonstration.

This will be the opportunity for the selected suppliers to demonstrate the setup of an event using a given scenario.

Anticipated timeline:

Cost

The maximum value of this requirement over the three-year period is a maximum of £600,000.00 excluding VAT.

This contract is structured as an initial two-year period with a maximum budget of £400,000.00 excluding VAT with an optional 12-month extension valued at maximum £200,000.00 excluding VAT.

Submission

In response to this tender, please provide the information listed below.

Please provide the information requested above to re.support@iukbc.org.uk by 17:00 10 October 2026 at the latest. IR35 will be assessed before the awarding of a successful contract. Submissions sent without relevant documents as listed above will be automatically rejected.

Innovate UK Business Connect may require successful submissions to be subject to non-disclosure agreements.

Evaluation structure

Submissions will be scored against the following areas: