Meetings management software provider Lenos soon will offer its ad-free venue sourcing technology as a free standalone product, according to Lenos president Patti Tackeff. The move will allow Lenos to provide an alternative to advertising-based competitors, she said, with an ancillary benefit that it can help to market the company.
"We believe the market needs an alternative to an advertising-based [venue] sourcing system, which advantages suppliers over the users," Tackeff said. "In the software industry, when you have advertising as a revenue source, the paying advertisers are the true customer and the [users] are the product that advertisers are buying. We have proven this by demonstrating dramatic savings, averaging 35 percent on room rates over an advertising-based solution."
Lenos has been in business for 20 years, but Tackeff acknowledged the company is not as well-known as it could be since it white-labels its solution for clients. "When other systems send out RFPs, they go out as that technology system," she said. "If an RFP goes out of Lenos, it goes out as from the client, so nobody knows who we are, and we power so many companies. We hope that by offering a 'freemium,' folks will get to use our system and see the benefit of it over the marketplace and then upgrade to Lenos for their strategic meetings management program."
The release will have the same benefits as its traditional product except for enterprise consolidated reporting. A few clients have been testing the standalone product, Tackeff said, but Lenos currently is upgrading the technology ahead of an expected February release.