Rearden Adds StarCite Meetings Apps To Personal Assistant Tool

Rearden Commerce is adding StarCite-powered meetings functionality to its Personal Assistant online booking and procurement tool, making meetings the latest spend category the firm is hoping clients will manage through the platform.

For joint clients, Rearden will activate for a fee the StarCite-powered meetings tab, through which users can register for meetings. That data then prepopulates the online booking path so attendees can complete travel reservations. Rearden also plans to enable the reverse of that functionality, so if travelers begin to book a trip whose time and destination parameters coincide with a meeting, the Rearden booking tool will prompt them to register. Any registration information collected through the Rearden tool then is fed back to the StarCite system for full attendee management and reporting.

Meetings joins other spend categories the Rearden tool enables, including air, car and hotel booking, restaurant reservations, package shipping and others. "We're always looking to add new services and enhance the value of the platform," said Rearden vice president of worldwide sales Tony D’Astolfo. "Meeting spend has been out there for a while. We've clearly had a need to do this to satisfy the demand that existed."

D'Astolfo said enabling the StarCite functionality through the Rearden tool comes with a one-time set-up fee in addition to a per-transaction fee, though he would not disclose pricing. No clients have yet adopted the combined tool, though D'Astolfo said there are a number of joint clients the firm would initially target.

StarCite powers the meetings offering as it stands, but Rearden's entry into that segment opens the platform to further meetings functionality and partners down the road. "Whenever we open up another service, we design it in a way where we can accommodate another service provider," D'Astolfo said. "The announcement is clearly with StarCite, and they are our launch partner, but we engineered it in such a way that if we did have other partners, you could certainly click on the meetings tab and be integrated to whatever meetings provider."