The Convention Industry Council's Accepted Practices Exchange initiative will focus on automating the more than 4,000 standard meetings industry definitions it has spent 10 years developing and several standard templates for such frequently used forms as requests for proposals, according to the initiative's new director.
"Where we're going is to take all of this and automate it," said Rich Hunter, a former Hewlett-Packard solutions manager who in April replaced Katie Brannan in the position. "The standards have been defined and we're moving into implementation."
The first three areas Hunter said the association will cover are room lists, single-facility RFPs and event specification guides.
CIC for several years has built standardized templates for RFPs, housing and registration and contracts. Until now, the templates have been available in Word or PDF formats. Automating these templates involves working with the industry's commercial products, such as StarCite and Passkey, to ensure that the technology systems match the standards. CIC is building a software product of its own that conforms to the standards. CIC's PowerShop is expected to launch in early 2008.
"You can either go with the commercial products that you're already using, or if you don't have a product, we'll have one available," Hunter said.
Apex's technology advisory council is identifying XML technology standards that will be embedded in the software to allow the systems to communicate with each other and allow for further industry cohesion.
"The systems are going to be able to speak to one another, whether it's a hotel system or a third-party planner application or the CIC PowerShop application," he said. That will reduce the margin of error that comes with having to reenter information into different systems.
"The vision is not printing a Word template and filling it out and e-mailing it or faxing it in," he said. "It's, as a planner, putting your information into your system and having it automatically upload and appear in the hotel system. That's nirvana."
Apex has been working with the technology companies for more than a year on this initiative
(Meetings Today, April 2)."Everybody's realizing it's in their best interest to play," Hunter said. The technology also will work with the Open Travel Alliance's technology standards. "We realize that the meeting planning space has a significant overlap with the travel space, so we are ensuring that the two systems are interoperable," he said.
News about this new initiative will be spread through a series of Webinars. "Webinars tend to be a very good avenue. The message really is that the software is going to let the planner easily follow the Apex standards," he said. Workshops were held at last month's Meeting Professionals International World Education Congress in Montreal.
The push for technology will help further the standardization of the industry. "Get people using the standard terminology and the standard formats and you get a big improvement in efficiency just by doing that. Automation makes it even better," Hunter said.
Hunter's experience at Hewlett-Packard gave him a technological foundation. "My focus was the payments area and banking, so I would get our hardware, third-party software and services and view solutions around fund transfer or ATMs," he said. Prior to HP, Hunter worked at Web development company Loki Technologies and consulting and technology consulting firm SRA International.
"My experience the whole time has been program management and project management," Hunter said. "When I look at Apex, what I can bring is the business project/program management side of things."