PlanSoft Corp.'s Meeting Management Solutions package of Web-based meeting planning tools now includes a registration module, allowing target users — Fortune 1000 companies and large associations — to send meeting invitations, accept online registrations, and create attendee registration reports. Attendees are able to pay registration fees online and to receive detailed information regarding the event.
MMS, released last October, is customized for its users and can work as an Internet-, intranet- or extranet-based tool. The MMS features include the site search and RFP capabilities of PlanSoft's flagship product, mpoint.com.
In a separate announcement, PlanSoft and Hilton Hotels Corp. have signed a deal that makes PlanSoft's powerful meeting site database and search engine part of Hilton's Web site, www.hilton.com, used internally by Hilton salespeople and staff and externally by Hilton customers. Hilton is licensing a combination of technological and marketing services from PlanSoft; in addition to the search engine, these include enhanced listings in the PlanSoft database for all Hilton properties, value dates listings, and other tools.
Another part of PlanSoft's recent shift is an emphasis on cost control, which led to layoffs at the Cleveland-based company last fall. According to Ed Tromczynski, president and chief operating officer, 37 of 183 employees were let go, many of them supporting desktop products that are now migrating to the Web and others who did data-entry for the supplier database. Much of the responsibility for keeping the database updated will now fall on the suppliers.