<H1> Melding Plans, Expenses</H1><H3> rosenbluth-mcgettigan synergys unit intros software</H3>By Cheryl Rosen
<B>A</B> new version of Core Discovery-the first technology product to come out of the joint venture of Rosenbluth International and McGettigan Corporate Services-offers the meetings industry its first comprehensive tool to consolidate meeting planning and spending information in a single database.
The new Core Discovery 4.0 meeting-tracking system adds a heavy dash of Rosenbluth's expertise in consolidating corporate data to McGettigan's year-old Core Discovery 3.0 meeting management software package.
Many of the product's elements-pre-trip reports, ad hoc queries, consolidated companywide data and savings reports to help corporate managers quantify the value of their input-are the familiar fare of corporate travel managers.
In fact, Synergys, the Rosenbluth-McGettigan joint venture that built the system (<I>MT</I>, Nov. 6), makes no apologies for the cross-pollination of concepts. Promoting the crossover of ideas like consolidation and centralization is, after all, its raison d'etre. The system has even borrowed the current travel-management technology buzzwords, pulling together spending and site selection databases into "a single unified solution" to be accessed by everyone involved in meeting planning and budgeting-from the secretary to the CFO.
Now, meeting planners can search a database of hotels to find the ones that fit their needs, fax out an electronic RFP to those properties, and build registration and budget databases for each individual meeting. At the same time, corporate meeting managers with higher security clearance can pull all the information into a single database to produce pre- and post-meeting reports on companywide meeting plans and spending.
Managers can query the system for all meetings being planned at a given hotel, for example, and pool the volume to negotiate a contract. Two meetings being held in the same city on the same dates might qualify for a reduced air fare.
"Core Discovery can track a company's annual meeting spending, down to the paper clips," said marketing director Mark Jordan. "There are other products in the marketplace that do components of what it does, but to the best of our knowledge-and we've done quite a bit of research-there is no other product that rolls all these functions together. And while there are a lot of tools for program-by-program management, this one takes all that data and provides a picture of overall corporate meeting spending."
The system is based on a year-old McGettigan software system, Core Discovery's 3.0 version, which simply tracked registration and budgeting at individual meetings. Even the original part of the system has been expanded: Where it once allowed the tracking of breakfast, lunch and dinner expenses each day, for example, the new version allows planners to customize the categories to include buffets and continental breakfasts. And where previously planners could get a running "total savings" column that tracked negotiated discounts off the room rate only, now a similar column tracks savings on food and beverage charges as well.
Also new is the hotel specification module, in which planners can note the room block, function space and amenities they need, query the hotel database and fax a mini-RFP. This function is perhaps the system's weakest link now, with hotels in the database limited to preferred Rosenbluth and McGettigan hotel partners. But Jordan said the intention is to grow the database quickly, adding preferred hotels used by customers of both agencies and by users of the Core Discovery system first.
"We built this ourselves, so we started with our preferred suppliers," Jordan said. "But we will be continually expanding it as we go along to include less of a bias."
The overall meeting reporting function, meanwhile, has been designed with four levels of security, so that meeting planners can be given access to data on their own meeting only, while the corporate meeting manager or CFO can pull up companywide data. "The key is that everything is networked into the corporate LAN, so everyone can access it," Jordan noted, "and we are investigating an application to do it over existing corporate intranets. We'll take care of the system integration, the help desk and the online help."
Core Discovery 4.0 is currently in beta test at six corporate sites. It will not be offered as a stand-alone product, Jordan said, but rather as an adjunct service for customers of Synergys, whose "prime focus is corporations with annual meetings of $10 million or more.