Liz Crompton is the meetings lead for consulting company ZS
Associates. About four years ago, the company reorganized its meetings strategy
to manage internal meetings and client-facing meetings separately. The larger
client-facing meetings went to the marketing side of the house, while Crompton
took responsibility for what she calls the 15-15-15 meetings: Those that have
at least 15 people, require at least 15 room nights and cost at least $15,000. Crompton's group takes these events into their
care to source, manage registrations and ensure data capture happens—yes, in
terms of spend, but also for engagement and other metrics that determine the
success of a meeting or event.
Still, she told BTN in an interview last week, she knows there are plenty
of additional meetings that her team isn't seeing. "The social events or smaller team events that we
suspect are happening but we aren't capturing. We know there is a lot we
are missing," she said.
Part of this is due to ZS Associates' culture of
independence. The firm is known for its travel program designed to allow its
people to book directly with airlines and make decisions based on their budgets
and their individual trip requirements. The internal meetings and events
culture has been similar, but Crompton is looking to rein in—not so much the
behaviors—but the data and the spending associated with meetings activities, so
she can present a full picture to suppliers and to executive leadership about
how ZS is conducting events, what their value is to the organization and how to
improve their effectiveness.
To that end, Crompton is deepening ZS's relationship with Cvent and engaging
with its new-ish product Cvent Essentials. It's a simplified version of Cvent that the tech firm rolled out in beta two
years ago and has been open to general customers for about a year. Cvent talks
about Essentials not as a stripped-down version of its core platform, but
rather as a reconsidered version that takes into account its intended user: a
non-professional meeting planner.
It has fewer features, for sure, but in some ways it has more governance
capabilities for templating and automating workflows based on the intake
form—or meetings request form—that is built into top of the workflow funnel.
The details offered in that form trigger a pre-configured set of templates and
workflows that support occasional planners with website creation automation,
invite and attendee registration management, site selection and negotiations,
and other "essential" logistics. And Cvent has an LLM strategy on the
horizon that would allow users never to enter the Cvent environment to execute
a meeting.
That's a potential compliance dream for
Crompton, who rolled out a ZS meetings request form earlier this year in an
effort to identify which events could be diverted to Cvent Essentials with
detailed contract terms. From there, she envisions the non-professional planner
taking the event forward through
a pre-set series of templates and workflows governed by her team, while her
professional planning and meetings managers gained visibility into the data all
the way through that process.
Crompton's decision to consolidate on Cvent wasn't fully
due to its inherent technological merits, however. There was pragmatism
involved.
"We know
Cvent has its challenges," she said.
"It's not a perfect solution, and it is by no
stretch the most affordable option. We felt it important to consolidate so it
would be feasible for us to get this off the ground. We continue to struggle
with putting [meeting and event] data points together. Our future vision—and
what I wish we could have and that AI would help with—is to find a sustainable
ecosystem to connect all this data."
Crompton
lamented her current "clunky" dashboards that look "homegrown." She
continued: "It's not really helping us tell the story to our
leadership of what's happening and where we are adding value and
spending money."
Fixing that is a vision Cvent shares,
according to executives speaking at the tech company's annual Cvent Connect conference in Nashville this month.
"We've made… foundational investments
to bring all these different types of events onto the platform … so clients
have all that event data and engagement data," Cvent SVP product management McNeel Keenan told BTN.
The company is building capability for centralized "knowledge centers" that will hold each client's unique meeting requirements, attributes and resources that
AI agents can reference to build compliant events independently. Cvent has also
reconfigured the platform to make it easier for AI to hop, skip and jump across
different event types and data silos to bring insights forward to management
teams "all packaged and ready to present with
crisp visuals, suggestions and overall story for your event success." Even when data might live in another system like
Salesforce, executives said, it will be possible for Cvent's AI agents to harness that data through integrations.
Crompton is not convinced, however, that Cvent's AI and integrations will cover her data needs—at least not in the first
go-around.
"I do see [the data advances] on their
roadmap. We'll see how it works. And while I want to
consolidate on Cvent, it's not because I think we can fit our
program into their vision. I think, realistically, we are going to need an
outside way to create our own ecosystem. For instance, with our travel data the
way it is, it's complicated behind the scenes for
meetings and events. Sometimes capturing travel data ahead of the event to get
manifests and other things can be a few extra steps.
"So having our meetings data as
consolidated as possible will be ideal for us because we are always going to be
pulling in a lot of separate travel and expense data. The more we can
streamline, the better, but I don't think Cvent will be our one-stop-shop."
AI Layers on Legacy Systems
Cvent's "Essentials" tool is one of the latest
entrants to address the simple meetings category, with "latest" meant
in both senses of the word. Yet most simple meetings platforms—Groupize, Hubli,
HRS and Cvent Essentials among them—are meeting the moment with new AI
orientations.
Platforms more than three or four years old aren't always built on foundations that easily accept AI
makeovers. As a result, their development often includes a combination of
approaches: embedding AI into the existing application, building an AI-based
orchestration layer, restructuring as microservices and leveraging multiple
best-of-breed AI solutions from third-party vendors.
Will Tate, partner at corporate travel
and software solutions consultancy GoldSpring Consulting, sees a mix of all these
among existing simple meetings platforms.
"What most incumbents do," Tate told BTN, "is to add AI to the application rather
than rebuilding what's underneath it." These add-ons manifest as writing help, session
recommendations or AI chat. They also can emerge as "a business intelligence layer that retrieves relevant
information from registration and engagement tools" and sends it to AI for interpretation, he said.
Other companies may build "an orchestration layer, that could,
for example, pull "sourcing, booking, payment and tax
reclaim [data] into one recommendation the buyer approves with a click, without
necessarily touching what's underneath," said Tate. He continued, however,
that some tech providers are "making real AI-native claims, noting
they aim to rebuild with autonomous agents as the foundation," versus "bolted-on" AI functionality.
Cvent sees small, simple and transient meetings as one of the biggest
opportunities for AI. "We have some cases with tens of thousands of users,
none of whom are professional planners. A lot of executive assistants, a lot of
field marketers, a lot of internal meeting planners," Cvent's Keenan told BTN.
To address the needs of this cohort, Cvent is rebuilding its Cvent
Essentials product, "rethinking our interface through the
lens of conversational AI," Keenan explains. Users will be able
to describe what they need in plain language without having to complete forms
or click through screens. "[Essentials] is also going to be very
aware of the nuances of each of our customers' programs," Keenan adds. The
aim, he says, is to deliver "a user experience that's more based
around how users want to work and not necessarily based around how Cvent
works."
HRS the Germany-based managed travel and meetings solution and end-to-end procure-to-pay firm, is concentrating on
automating the financial, sourcing and procurement work that surrounds simple
meetings. The embedded AI and workflow automation offered through its
HRS Copilot solution is intended to reduce the repetitive work that often
overwhelms travel and meeting departments. One of its most mature capabilities "compares the invoice to the contract without a human
involved," said HRS VP of lodging and meetings
solutions, Kari Wendel. HRS is also beginning to automate sourcing, as well,
with "AI performing some of the tactical back-and-forth activities of a
bid for a meeting or for the transient program," Wendel said.
Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Hubli applies several AI
frameworks to deliberately address the needs of travel departments that oversee
transient travel, small meetings, and self-service meeting programs. AI
automatically directs users down the appropriate workflow: Simple meetings are
self-service and complex meetings are routed to planners or agencies.
Rather than forcing users through
lengthy meeting request forms, Hubli uses AI to simplify venue search and
selection. The platform offers AI-powered venue recommendations, AI ranking of
hotels and venues, automated venue comparison, AI shortlisting, instant booking
where available and automated RFPs when necessary.
Hubli's AI simplifies sourcing, offering "an AI-centered search that learns from your previous
events and [using natural language] instead of dropdowns lets you just ask for
a venue in London with natural daylight near Covent Garden. That's the search
experience you want, so you're not filling out forms," explains
Ciaran Delaney, Hubli CEO.
Groupize announced recently
it "has rebuilt its platform from the ground up around autonomous AI
agents capable of venue sourcing, meetings management, strategic meetings
management, group travel, registration, compliance, budgeting and spend
optimization." According the company, the revamped system is "capable
of managing the full spectrum of enterprise meetings—from self-service small
meetings and simple venue sourcing to highly regulated life sciences events and
complex global conferences—within a single intelligent ecosystem." The
provider calls its AI agents "AIME," each with a specific remit.
Groupize
recently launched what it calls "the brain" of the operation—AIME
Manager—which ensures that manages the other "AIMEs" to ensure
meetings workflow is in line with policy and approval guidelines. The firm also
uses AI to connect meetings with corporate travel systems and mitigate manual
reconciliation.
Dazzle Me? Yes, and…
What travel and simple meeting professionals are looking for from AI, and
the subsequent choices they make, may be less predicated on the dazzle of AI
than it is on the practicalities of their programs. If the AI-enablement moves of
market-leading technology companies aren't relevant to them, or users haven't yet noticed any major differences in their workflows
as the result of AI, they aren't going to implement a tool just for
the sake of AI features.
But HRS' Wendel sees simple meetings
technology—especially with AI capabilities and workflows embedded—as a great
opportunity for those who haven't yet started on meetings management to
wrap some structure around disparate meetings activity without resorting to a
cumbersome RFP process.
"A
company that doesn't have a centralized program won't even know where to begin
with a strategy. You don't know what your data is. How do you issue an RFP
without any of that important information? That's where the concept of 'start
with simple [meetings]' comes into play. It's not a deep strategy. It's a
value-added system that gives you a lot of that centralized benefit and that
visibility component to make better decisions and build an RFP that's
meaningful."
At the same time, adopting a simple meetings technology is not a
throwaway decision. Wendel advises corporates to "do your homework"
and assess any meetings tech with future goals in mind. "Really understand
where the industry is going and the nuanced components of each offering, so you
can match them to your objectives and evaluate providers based on where you
want to be in three to five years—not just where you are today."
Tate agrees that what many transient
business travel and simple meetings managers want is not complicated. Rational
processes that follow policy and clean data are at the forefront.
"Agentic routing is only as good as the
policy, rate and approval data feeding it, and that's real work for a small
travel or meetings team that doesn't have spare hands," he said. Travel and meeting managers also want to know
who is responsible "once a system starts auto-booking or
auto-approving," so providers and their clients will
need to button up that concept.
No matter how fancy the AI looks and feels, meetings managers like
Crompton with established programs aren't necessarily looking to reinvent the
wheel. While they like the fact that AI helps relieve some of their busywork
(building content for registration sites or building reports, for example),
what they're really looking for is work
consolidation—one login, one data model, one vendor—versus new features. "Most of them don't want to un-consolidate a workflow
they just spent years building," he said, even if it means being part
of "the future."
Sage Dining director of administration and facility manager Karyn Harris
is another case in point. She works with Groupize via what she calls a "pass through" contract she holds with Concur
Travel. Her centralized team of meeting planners works almost entirely on
internal meetings and she's intent on implementing platforms that
serve her company's meetings management configuration.
She resisted going with Cvent, after initially researching them, because
the tech provider’s commercial models didn't match Sage Dining's 18-month meetings cycles and, she said, their focus at
the time on the large meetings market with per registration costs didn't fit her internal meetings strategy. "I can't justify a single participant paying
10 times to register for separate internal events. That just doesn't make sense for my program," she told BTN.
So she went with Groupize and has specifically valued its Concur
integration that helps capture travel costs associated with meetings and how
that wraps into her managed travel program. Plus, she says the attendee management
and sourcing tools have been really positive for her team.
She's intrigued by Groupize's new AI strategy but said it has
forestalled her transition to a Groupize direct contract because the tech
company had not defined its commercial and cost models around the multiple AIME
agents. Concur a year ago said it would stop contracting Groupize services and
all clients would need to go direct to Groupize to continue that relationship.
Some information about that model very
recently came through to clients, and it looks to Harris like an a la carte
configuration where clients pay for individual bots to build the ecosystem they
want.
"What I have seen from Groupize's new strategy via webinars and demos
is interesting," she said. "I think some of the
changes could help with our workflow." But there's a wrinkle in the changes seen so far that she's not sure her company would be ready to implement.
"What Groupize has demonstrated is the
ability for the AI to do what my event planners do," she said. "I'm not sure we're ready to replace the event planners and go to a more
distributed model where people outside of my team—like executive assistants—are
planning and booking events. That's just not our model." And, she said, she's not opposed to changing providers to
keep her model intact.
"We're a small, nimble company. We're always going to look out for what's best for us," Harris continued. "There are enough [options] in the market right now that
I can have a choice and still take advantage of AI opportunities."