Meeting World's Online Registration Company Face Off Results
©2001 Corbin Ball Associates

This session was an interesting experiment with the audience actually voting on the strengths and weakness of the four major online registration companies based on their responses to a sample request for proposal.  Only planners in the audience were allowed to used the audience polling units.

Participants:    

RegWeb, Rodman Marymor, CEO, www.regweb.com

b-there, Peggy Lee, b-there, CEO, www.b-there.com

Event411, Sam Rand,  Executive VP, www.event411.com

SeeUThere, Ray Thackeray, Co-Founder, VP of Channels, www.seeuthere.com

Audience polling devices were provided by:
Rick Boschen, III, Option Technologies Interactive,LLC
rboschen@meeting-net.com
www.meeting-net.com or www.optionfinder.com

Disclaimer:

The audience sample was small -- ranging form 6 to 12 planners and was not scientifically drawn -- all planners showing up to the session were included.  In my opinion, all of the companies provide quite strong products and should be considered when choosing and online registration company.

Sample RFP (Word Document): 
Created by and posted with the permission of Bill Mattes, Insurance Services Offices Inc.

Results:

Graphs

Raw Data

Session Concept,  Description, Agenda, and Questions received by the panelists.

Event:              Meeting World 2001

Session: Shopping Attendee Management Systems
Corbin Ball, CMP, Facilitator
Corbin Ball & Associates, Bellingham, WA
Industry expert Corbin Ball will serve as the committee chair for this mock purchasing team comprised of the audience members. The team's mission is to make a decision regarding an attendee management system for registration and housing applications. The RFP will be presented to the audience and invited companies will present their proposed solutions. After a thorough discussion of the pros and cons, as well as the key factors playing into the decision, the audience votes on who will get the contract (using the audience response system). Be a part of this very realistic review of the solutions available.

Date:                Thursday 12 July 2001

Time:               Both afternoon sessions: 1:00-2:30pm and continuing at from 3:00 to 4:30pm.

Location:         New York Hilton Hotel

Concept:

This session is substantially different from past product comparison sessions.  In past sessions, the urging was to avoid blatant commercialism and, rather, focus on educating the audience on the general benefits of online applications.

In this session, you will be each given a “sample: RFP, and you will be asked to sell your product to the decision maker buyers (the audience) based on this RFP. The session should be highly interactive with the use of audience polling devices.   The buyers will be given the opportunity to vote on the products on feature by feature basis.

Agenda:

1:00      Introduction to the concept and review of the RFP

1:10      Company background and  introductions (5 minutes each)

Address the following:

·   Company name and history                

·   Geographic location

·   How long has your company been in business?                                                            

·   How many employees?

·   How are you capitalized? 

·   When was the last round of funding and how much?

·   How much money has been raised to date? 

·   Who are the company backers? 

·   How many “core service staff” (people who are most directly responsible for delivering the service you are buying) such as engineers and customer service and support?

·   Has there been recent layoffs or signs of problems at the company?

1:30      Audience questions and polling

1:40      About Your Products (10 minutes each)

Address specifically the following areas:

·         The Registration Component

·         The People Profiling Component

·         The Housing/Travel Component

·         The Budgeting Component

2:20      Audience questions and polling

2:30      Coffee break

3:00      Reconvene and re-orient

3:05      Reporting (5 minutes each)

            Address the following:

·   What type of reports do you provide?

·   What format do the programs run in?

·   What formats can they download into?

·   Are they compatible with other software formats and what are they?

·   How many standard reports do you have?

·   What standard reports are there?

·   What customization process do you have?

·   Is this process in-house, or do you sub-contract that work out?

·   What is the hourly fee for customization?

·   What is the backlog time for getting customized reports done?

3:20      Audience questions and polling

3:25      Implementation (5 minutes each)

            Address the following:

·   Do you have a need assessment and how long does this take?

·   Who does the needs assessment?

·   Is there a cost for the need assessment? If yes, how much?

·   How long does it take to install the system?

·   Who from your staff will work on the installation?

·   What type of training does your company provide the new users?

·   What type of customer support do you have?

3:45      Audience questions and polling

3:55      Costing, security, and  final “plea” (5 minutes each)

Address the following:

What level of data security, backup and disaster recovery does the company offer to ensure integrity of your customer and event data?

·   How much your product cost?

·   What is the deposit schedule?

·   What is the charge for training?

·   What additional fees and/or services do you offer that have not been discussed?

4:15      Session wrap-up and audience polling

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