Suppliers using Cvent's Lead Scoring tool within the
company's Hospitality Cloud will soon have automated capabilities to respond to
RFPs with the company's new Proposal Assistant, announced
today at the Cvent Connect conference. Available in August, Proposal Assistant
will automate current manual processes, such as dates, rates and meeting space
that best fits a group's needs and the property's current availability.
The proposed benefits, in addition to automation, include a
faster response time to electronic RFPs that come from Cvent buyer users, the
ability to drive more group revenue because of the Lead Scoring prioritization
of RFPs and competitive insights using Cvent's Competitive Set Dashboard.
Lead Scoring takes a hotel's RFPs and assigns them each a
score based on an algorithm that takes into account availability, hotel fit,
profit and size of the group. The sales team can then review each RFP by its
lead score and also view the lead source, preferred arrival, booking name and
peak rooms, and focus on those leads that are the most promising. With the
Competitive Set Dashboard, Proposal Assistant will start with the average rate
quoted by a property's competitors. Users can then adjust the rate and see the
lead scoring effects in real time.
Most buyers are probably not aware that their RFPs are
getting scored, admitted Cvent's SVP of sales Brian Ludwig, "but when
explained it makes a lot of sense to them. They get the idea of anyone in sales,
anyone working a lead, needs better insights to make a decision on what to
focus on."
The positive for buyers is that they'll have access to more
of the marketplace and see more promotions and deals, said Cvent's chief
technology officer David Quattrone. "When you have a situation where
events aren't flexible, this allows the planner to find the best venue within
their rigid structure to get the event done. But if they're planning enough
into the future with flexibility on what days they can do it, it allows hotels
to fill need dates they have or put proposals in front of customers and say,
'hey, if you shift a week, I can get you better pricing, or different amenities,
or into different components in terms of what kind of services we can grant you
because we have rooms to fill.' We're trying to find win-wins between the venue
side and the planner side where flexibility exists."
For buyers concerned about how to leverage their business amid
such automation, there's a part of the RFP process where they can share details
around past booking patterns and volumes so their business stands out and gets
a higher score. But "sometimes a planner will rush through that and not
give real data," Ludwig said. "So, some of the challenge is the
validity of the data, which obviously the property can validate what they are
seeing, but they might not have visibility of full spend across the brand, but
they're taking the word of the organizer. That's something we've been thinking
about. How do we help make sure that the data and insights being shared is
confirmed business, confirmed volume. It's a little bit tricky."