Cvent's Product Team Saved 75% of Their Time with Beautiful.ai

At Cvent, one of the world’s leading event management and marketing platforms, clear and effective communication is essential. With a globally distributed product management team of 125 people, presentations are not just routine—they're crucial to their success. From internal stakeholder updates to customer pitches and board meetings, McNeel Keenan, VP of Product Management, oversees a team that creates more than 1,000 presentations a year.

Before adopting Beautiful.ai, Cvent's team relied on traditional presentation software like PowerPoint. This process was slow, clunky, and creatively draining. Keenan described the former process as document-heavy, visually uninspiring, and overly time-consuming. "We weren't telling stories," he said, "we were reviewing information."

The team’s introduction to Beautiful.ai wasn’t planned, but the impact was immediate. After seeing a presentation built on the platform, McNeel was struck by how polished and clear it looked. The next day, he created his first Beautiful.ai presentation.

That grassroots adoption quickly spread. One product manager became five. Five turned into entire teams. Now, more than 170 users across departments at Cvent use Beautiful.ai daily.

From documentation to storytelling with Smart Slides

McNeel is a strong advocate for the power of storytelling through presentations. “I really do feel passionate about the difference between a presentation and a document,” he explains. “If you want documented information, that's fine. But for me, the ability to present correctly and actually do the storytelling you're looking to do was the big game changer.”

At Cvent, the Product Management team runs over 1,000 presentations a year — ranging from intimate four-person meetings to massive stakeholder sessions with up to 400 attendees. This volume made the creation and design of effective presentations a significant drain on time and resources. The platform’s Smart Slide functionality helps shape raw ideas into coherent narratives. “Smart slides take ideas into stories and that really gives us an idea of how to best communicate it,” McNeel added.

This means less time spent fussing over formatting and more time focused on strategy and storytelling. “We're ensuring that we're spending time crafting the right story — not formatting,” McNeel emphasized.

Reducing design time by 75%

Beautiful.ai didn’t just replace PowerPoint—it redefined the team’s entire presentation workflow. “Before Beautiful.ai, we started taking inventory of how much time our team was spending building presentations, not to mention delivering them. We wanted to get that time down,” Keenan said. “And with Beautiful.ai, we were able to get the time down by 75%, so they could focus on the core message, the story, and the content, and not the design.”

This drastic reduction wasn’t just about speed — it unlocked more time for what really matters: content strategy, messaging, and audience engagement.

With Beautiful.ai, product managers were freed from the burden of pixel-pushing. The platform’s design automation meant that McNeel's team no longer needed to rely on creative teams to produce professional-looking decks. 

Powerful reusability helps the team scale the presentation design process

One of the standout features for McNeel’s team is Beautiful.ai’s ability to repurpose content. “More commonly, we're reusing other presentations, recombining them in different ways,” he said. “That's one of the most powerful pieces of Beautiful — being able to reuse content from other presentations you've already put together.”

Far from just being a design tool, Beautiful.ai has become an essential part of Cvent’s collaborative ecosystem. “We think of this as more than just a presentation tool. It is a collaboration tool. It helps us communicate more effectively,” McNeel noted.

With no need for design approval cycles and immediate access to team-wide content libraries, the workflow has become seamless and scalable. “Could it be made faster if you not only had Smart Slides, but you had all of your previous content and the content from your entire team right at your fingertips? That’s the benefit of Beautiful.ai,” said McNeel. “You’re going to spend a lot less time doing it and each presentation is going to be much more impactful than ever before.”

Cvent didn’t just save time—they leveled up how their teams communicate, align, and share their story. Beautiful.ai helps them scale their presentation process with ease. 

“Beautiful.ai is one of those tools that gives us leverage,” McNeel concludes. “It ensures we're spending time where it matters most — on people, process, and product.”