Meet Rachel Hales, the Founder behind Get Synergised, an organisation that exists to do one simple thing well: help people build meaningful connections.
Since 2021, Get Synergised has been breaking down barriers between businesses and third-sector organisations by creating space for true collaboration, shared learning and social impact.
Over the years, the network and community has grown, and so has the operational challenge of running professional events without spending hours on admin.
The Challenge
As Get Synergised in-person business charity networking events became more popular, running them regularly meant managing registrations, tracking attendance, and following up - all while ensuring every attendee had a great experience.
Rachel had a small team supporting her behind the scenes, and the process was still largely manual. When attendees arrived, they were prompted to write their own name and organisation on their badges, as a team member ticked off their names from a printed list of expected attendees. Later, attendance had to be manually cross-referenced with an Excel spreadsheet.
This approach helped avoid missing attendees due to registration errors. It was time-consuming, duplicated effort and limited visibility into who actually attended.
Rachel knew that they had to find a better way, and when attendees began asking for easier ways to connect, without awkward LinkedIn searches and business card exchanges, she started looking for a solution that could help them achieve both.
A little bit of context
While working in the charitable sector for many years, Rachel was involved in a project with Cambridge Building Society and Romsey Mill that demonstrated the power of genuine collaboration, where businesses wanted to share skills and expertise directly with their communities rather than just ticking a box.
This experience highlighted a wider challenge: businesses wanted to connect with and support their communities but didn’t know how or where to reach them, and charities and social enterprises wanted to connect with businesses but didn’t know where to go.
Rachel was inspired to create a space where these relationships could form naturally, with a shared purpose to improve outcomes for people across the UK, and so Get Synergised was born.
If you’ve got the time, skills, expertise, resources or finance to help improve somebody else’s life, why wouldn’t you? Rachel Hales, Founder - Get Synergised
Today, Get Synergised operates as a membership networking organisation, with events playing a central role in building those relationships.
The solution
The Get Synergised team used the Orca Scan Event Attendance Solution to modernise their event check-ins and make it easier for attendees to connect.
Before each event, delegate data is imported from Ticket Tailor into an Orca Scan sheet. Then, using the Orca Scan Barcode Label Designer, the team created custom name badges for every attendee, each featuring a QR code.
On arrival, these QR codes were scanned on a smartphone to instantly register attendance. Throughout the event, the same code allowed attendees to connect directly via LinkedIn, making networking, and building the lasting relationships Get Synergised exists to support, faster and more natural.
Because all data capture was live and automated, badges could be printed, cut, and prepared with lanyards in advance, helping create a polished, professional first impression.
As attendees arrived, staff located their badges and scanned them, instantly logging attendance and arrival time in the ‘Registration’ sheet.
This meant the team could see, at any moment, exactly who had arrived and how many people were in the room.
To capture feedback, the team also used an Orca Form, allowing attendees to simply scan a QR code, submit their feedback in seconds, and giving the organisers instant access to responses.
At the end of the event, there were no paper lists to reconcile or spreadsheets to update, as all attendance data was complete, accurate, and ready to use.
Was the solution successful?
The results of using Orca Scan to digitise the Get Synergised event experience were immediate.
Without the need for paper lists or post-event data entry, over 60 guests were scanned in quickly and accurately, giving the team live visibility of attendance throughout the entire process.
Instead of leaving an event with multiple paper lists and ticks to transfer onto a master spreadsheet, the team finished the day with a complete digital attendance record, ready for immediate use. This hugely reduced staff time spent on admin, lowered operational costs and supported a more sustainable, paper-free approach to event management.
Additionally, attendee feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with QR-enabled name badges standing out as a simple yet powerful improvement to their networking experience.
What’s next?
Following its success, Get Synergised plans to roll out Orca Scan across future events and has even recommended the solutions to peers and other partners.
By reducing admin and making it easier for people to connect, Orca Scan has helped Get Synergised focus on what matters most to them: building relationships that lead to real social impact.
Thank you
A huge thank you to Rachel and the team at Get Synergised for sharing their story of how implementing Orca Scan has improved their event experience! We are very grateful 🙏