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Why Event Planning and Procurement Must Work Together
Published 1 week, 1 day ago
Description
Modernizing an experienced event team does not mean starting over. It means knowing what to preserve, what to change, and who needs to be involved earlier.
In this episode of Event Planner Confessions, Cara Pratt talks with Dawn Wesley, Senior Manager of Agency Operations, Agency Awards and Recognition at Allstate, about team modernization, attendee experience, AI, supplier strategy, procurement, and the capabilities future event leaders will need.
Dawn has spent more than three decades at Allstate and 16 years in sales leadership. Before leading the company's event-planning team, she experienced its incentive programs as an attendee and award winner. That background gave her a direct view into how event policies, recognition programs, guest experiences, and family inclusion feel from the other side of the plan.
When Dawn moved into event leadership, she inherited a team with roughly 100 years of collective experience inside Allstate. Her job was not to dismiss that history. It was to modernize the work while respecting the knowledge and relationships that had already made the programs successful.
The conversation then turns to supplier strategy and procurement. Dawn explains why planners must help procurement understand the purpose behind event decisions and why procurement should be involved before scopes, suppliers, and contract positions are already locked. When both teams understand the same business outcome, procurement can become an extension of the event team rather than a final approval step.
Finally, Dawn shares what she looks for in future event professionals and why grit, curiosity, energy, and the willingness to learn can matter more than a traditional event-planning background.
In this episode, you will learn:
In this episode of Event Planner Confessions, Cara Pratt talks with Dawn Wesley, Senior Manager of Agency Operations, Agency Awards and Recognition at Allstate, about team modernization, attendee experience, AI, supplier strategy, procurement, and the capabilities future event leaders will need.
Dawn has spent more than three decades at Allstate and 16 years in sales leadership. Before leading the company's event-planning team, she experienced its incentive programs as an attendee and award winner. That background gave her a direct view into how event policies, recognition programs, guest experiences, and family inclusion feel from the other side of the plan.
When Dawn moved into event leadership, she inherited a team with roughly 100 years of collective experience inside Allstate. Her job was not to dismiss that history. It was to modernize the work while respecting the knowledge and relationships that had already made the programs successful.
The conversation then turns to supplier strategy and procurement. Dawn explains why planners must help procurement understand the purpose behind event decisions and why procurement should be involved before scopes, suppliers, and contract positions are already locked. When both teams understand the same business outcome, procurement can become an extension of the event team rather than a final approval step.
Finally, Dawn shares what she looks for in future event professionals and why grit, curiosity, energy, and the willingness to learn can matter more than a traditional event-planning background.
In this episode, you will learn:
- How attendee experience can reshape event policies and family programming
- How to modernize a team without dismissing its institutional knowledge
- Why diverse professional backgrounds can strengthen an established event function
- How AI can improve standards, analysis, planning, and work-life balance
- Why new supplier relationships can unlock ideas an experienced team has not seen before
- When procurement should enter the event-planning process