<B>Meetings Beat</B>
<B>StarCite Rakes in $10 Million</B>
Online meeting portal StarCite Inc. has raised $10 million in new funding and inked a deal with Starwood Hotels & Resorts to provide site search and request for proposal services for the chain's Web site. Other investors include American Express, which last year formed a deal with StarCite to become subsidiary American Express One's preferred meeting portal solution; the Internet Capital Group, which owns 49 percent of StarCite and McGettigan Partners--which initially spun off the portal in 1999. The portal also received funding from TQ3 Maritz Travel Solutions, Breakaway Solutions, Mellon Bank, Networld, Strattech Partners and VerticalNet.
This round of funding increased privately held StarCite's total haul to about $30 million since its inception in 1999, but prior rounds were completed in times far friendlier to Internet-only companies than today's harsher economic climate. While StarCite, similar to many Internet companies and all of its industry competitors, is not yet profitable, the infusion of funding should keep the portal solvent for quite awhile. "The financial and strategic support of our investors and partners validates our business model and stabilizes our leadership position in this industry during a particularly volatile time," said StarCite CEO John Pino.
<B><a name="2"><a>McGettigan Hires Procurement Exec</B>
Emphasizing the increasing role of procurement in the corporate meetings management process, Philadelphia-based McGettigan Partners has hired Murvin Lackey, formerly Philadelphia-based vice president of worldwide supply operations at GlaxoSmithKline. Lackey, who has a long career in procurement but no official meetings management positions, will head the company's enterprise solutions division with McGettigan vice president Dick Zeller. Together, they are developing a product that will aid in the assessments of corporate meeting procurement structures, said McGettigan COO Christine Duffy.
"Procurement has taken on a more visible and prominent role in corporations," Duffy said. "If this is what Corporate America is embracing, then it's up to us to understand what our customers are looking for. Murvin doesn't even like the phrase 'meetings consolidation.' To him, these are strategic sourcing initiatives to determine what makes sense about leveraging spending and getting more out of a category like meetings. It's his belief that there are other products beyond meetings consolidation available to corporations."
Lackey added, "One area that I would like to immediately expand is our assessment services. Companies want to understand meeting expenditures in a more finite way. We have the knowledge, experience and tools to help them do that and it begins with an assessment and recommendation.