A number of technology providers, including Ambassadors, Certain Software, Concur Technologies and Passkey have launched new or updated meetings management products this year, hoping to capitalize on the growing adoption of online registration, attendee management and sourcing tools.
Concur, which recently bought Outtask Inc. and its Cliqbook booking tool
(BTN, Feb. 6), on Feb. 21 launched Cliqbook Meeting, which is aimed at both corporate meeting planning and group travel booking. Cliqbook will continue to integrate with meetings technology firms such as StarCite and OnVantage, officials said, but Cliqbook Meeting is a separate online registration and attendee management tool.
"We believe that there was room for a tool that didn't provide the tremendous procurement capabilities of a StarCite or OnVantage, but performed the purest in meeting management and that is what we developed," said Tom DePasquale, former president and CEO of Outtask and now general manager and vice president of Concur travel management services.
DePasquale said about five customers are using the tool, which features custom attendee registration Web sites, a payment module, and room block and ground transportation management functions. Another 18 customers, many of whom were involved in the development of the tool, are evaluating the product, he said.
The technology was developed before Concur acquired Outtask, and new expense reporting functionality soon will be added to the tool, he said. "There are opportunities here not only for seamless expense reporting for the traveler but also to allow the corporation to do a better job with expense reporting for the whole meeting. That's work that will be done in the months ahead," DePasquale said.
Event management company Ambassadors LLC, a subsidiary of Ambassadors International Inc., earlier this year updated its meetings consolidation technology tool. Company president Jerry McGee said the tool is aimed at the two most discussed and complicated areas of the market: strategic meetings management and return on investment.
"There is a general feeling that meetings and events are the last uncharted territory for procurement in a lot of corporations, and there's a lot of very good reasons why," McGee said. "There is not a standard place that meetings and events resides: sometimes it's in marketing, or in human resources or in their corporate travel area."
The company has had a meetings tech product since it acquired assets of Bluedot Virtual Event Organization Inc. in 2002. The update takes separate tech solutions developed by Bluedot and Ambassadors into an "end-to-end" integrated product, he said. Customers are encouraged to take a phased-in, modular approach before adopting the entire system.
Ambassadors offers a money-back guarantee on cost savings. The company typically quotes 15 percent to 25 percent savings for prospective customers.
"Almost every company has some anecdotal incident where they asked the CEO to speak at a conference in San Francisco one day and Orlando the next and Phoenix the third—there is usually hell to pay for the lack of coordination," McGee said.
Quincy, Mass.-based group reservation technology firm Passkey International plans to release a new version of its online attendee registration product in August, according to a company release. The version would include a new user interface, room list manager, pre-loaded templates and new event Web site design.
Passkey said it would move its database to partner Oracle's platform on new servers and storage systems, as part of the release.
San Francisco-based Certain Software in January added to its Register123 online registration product several features, including a budget module to track expenses, change reports and Web integration links
(BTNonline, Jan. 27).