Global Standard for Trade Fair Lead Capture
Across Business Groups

A global Trade Fair App for digital lead capture was established for the company. Today the solution is used group-wide across three Business Groups. It supports sales, marketing, and event teams in the structured capture, qualification, and handover of leads at international trade fairs and congresses.

The app maps the lead capture process digitally right at the trade fair booth: contact details can be captured via CRM existing-customer search, business card scan, badge scan, or manual entry, enriched with qualification information, and subsequently processed through the existing system landscape. The data flows into the Marketing Automation solution and from there into the CRM.

What began as a project-specific solution has evolved over the years into a globally established standard for trade fair and congress communication at the company.

Before the Trade Fair App was introduced, lead capture at trade fairs and congresses was entirely paper-based. Processes were also organised in a decentralised manner and characterised by isolated solutions. Contacts were collected by hand or via business cards and then transferred manually into downstream systems. This process was time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to standardise.

At international trade fairs with high visitor volumes in particular, this created several challenges:

• Manual re-entry of paper forms and business cards
• Delayed handover of leads to marketing and sales
• Increased risk of input errors and duplicates
• Different capture processes per Business Group, country, or event
• Limited comparability of trade fair results
• High effort for post-event follow-up
• Inconsistent data quality in Marketing Automation and CRM

The company therefore needed a solution that could be deployed globally, accommodate different Business Group requirements, and at the same time create a standardised process for lead capture, qualification, and further processing.

Together with entergon, a digital Trade Fair App was introduced that supports the lead process from capture at the booth through to handover into the downstream systems.

The rollout began as early as 2015 with the then e1.Mobile and was later migrated to the entergon Suite, which is still in use today. Over the years the solution has been continuously extended, standardised, and adapted to the requirements of the various Business Groups.

At the core of the solution is a globally usable lead capture process:

• Digital capture of contacts at trade fairs, congresses, and roadshows
• Standardised forms for different Business Groups and event types
• Qualification of leads directly during the conversation
• Business card scan via OCR for faster master data capture
• Scan of trade fair badges – particularly in the US market – via connected registration systems
• Transfer of data to the Marketing Automation solution, and from there to the CRM
• Duplicate detection and enrichment of existing contacts
• Reporting via the entergon Suite back end
• Role and permission model for complex organisational structures
• Multilingual usage with a pragmatic focus on key languages

An important element is the standardised data logic. Existing master data in the CRM is not overwritten in an uncontrolled manner. Instead, new qualification information is added in dedicated fields. This keeps existing contact profiles stable while new trade fair information can be cleanly enriched.

A further milestone is the CRM search introduced and rolled out in 2026. While the previous search via the Marketing Automation solution was technically limited – for example in search logic and field access – the CRM search now enables a significantly broader CRM-wide lookup. This makes the app even more powerful for users in the trade fair context, especially when it comes to quickly identifying existing contacts.

The Trade Fair App has transformed what was formerly a paper-based and largely manual process at the company into a digital, standardised, and globally scalable lead process.

For event and sales teams this means above all: less manual rework, faster data availability, better data quality, and a more professional customer experience directly at the trade fair booth.

The key benefits for the company:

• Elimination of paper-based lead capture
• Significantly less manual re-entry after events
• Faster handover of leads to Marketing Automation and CRM
• Higher data quality through standardised fields and duplicate detection
• A uniform global process across Business Groups and countries
• Better comparability of recurring trade fairs and congresses
• Faster follow-up communication through automated thank-you emails
• Email-based follow-up dispatch with linked brochures and information materials directly after capture
• A modern, professional customer experience at the trade fair booth
• Greater efficiency at large international events
• Flexible extensibility for special processes such as roadshows or showrooms

Particularly valuable is the combination of standardisation and flexibility. The company can unify global processes without fully ironing out the differences of individual Business Groups. While one Business Group, for example, works with a larger number of templates, other areas get by with just a few standard forms. The platform supports both scenarios within a shared framework.