The new head of GetThere's DirectMeetings division is spearheading a program to measure the effectiveness of its offerings by creating quantifiable goals for its clients—especially important in a time when the growth of online meeting management tools is incremental.
Mike Malinchok—a veteran of the DirectMeetings division and its predecessor AllMeetings.com, which was purchased by GetThere in 2000—took the manager reins from Brian Ashton in September. Ashton was promoted to vice president of strategic development, a larger role within GetThere.
"We met with each customer about quantifiable goals regarding usage," Malinchok said, "and discovered they want to know how to track and quantify usage." As such, the division developed three criteria that will be used to measure clients' use of DirectMeetings tools. The company will measure the amount of meetings registered through 60 days, the number of group passenger name records created through six months and the number of actual users in the first year. "If it's for a specific meeting, that's easy, but if a client is buying a product to get a handle on the 80 percent of its travel that is unmanaged, how do you do it?"
The three criteria help to promote use of meetings management technology throughout a corporation without bluntly forcing adoption, and consequently provide meeting managers with better, quantifiable assessments of meeting volume. Registered meeting totals, for example, enable managers to see which employees spend on events and at which hotels they spend it, which allows buyers to negotiate better deals or modify usage policies. "I don't want it to sound like we're creating nirvana, but it's important to generate targets to reach to generate savings," Malinchok said.
There are several other changes underway at DirectMeetings, most of which center on the further integration of its tools with GetThere's DirectCorporate transient self-booking tool. "There will be new functionality and a new interface in January," Malinchok said.
American Express Meetings & Incentives this year signed a deal with GetThere
(Meetings Today, Aug. 12, 2002) to include DirectMeetings functionality under its Corporate Travel Online banner, which Malinchok said will help the division expand its base of clients adopting DirectMeetings as an enterprisewide tool beyond the current 33. That number might be lower than the company expected when it bought AllMeetings
(BTN, July 31, 2000). "Taking a look back at the time of the acquisition, it's logical to assume that it would have been higher," he said. "But there have been hiccups in the economy. Meetings consolidation and technology continue to be a conundrum, an elusive thing that nobody has gotten their arms around. It's still evolving."