Meetings technology provider Groupize has introduced Groupize Assurance, a series of platform, service and feature enhancements that aim to address risk mitigation for meetings management and travel in light of the coronavirus pandemic, the company announced.
"Rescheduled and canceled meetings have twice the work as a meeting that happens, and there will be many new required steps in meeting planning," Groupize CEO Alisa de Gaspe Beaubien wrote in an email to BTN. "We have automated those to ensure they are centralized and trackable."
One element is a free meetings program risk assessment calculator, created by Groupize and hosted on Calculoid. Questions are segmented into pre-, during and post-event categories that cover elements such as duty of care, employee safety and contracting, then the answers—yes, no or unknown—are calculated into a risk preparedness score and a guideline for what the scores mean.
The company now also supports virtual and hybrid meetings, and has enhanced several areas of its core product. There are new and multiple levels of approvals; new standard questions in the sourcing module related to venue sourcing requirements for cleanliness, staff monitoring, food and beverage policies and safety measures; enhanced and new functionality to manage internal meeting space; a new workflow for the registration process with auditable participant consent forms, attendee certifications and statuses; new multi-event contact tracing reports; and an auditable checklist that indicates whether all steps have been followed.
Further, there are new email templates for additional attendee communication, "with more pre-travel touchpoints spanning from approval to health status," and reminders, according to de Gaspe Beaubien. Additional duty-of-care integrations are planned for release in the winter.
Groupize's pricing model used to be based on the number of meetings a client held. "We have removed that trigger and have bundled everything together for one set price, depending on the travel program," said de Gaspe Beaubien. "To help companies through this transition, if they enter into a four-year deal, their first year of subscription is free."