Meetings industry veteran Mike Malinchok in March rejoined Philadelphia-based StarCite Inc.—the company he helped launch as regional vice president of sales six years ago—to head a new product resellers certification program. The new role highlights the future direction of meetings technology development: integration and partnerships between technology companies and traditional travel management companies, he said.
As vice president of partnership development, Malinchok said he would create and manage a training and certification program for companies that resell StarCite products. The role will lead him to work directly with his former employer, WorldTravel Meetings & Incentives.
Chicago-based WTMI is the meetings management arm of Atlanta-based WorldTravel BTI, now known by its redefined parent company, BCD Travel. During the past six months, Malinchok worked with WTMI to find and implement a technology partner after the company decided to discontinue its own Plan2Attend tool
(Meetings Today, Feb. 6). WTMI chose StarCite and StarCite chose Malinchok.
"Within WTMI, my role had pretty much come to a close, so the timing worked perfectly," Malinchok said. "It worked out well for all three of us."
WTMI, like some other travel and meetings management companies, now promotes the use of StarCite to its clients. "Over the past five years at StarCite, there have been partnerships forged, whether you call them distributors or resellers, with some of the major companies in the business: American Express, Maritz McGettigan and now WTMI. My role is to take our existing partner relationships and create a certified reseller program," Malinchok said.
StarCite also plans to segment its partners into three groups: certified resellers, strategic business partners—which do not resell StarCite tools—and product partnerships with other technology companies to foster development. Malinchok will manage partnerships with all three groups.
StarCite expects to roll out the certification program in early July, he said.
"We want to create some formality and structure around the process of a partnership with StarCite," Malinchok said, adding that partners would benefit from "a level of credibility."
"From our perspective, it gives us the comfort level that the message is being standardized, that the delivery of the product attributes and benefits are consistent across all distribution partners," he said.
The move to embrace partnerships is "unique" to StarCite, Malinchok said. Instead of competing directly with travel management companies that are adding meetings management products, StarCite chooses to join with those companies and provide the required technology, he said.
"Instead of viewing agencies as competition or a necessary evil, we're embracing them," Malinchok said. "Corporate America, in some instances, likes to buy direct from the tech company and I don't think that's ever going to go away. In other instances, a lot of corporations like to buy from a single supplier. They want to go to one supplier to buy strategic meetings management tools, personnel, etc."
The industry has come full circle, as technology companies initially promoted an alternative to large, traditional agency models, he said.
"Maybe some of that needed to be done, and the cobwebs needed to be blown out," he said, "but combining the best of technology with the best of a distribution partnership plan, we believe, is a home run."
Malinchok said he will remain involved in finding synergies between his previous product, Plan2Attend, and StarCite's tools, but that he will only be slightly involved in product development.
As StarCite pushes multinational business development
(Meetings Today, Aug. 15, 2005), Malinchok said he is charged with developing strategic business partnerships both domestically and overseas.
"They may not be necessarily in a reseller or a distributor capacity, but will keep us more in line with our long-term goals of going global and having an international presence," he said.
Malinchok also has responsibility for developing "product partnerships" with other technology developers, he said.
"That will allow us to bring additional functionality to customers through partnerships as opposed to building or buying technology. For example, we have relationships with [Sabre's] GetThere and with [Concur Technologies'] Outtask, which enhance our offering," he said.
"As we look to build out the partnership program we're really taking a close look at nontraditional partnership opportunities," Malinchok said. "While we are focused on solidifying the traditional partnerships, we're starting to look at some partnerships that are a little bit out of the box. We're going to plant some seeds that may come into fruition a year, two years or five years from now."