McGettigan Spins Off Mtg. Tech Co.

<B> McGettigan Spins Off Mtg. Tech Co.</B>

By Chris Davis

McGettigan Partners is spinning off a new company, Star-cite Solutions, to sell its CORE Discovery meeting planning software to agencies and planners who aren't necessarily McGettigan clients. Star-cite will sell three versions of CORE Discovery, under the name RealPlanner.

The setup is not unlike that at WorldTravel Partners, which distributes its Meeting Assist planning software through its Travel Technologies Group subsidiary. Star-cite, however, will function as a corporate entity separate from Philadelphia-based McGettigan.

"The software has evolved from a value-add for our customers to get us more business, and now has become a crucial, and in some cases mission-critical, application for them," said McGettigan president and CEO John Pino, who will act temporarily as Star-cite's CEO. "We're forced to put more and more resources and more and more money into it, and to give it total 100 percent attention to bring it to the level where it needs to be."

Current McGettigan clients won't notice much difference, officials said, but other planners now will have access to the software through a wider variety of third parties. "You can't get to industry status if the only people who use your software are people who do business with you," Pino said. "We want to keep an independent view, because those who don't use us and also competitors have expressed interest."

McGettigan, which already has spent more than $5 million on the development of CORE Discovery over the past four years, now will contribute an additional "significant amount of money" to launching Star-cite, Pino said, though he declined to disclose exact figures. In addi- tion, "we will look for more capital in the venture capital community and through other sources and investors."

Pino and McGettigan Partners executive vice president Marianne McGettigan Kehan will be the major shareholders of Star-cite, said director of sales and marketing Mark Jordan.

Star-cite will produce and market three versions of the RealPlanner

software, all offering automatic site search and transmittable requests for proposals, and financial and attendee management.

RealPlanner EN, the highest-level version of the software, is commensurate with the highest-level CORE Discovery 5.0, said Star-cite director of development and operations Mark Phillips. It can be deployed through wide area networks, the Internet or corporate intranets. It also includes a passenger-management piece that allows planners to specifically tailor meeting registration forms to prompt certain questions to an attendee registering over the Internet. For example, a corporate VIP could get a different set of questions concerning lodging and amenities than a regular employee. Planners can capture information they need from attendees "down to the event level or item level."

RealPlanner EN is the only version of the software with this ability. RealPlanner Pro, designed for 10 to 15 users, as may be found in a corporate meetings department, is commensurate with the standard CORE Discovery system. RealPlanner Lite, which will be available this summer, is designed for a single desktop.

While pricing is not yet set, "RealPlanner EN could be six figures and RealPlanner Pro could be four,"Jordan said.

But Pino said corporations will see a quick return on their outlay in greater planner efficiency. "There's so much stuff--detail work, transaction processing, manual work--that has to be done to produce a meeting that it takes away from the core competency of project management. The feeling is, technology will be able to solve these problems and allow these people to focus on the pieces involved to the customer. That's what people want to know: What was the ROI on the event?"

Pino said Star-cite hopes to install 50 RealPlanner EN systems, including upgrades for some of the 12 corporate clients using CORE Discovery, plus 20 to 30 copies of RealPlanner Pro and 1,000 copies of RealPlanner Lite by the end of the year.

Star-cite also is open to licensing its software to other distributors, Jordan said.

Travel Technologies Group will be one of Star-cite's major competitors--but Rigsby Barnes, general manager of the meetings and incentives division of its owner, WorldTravel Partners, said the entry of another meetings software player into the market will make it "more competitive and more interesting. It will make all of us better."

With a richer and more independent competitor selling meetings systems, "more companies will be aware of what's out there, which creates a situation where we, they and other companies will continue to enhance our products to be competitive," Barnes predicted.

Pino said the new company will have a president of its own to handle all day-to-day operations "hopefully on board shortly. The dream is that we'll find an individual who has successfully run a business, knows our industry and has a technology piece as well. There aren't a lot of people like that out there, but there are some. It is a wide-open search right now.