WTMI Pulls Plug On Plan2Attend, Selects StarCite
WorldTravel Meetings & Incentives today announced it has stopped developing its Plan2Attend meetings management technology and signed a strategic partnership agreement to use and offer products from meetings technology provider StarCite Inc.
WTMI president Scott Graf said the company has adopted StarCite's meetings management technology for its own internal use as well as distribute the product to its customers. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"There's plenty of things that made Plan2Attend a good choice and a lot of customers were quite happy with it. For us, we said there are clearly some things in our tool that we'd like to make part of StarCite's tool and they're either on the development plan that StarCite had, or will be," Graf said.
The two companies already have begun collaborating on marketing and product development, said StarCite founder and executive chairman John Pino.
"We're trying to get our technology out to the customers first and then see what, if anything, is lacking or needs to be improved," Pino said.
The transition of WTMI customers to the StarCite platform will happen over the next six months, Graf said, and customers that wish will be able to use a different tool than StarCite. About 15 companies currently use the P2A tool, and pricing for WTMI services will not change, he said. The cost of developing Plan2Attend as a competitive product became prohibitive as such technology companies as Philadelphia-based StarCite received new funding and resources, Graf said.
Both sides stressed cultural similarities between the two companies and their different offerings to the meetings industry: StarCite pushing its role as a technology provider and WTMI stressing its role as a management solutions provider.
"StarCite is a meetings technology company, period. We're a meeting, event and incentive company that happened to be in the technology business as well. Frankly, this a very good thing for us in terms of the resources and investment dollars available to us that can be better used in more strategic areas," Graf said.