The pursuit of small meetings management historically has
cooled in the face of technical constraints. Access to live meetings inventory
is a challenge, as has connecting, or separating, travel costs, venue,
equipment and food and beverage costs. Formal meetings management technologies
like Cvent and Etouches seem like overkill for small, ad hoc meetings. Yet
allowing multitudes of meetings to go unmanaged is not the answer. Small
meetings need a lighter-weight, more intuitive solution with enough complexity
under the hood to be effective. Like Groupize.
"We've built a lot of technology," said CEO
Charles de Gaspe Beaubien. Yet the Groupize interface is deceptively simple.
There are certain things it can't do, such as book live meeting space
inventory, but plenty of things it can do. It serves content via the global
distribution system with corporate preferred rates. The tool allows organizers
instantly to book via the GDS as many as nine sleeping rooms for group or project
travel. If meeting space is needed, Groupize reverts to a simplified
email-based sourcing process that logs all communications in the tool.
There are other small meetings tools in the
market, but de Gaspe Beaubien has broken from the pack not only with good
technology but also via a tight integration with Concur Travel that pulls
profile information into Groupize and sends information back to Concur for
reporting. It also facilitates an easy pass from registration to travel booking
and tracks the details. "We built Groupize to integrate with Concur,"
he told BTN in February, because he knew the Concur Meetings technology would
be pulled out of the market in January 2018. That gave Groupize a pipeline to
direct corporate customers who need a logical solution. De Gaspe Beaubien also
has forged relationships with more than two dozen travel management companies,
and Groupize serves as a white-label solution for several that resell the
product under their own names.