View the entire 2009 SMMP Software Buying Guide

THE MOVER
Cvent

Contact: Chuck Ghoorah, EVP, Sales & Marketing

The Story: Launched in August 1999 as an online-registration provider, Cvent has evolved into a software system for strategic meetings management. “Cvent has grown from 4 to 497 employees around the world and has 14,000 users in 22 countries,” Chuck Ghoorah notes. “We were recently awarded PCI Level 1 Compliance, the Payment Card Industry’s highest data-security standard. And as of the fourth quarter of this year, site-selection firms HelmsBriscoe and ConferenceDirect named Cvent their official e-RFP platform.”

Product Type: Software as a Service (SaaS)

For Meeting Management:

• Meeting request and approval
• Enterprise calendar
• Planner resource management
• Venue database/e-RFPs
• Budget management
• Attendee management, including registration, surveys, and e-mail marketing
• Custom reports on cost savings, cost avoidance, and spend, aggregated or segregated as needed
• Integration with Webex that allows registrants to more easily attend Webex meetings

Supplier Database? Yes. “The Cvent Supplier Network took three years to build with a dedicated staff of 120 people,” says Ghoorah. Suppliers get free basic listings. All suppliers are able to update their own accounts. Cvent staff also updates the database monthly.

Supplier Database Marketing Packages: Three types: 2-diamond, 3-diamond, and 4-diamond listings. The packages offer varying degrees of increased exposure, from ads on search-results pages to listings that appear first in search results. Cvent also provides additional marketing opportunities in its e-mail newsletter, Destination Guide, and blogs. Packages cost $2,500 to $18,000 annually.

Do you get commissions or finder’s fees from hotels? No.

RFP Customization: Planners can create highly customized RFPs and ask “custom questions” as part of the RFP process. Planners may attach documents to RFPs or include standard contracts. Cvent also allows the planner to copy previous RFP to reduce data entry.

What are the different ways hotels can respond to your RFPs? Suppliers can log in and respond through the Cvent system itself. Cvent offers free, live, online training 10 times per week to hotels and venues. Cvent is also integrated with NewMarket International’s MeetingBroker, which routes RFPs to hotel CRM systems like Delphi. This permits hotel sales executives to respond to Cvent-delivered RFPs within the hotel CRM system itself.

What do corporate clients pay for? Annual license fees for different modules; clients choose which they need. The primary cost is for the attendee management module, priced on a per-registrant basis.

Credit-card partner? None

Enhancements: 3 to 4 per year

Support: 24 hours on weekdays via phone and e-mail; daytime weekend support; based in Maclean, Va.

Our Differentiators: “The primary differentiator is our scale,” says Chuck Ghoorah. “With a global presence and our 497 employees, we offer a world-class level of customer service, security, and responsiveness. Second is the affordable price point for our SMM software suite. Third, we are the second generation of SMM. The first generation SMM systems are stuck with inflexible legacy architecture. We entered the market and asked customers what they liked and disliked and then built a better, more nimble system.

“Our software has been guided by the same team over the years (11 of our 12 senior managers have been with us since we started the company),” Ghoorah continues, “so that every component seamlessly speaks to the other parts of the software. We believe this makes for a better user experience and provides the most reliable service for our customers. Fourth is the size and accuracy of the Cvent Supplier Network—100,000 suppliers, including restaurants and venues like museums and aquariums.”

Other SMMP Software profiles:
Arcaneo Metron
Cvent
Lenos
StarCite
Certain Software
Meeting Evolution

Editor’s Note: Corporate Meetings & Incentiveshas partnered with Cvent to offer its supplier database at our Web site, meetingsnet.com.