SeeUthere Offers Consolidation Tool To Centralize Mtgs.

SeeUthere Technologies has developed an Internet-based meetings consolidation tool featuring centralized procurement and the ability for individual managers to view and approve prospective meeting arrangements and budgets that fall under their authority.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company expected to announce the new product, tentatively dubbed MeetingCentral, last Friday—after Meetings Today press time. SeeUthere was in "the early stages of implementation" of MeetingCentral, which was completed in late May, with "two or three" of its clients, said vice president of marketing Helen Loh.

"Our clients want to consolidate meetings, but were compiling solutions through different companies and wanted us to put it all together," Loh said. "We felt it was time to tackle consolidation."

The new product ties in all of SeeUthere's existing capabilities, including housing, registration and its links to its online booking partners with new applications, including request for proposal management and online executive approval capability. The concept, Loh said, is to combine centralized procurement and policy control with decentralized meeting ownership. In most corporations, responsibility for meeting expenditures lies with the internal business unit holding the event, and the head of that unit must sign off on the meeting budget.

This process is reflected in MeetingCentral in three areas: the ability of a company employee to request a meeting, the ability of a corporate meeting planner to source potential meeting specifics, including site selection, and create an analysis of potential expenditures, and the ability of the manager responsible for the meeting's budget to approve those specifics.

The product would reside on a corporate intranet and have password-restricted areas, allowing only planners and budget managers access to much of its functionality. "There will be a lot of decision support for the proposed meeting, including meeting history and planner analysis," Loh said.

From a wider viewpoint, MeetingCentral acts as a meeting data consolidator and a policy enforcement tool, Loh said. It can aggregate corporate meeting spending data as the company wishes and give the corporate meetings department the ability to input corporate travel policy into the system. MeetingCentral will not prohibit a request that is not in accordance, but the system will note that such a request has been made, allowing the budget approver to take action.

"Most meeting policies focus on hotel restrictions but don't focus on attendee travel," Loh said. "Now you can see and report travel policy compliance, including the use or airline meeting products like zone fares."

Use of the new product would raise SeeUthere's variable annual subscription fee and transaction fee per attendee registration.