PlanSoft's Ajenis Ready To Ship
<B> PlanSoft's Ajenis Ready To Ship</B>
By Chris Davis
Corporate meeting planners this month finally will have the opportunity to get their hands on PlanSoft Corp.'s long- awaited Ajenis meeting planning software.
After more than two years of development, the meeting industry's most ambitious planning tool is about to roll out, though PlanSoft officials recommend that planners attend an Ajenis training session before they start using it.
"We'll start to ship this month," said PlanSoft executive vice president Ted Frank. "We do request that planners participate in the training, which is important, but aside from that we're ready to sign them up and get them the software."
The Ajenis software allows planners to coordinate all facets of a meeting electronically. Each hotel's listing includes the various audiovisual and food and beverage services it offers. Planners can click on each service and the quantity they need to include it in a request for proposals. The hotel's services manager then approves or denies the requests electronically.
Training sessions begin next month at PlanSoft's headquarters in Twinsburg, Ohio. Onsite training also will be offered at major industry events and in large cities nationwide in 1999.
The system retails for $499, plus an additional $499 annual licensing fee.
The software, which offers a standard and detailed RFP that meeting buyers can submit electronically to hotels, has not yet been available to the public. However, PlanSoft has shipped about 1,000 copies to planners at the American Bar Association and Conferon, an independent meeting planning firm whose president, Bruce Harris, also is PlanSoft's chairman.
"The ABA came at us pretty aggressively. They wanted the product and were ready to make a move," Frank said. "We told them then that the product was in an early stage, and they would have to work with us if they were going to use it."
Conferon is using the software at its headquarters, which are near PlanSoft's. "It was logical. They could send their people here or we could send our people there for training," Frank said.
Ajenis will work in conjunction with PlanSoft's Website (www.plansoft.com), which allows planners to search for meeting space in more than 4,000 hotels and conference centers by such criteria as meeting size, the amount of space required, the number of hotel rooms needed and the desired geographic location. The site also features floor plans and photos of the property or space.
PlanSoft officials had announced last summer that the infusion of an additional $11.25 million in venture capital would shepherd Ajenis through the myriad delays of the past few years and to the market (<I>Meetings Today,</I> Aug. 17).