7th Annual Avionte Client Connection Forum, Day Two Recap

While Avionté’s 7th Annual Client Connection Forum event has come to a close, the event’s attendees and Avionté employees are still reminiscing on all that’s happened this week.

From the office visits and golf event that kicked things off on Tuesday, August 2^nd, to the two full days of forum sessions and evening events that took place on Wednesday and Thursday (August 3-4), it was a staffing industry event that brought in 350 attendees from across the U.S. and Canada.

Client Connection 2016 attendees, we sincerely enjoyed hosting all of you this year and hope you gained from your time with us! If you missed any of day one, here’s a recap of what took place. Now, let’s have a look back on day two.

August 4^th of our Client Connection forum, an Olympics-themed event, began with breakfast in the ballroom. Our Q&A stations opened up at this time as well; on both forum days, attendees were able to drop in to the Minnesota Room on 6^th floor to talk with members from our Development, Technical Services, Support and IT teams, along with representatives from Assisted Payroll Services, Compliance and more.

Then, beginning 9 a.m., everyone gathered in the general session ballroom to hear from Avionté’s CEO John Long on “Key New Initiatives”, i.e. the “Here and Now” at Avionté. Long spoke candidly about current initiatives at the company, his hopes for the company’s newest departments and hires, and Avionté’s efforts on the support and services side, which included an explanation of the company’s FIFO (first-in-first-out) method of ticket closure and data highlighting Avionté’s increased ticket turnaround times in recent months.

Wrapping up his presentation, Long called to the stage the “Expert Panel”, which included representatives from both the Avionté Executive Team and the greater staffing industry. The panelists included President of The Visus Group Tom Kosnik, CEO of My HRCounsel Mark Young, President of the American Staffing Association Steve Berchem, CFO of Avionté Mike Kennedy, Independent Consultant Leigh Ann Pagnard and CEO of TalentWave Teresa Creech.

Berchem moderated the majority of the panel session and noted that his hope was to provide information to help make it a “gold medal year” and “gold medal years” to come for attendees and their staffing firms. The 1.5 hour session delivered loads of useful information about the changing staffing industry landscape and prompted plenty of audience questions during the Q&A that followed.

Attendees were then given some time to mingle with the 20 staffing industry partners in attendance at this year’s forum that were stationed at tables set up along all of the bordering walls of the 4th floor/main conference space. Then, it was time to refuel with a healthy and hearty lunch before the afternoon’s breakout sessions were set to begin.

Round one of Thursday’s breakout sessions began at 12:40 p.m.. This year’s Client Connection forum offered breakout sessions covering nearly 25 Avionté Staffing Software training “topics”, half of which were offered on Thursday afternoon in the meeting rooms on the Marriott’s 4^th, 6th and 8^th floors. These breakout sessions included training on Interview and Portal Setup, Timekeeping, the Avionté Sales CRM, Advanced Search and more.

At 3:15 p.m., attendees gathered for one last time in the ballroom for the Closing Ceremony Address. Long gave attendees a glimpse into what’s ahead for Avionté, reminding all that “we aren’t done yet” and that Avionté is always moving forward and thinking ahead, making decisions based on Avionté’s goal to provide staffing software “the way it should be”. During the closing ceremony, Avionté also handed out the prizes, like an Amazon Echo and a guitar given away by Chris Dyer, the CEO of one of Avionte’s technology partners, PeopleG2.

Avionté’s evening event was held at the Minnesota Twins Stadium Budweiser Roof Deck, located on the 6^th floor of Target Center, which overlooked the stadium and provided great views of the Minneapolis city skyline!

The event kicked off at 6 p.m. and included adult-sized games, including giant Jenga, foursquare, bean bag toss, giant Yatzee and more. Interested CCF attendees were also given a tour of the Twins stadium.

Then, an hour or so into the main event, Minnesota Twins baseball all-star Tony Oliva came by to visit! Attendees were able to get an autograph from and photo with the star and Oliva even joined in on the fun for a while, trying his hand at bean bag toss!

But that wasn’t the end. When our time at the Budweiser Roof Deck concluded, attendees made their way to The Shout House, just a few blocks away. With a whole lot of singing along, dancing and even a few performances from Avionté staff, CCF attendees and Avionté employees partied on until closing time.