At the outset of your meeting, a PCO will serve as a valuable consultant, helping you define your objectives, advising you how best to achieve them, assisting with conference bids and liaising with organising committees. And you can trust a PCO to act impartially in your best interests.

Other services include finance consultancy; all logistical and organisational handling; registration; abstract handling; venue finding; liaison with speakers, and much more. Utilising the PCOs knowledge and resources will often prove to be a good investment, because the PCO can help you cut costs on many aspects of your conference.

And, of course, you remain in charge of your meeting, and the programme content is entirely your preserve. You decide what you are better off doing yourself and what you wish to outsource to your organising partner.