Australian meetings technology player Ivvy has entered the
North American market with the goal of building out inventory within its global
distribution platform for meetings and events. The company has opened its North
American offices in New York.
A global distribution system for meetings and events that
connects all the players—the buyers, venues, caterers, florists, speakers and
intermediaries—has been an elusive concept for the industry. Ivvy has spent
eight years building and refining enterprise technologies and software services
in the Australian market, with its eye on the $400 billion North American
market since the beginning.
"I wanted to create a platform that would connect this
entire ecosystem, so buyers—whether individual consumers or business buyers
from corporate—could actually have access to live inventory, rates and
availability of all products and services needed to create an event," said
Ivvy co-founder and CEO Lauren Hall, who worked on the planning side before
venturing into meetings technology. "I organized large local and
international events, and it would take six weeks to source suppliers and get
responses on the RFPs and get all the information and budget signed off. All
the processes were manual, so 10 years ago, I started on this journey to solve
the problem. I want to take a six-week process down to six minutes."
With inventory in place in Australia, Ivvy opened its first
marketplace as a proof of concept a year and a half ago to ensure live
transactions could take place and that there were customers who wanted to
access the inventory. It worked. "The industry is ripe for change,"
she said, also citing the small meetings technology vendors and "hot
desking" platforms that have emerged in the market.
But Ivvy has bigger goals. For now, the company is building
its meetings inventory across the supply chain in the U.S. to open a consumer
marketplace. In the meantime, it has the capacity to build customized
marketplaces for corporates to include all preferred suppliers, configure to
policy and support customized processes. "We are working in the corporate
market to create real-time procurement platforms where they can manage all
their spend," said Hall, citing 40 percent to 60 percent lost visibility in
meetings and events budgets. "We can slice and dice the data in terms of
the vendors, rank them, price them according to procurement policies, and [the
marketplace] can be deployed to every user in their organization." Hall
claimed the technology could drive 25 percent to 50 percent in direct savings—not
to mention the human capital savings from driving efficiencies.
Ivvy has appointed to advisory positions both Flo Lugli,
founder and principal of Navesink Advisory Group, and Kathy Misunas, co-founder
and principal of boutique advisory firm Essential Ideas. Both have extensive
background in hospitality and global distribution, with senior roles at Sabre
and Travelport between them. Hall told BTN Ivvy will develop a 150-person U.S.
sales force within six months.