San Francisco-based
meetings technology company Certain Software this week plans to announce a new
version of its Certain Meetings platform that incorporates mobile capabilities,
enabling meeting sponsors, planners and attendees to manage their respective
needs onsite.
The release,
Certain Meetings 6.0, requires no application download to use its mobile
services, and incorporates additional social media and e-mail marketing
capabilities as well as Google Analytics tracking tools to assess event website
usage patterns.
"We believe
it is an industry first," said Certain chief marketing officer Olivier
Delerm. "What we hope this will do is help cross the chasm from only some
of the largest events being mobilized to virtually mobilizing nearly any event
where it makes sense to give more power to the attendee."
The broader
sharing of meetings information that mobile applications enable not only eases
onsite communication and data management, said Certain CEO Peter Micciche, but
also increases the number of stakeholders of a given event.
"Pretty
much anyone attending a meeting today has a smartphone or, at minimum, a
browser-enabled phone, and that puts physical and virtual event participants in
a place where they can access and exchange information and participate
real-time in ways we couldn’t even dream of five years ago," Micciche
said. "The result of that is that additional stakeholders are coming into
the mix. Our company's mission has always been to meet the needs of the meeting
planner, but now it's extended not only to executives, who are becoming more
and more connected to the meetings mix, but also attendees, speakers and
exhibitors. By equipping them with application software that targets their
individual agendas, we can now create a much more powerful experience for
everyone and more business value."
As a result,
Micciche said, the value of meetings technology to corporations is evolving in
ways similar to manners in which application software has done so in other industries:
first as a specific solution that is implemented on a wide scale, which grows
into a portfolio of tools, then a broader platform technological platform. As
that evolution occurs, defining and measuring the value of the technology
becomes a wider corporate exercise.
"We see
similar pattern in meetings," Micciche said. "Behind the scenes,
there's a shift from hard-dollar return on investment to, 'What is the
contribution of this application to enhancing our ability to do business?' For
example, look at how financial apps grew up. It's very similar. A CFO would
initially justify the acquisition of a software product because it would result
in savings by reducing headcount, for example. As that proliferated,
organizations began to shift focus from less about the ROI to the value
justification, that is, being in a stronger position of compliance with better
information to run your business."
The state of the
economy and a landscape in which corporate meetings volume remains lower than
it was two years ago does not limit the technology's potential impact, he said.
"In this
economy, it's a critical issue, because there must be ongoing focus on cost
savings and making sure that every dollar generates ROI," Micciche said.
"At the same time, the global competition means you can’t stand still, and
we see meetings and events, physical or virtual, as a key conduit to market and
getting your share, but you can’t do that without getting information from those
markets in a granular way. We think the tight economy and focus on cost savings
means organizations must pay that much more attention to the value side of the
equation, and our belief is that the meetings and events industry is going
through this metamorphosis. It may not be a real obvious one, but one that will
become more prominent as we go forward."
Certain prices
its Certain Meetings platform with a base cost per end user—meeting planners
and executives—and a per-attendee charge that can vary based on the audience
and the services included, Delerm said. E-mail marketing services are charged
per e-mail, with mobile capabilities included in the platform's base price.