EAU Saves €2.5 Million in Development Costs by Replacing PHP and MySQL Systems with Betty Blocks
Business value
€2.5 million saved in development costs
24 months faster development time
Awarded the Best Use of Technology in Events prize from the Associations World Congress
Limited options
EAU was limited by their current system for the conference organization. Continuing to develop the PHP and MySQL systems to meet EAU’s expanding needs was not an option. And rebuilding the system in a traditional way (by coding) would take several years and be very costly. “In 5 years, the world will be completely different again. We couldn’t afford to invest in changes that would take too long to realize, therefore because of the wait it’s not worth it,” says Antoine van der Velden, IT Project Manager.
“An application with all the functionalities Oxygen has would normally take many developers to build, but using Betty Blocks we built it with only 4!”
A functional, flexible solution
EAU needed the versatility of a system that had more functionalities than managing their annual conference. And they needed a system that they could easily adapt to their changing needs. So they ran pilots with Betty Blocks and a popular low-code development platform. “Betty Blocks was so straightforward that we could focus entirely on functionality,” says Antoine. “Within the first day of the pilot we made more progress with Betty Blocks than we did after three days of developing on the low-code platform. That’s what helped convinced us.”
Development facts
EAU developed a fully integrated CRM, membership and registration modules, abstract handling, logistics, finance, scientific program, accreditation and events management: all managed more efficiently from a single platform. EAU plans to optimize Oxygen moving forward with the goal of further developing the application into a standard product for other medical associations to use for conferences, made possible by a flexible, adaptable, and powerful platform that can accommodate all of their changing needs.
Development time
Continuous
Development hours
Continuous
Building blocks used
4500
A powerhouse application
The EAU Annual Congress in Copenhagen in March 2018 was the first for Oxygen, the extensive backend application with complementary online and mobile applications. In addition to managing around 11,000 conference attendees, Oxygen allows EAU to also have a fully integrated CRM, membership and registration modules, abstract handling, logistics, finance, scientific program, accreditation and events management with integrations with Ingenico epayments, AFAS, and M Events, for example. And everything is managed more efficiently from a single platform.
Performance results Oxygen
Requests
1500 requests per minute
Attendees
13,000 attendees
Scans, evaluations and tests
56,000 scans, 30,000 evaluations and tests
Looking to the future
During the peak moments of the conference, around 11,000 participants printed their badges via the self-service units, collected their registration packets, and booked their extra courses, all without significant incidents. Oxygen was successful beyond managing the conference, proving itself useful as a powerhouse application that can support all aspects of EAU’s operations. EAU continues to develop new functionalities on the platform, making thousands of changes in the past 9 months alone. “It has changed our whole process,” says Antoine. “An application with all the functionalities Oxygen has would normally take many developers to build, but using Betty Blocks we built it with only 4! And if we’d continued doing things as before, we’d still be developing the system rather than using it.”
Because EAU built Oxygen with Betty Blocks, they saved €2.5 million in development costs and more than 24 months of development time – and Oxygen was even awarded the Best Use of Technology in Events prize from the Associations World Congress. EAU has future-proofed their IT operations by gaining the flexibility to fully – and easily –customize development. What's more, they have shown themselves to be an impressive example to others.