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Web Site Favorites for Meeting
Planners Innovation is alive and well -- especially on the Web! New net tools appear daily that are improving speed, efficiency and the bottom lines for meeting planners. For a start, let's look at some typical meeting planning tasks: we find meeting space, mail requests for proposals (RFPs), manage speakers, organize conference education programs, manage registration logistics, and deal with suppliers. These tasks can be simplified, streamlined and, in some cases. almost totally automated using web-based applications. Hot Dates The web is perfectly suited for yield management. The airlines have been using email promotions to unload excess seats for a couple of years now. Hotels are just starting to get the idea for beds. Planners are now able to use the searchability and interactivity of the web to find this hot-deal inventory. . Email newsletter such as MadSearch (www.madsearch.com) work with hot dates as well as sites specifically devoted to special rates (www.hotdateshotrates.com). Site Research and Selection PlanSoft (www.plansoft.com) still remains one of the most comprehensive databases of meeting facility information on the web. However, there are other good ones such as EventSource (www.eventsource.com) which also includes non-hotel meeting facilities (halls, catering venues, etc.). The meeting facility guides on many meeting planners' shelves will become a thing of the past as the web provides more up-to-date, richer, and lower cost information. Request for Proposals (RFP's) Planners can now use the Web to send out RFP's to multiple hotels instantly and at no direct cost. Plansoft has offered this option for more than a year. SmartRFP (www.smartrfp.com), a new entry to this field, offers a clean, user-friendly interface. A guaranteed 48- hour response is claimed as well. Online Registration Templates On-line meeting registration is mushrooming -- nearly all of the registration software packages are adding web-based components. The hot trends in web design, however, is to build these registration pages in templates. Templates allow you (the planner) to create new events and registration forms on your web site with no web design experience! Now you don't have to ask your web designers to make the changes, you can do it yourself as often as you like! Once a template is built, all you have to do is go the password-protected administrative area of your site, fill in the simple templates boxes, hit the "update" button, and your new event with description, and customized registration form appears instantly at your site. An excellent demo of this new technology can be found a RegWeb (www.regweb.com). Templates will be seen more commonly in web site construction. It gives control of the web site to the stakeholder, saving management costs, and reducing change time. Program Coordination and Content Management Coordinating content, speakers, calls for papers, and program content can take many people working many hours for larger meetings. There are two web-based solutions that put management of these tasks on the Web, greatly increasing communications efficiency. They allow the planner to easily post program and registration module on-line as well.. SaratogaGroup (www.saratogagroup.com) and Neology (www.neology.com) both are very powerful on-line event content management systems and are worth checking out.. Mass Customization The Web will fundamentally change how items are sold and marketed in this coming decade. Just as "Malls" changed the retail landscape in the 70's, the new way to buy will be e-commerce. "Mass marketing" will give way to individual, customized, one-to-one marketing that is easy and cheap using this medium. A great example of this "mass-customization" is found at Disney's Swan-Dolphin Hotel Web site (www.swandolphin.com). If you click on the "Meeting Space" button, and fill out the meeting profile form, you with then be able to see PERK -- the personalized electronic response kit -- 500 web pages of meeting information on the hotel that is customized to you (using your name, profile, etc.). It is an example of how a web site can be dynamically adjusted with the ability to tailor to the individual client -- one-to-one marketing! News Another great web tool is the ability to get the latest, breaking news on just about any imaginable topic -- just as long as you check the source. One excellent news source for meeting professionals is Adam's MeetingsNet (www.meetingsnet.com). This content-rich site has numerous features. Clicking on the "News" button will give you, on average, six new news stories each business day. Also, the "Archives" section contains thousands of articles and is fully searchable back through 1996. If you are wondering what's been written on nearly any meeting industry topic -- this is an excellent start. The Web is giving meeting planners tools to do their job faster, better and cheaper. The ones mentioned hear are just a few and many more just beyond the next click. If you find this article helpful, please let me know by signing the Guest Book in the Contact Corbin Section.. |
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