PlanSoft last month quietly introduced an internally developed attendee management application called Qreg, short for quick registration. The move, which ends PlanSoft's longstanding partnership with B-there to provide attendee services, makes the Twinsburg, Ohio-based firm the last of the five major Internet meeting companies to provide such a tool.
Like other attendee management applications, Qreg encompasses attendee e-mail marketing, housing and registration and post-event reporting capabilities. Given that all of PlanSoft's competitors, including B-there, GetThere's DirectMeetings division, SeeUthere Technologies and StarCite, offer similar capabilities, PlanSoft is dipping its feet into a crowded pool. Yet, attendee management applications have proven popular with corporate clients, and there are many firms that have integrated registration tools that have not incorporated more extensive consolidation or management applications.
PlanSoft president and COO Ed Tromczynski said Qreg differs from its competitors' products in terms of the consistency of its offering and due to differences in general PlanSoft philosophy. On the second point, he said, PlanSoft has focused its offerings for the corporate market on capturing "macro spend"—total hotel meeting expenditures, including total guest room, food and beverage and audiovisual expenses. Others, he said, have based their tools on capturing "micro spend"—rolling up data based on the spending activities of each attendee.
"SeeUthere and B-there have taken micro spend, built it into consolidation offerings and rolled it up into macro numbers," he said. "It's pretty smart, actually. They have had success with it, as has DirectMeetings, but we think you get a greater penetration into corporations if you take a macro approach."
The different approaches of the technology firms reflect the differing approaches within the operations of their corporate clients, Tromczynski said. "There's a clear division within corporations," he said. "Most executives would say that they are looking for macro consolidation, while most meeting planners would say they have trouble with attendee management and micro consolidation. There's a need for both. It's hard to do a great job for big companies and small companies and big meetings and small meetings."
B-there, as did SeeUthere, entered the meetings market as an attendee-management tool, focusing on registration and housing applications. Both B-there and SeeUthere introduced data consolidation solutions in 2002. StarCite and GetThere DirectMeetings, by contrast, developed attendee management applications following their establishment as site selection and consolidation firms. GTDM developed its own attendee management tools in 2001, while StarCite bought Cardinal Communications' RegWeb attendee application last year.
Tromczynski said attendee management technology can be divided into three parts: the initial inviting or alerting attendees to an event and coaxing them to register through a customized Web site, the actual registration process—housing and connecting the attendee to air and car bookings—and the process of submitting confirmations and reporting data. All current competitive products, Tromczynski said, handle well at least one of these three categories, but no product has yet been able to display strength in all three. "It needs to be easy for the attendee and the administrator," he said. "You can't have a three-day training session for housing and registration for a meeting administrator."
Charges for use of Qreg, which PlanSoft officials have been working on "full time" since January, will be based on the number of transactions processed, with transaction fees likely ranging in the $3 to $4 range, Tromczynski said. The firm hopes the application will serve as an introduction to its MMS consolidation tools.
The move also effectively severs PlanSoft's relationship with B-there. "They had a focus on their consolidation tools, and we have been focusing on this," Tromczynski said. "It's hard to sew those two together."
A B-there spokesperson confirmed the split with PlanSoft, adding the relationship ended when PlanSoft notified the company of its plans. "It ended amicably," the spokesperson said. "We do not believe the end of the relationship will have a significant impact."
PlanSoft will target the corporate market with the tool. "It's not super great for large association meetings with multiple tracks and different costs per attendee, or larger events and tradeshows," Tromczynski said, "but anything on the corporate side, this is in the middle of the bull's eye."