Groupize introduces the “Expert Assist Console” to empower travelers to book meetings on their own, and when necessary or desired, for their meeting planner to review and add value.
BOSTON, MA – Groupize is continuing our efforts to move the industry forward from the static 10-10-10 model. The award-winning technology company announced the launch of an innovative new tool, Expert Assist, which enables a highly simplified workflow for meeting owners to collaborate with their existing professional planning services team on the sourcing and execution of simple meetings. This next generation of collaboration and support is designed to add value to the meetings process by increasing online adoption and visibility while mitigating risk and lost opportunities to save money and enrich the overall meeting experience.
Expert Assist allows the corporation to maximize their existing professional meetings resources who can efficiently offer additional support to their meeting owners such as negotiating, contracting, comparing, supply chain optimization, approvals, budgets, tracking savings, reconciliation, registration sites and rooming list management, all in the same platform and at a click of a button.
Groupize technology allows all travelers to become an event owner with the peace of mind of professional oversight. The traveler logs on and initiates the process by researching and ultimately selecting the properties that meet their criteria. Based on the configuration of the Groupize rules engine, the bid is routed to the Expert Assist Console allowing the meeting team (internal or third party) to intercept the request, evaluate it, and add their experience and knowledge before forwarding it to all hotels.
“In 2018, meeting owners do not want to waste 10 minutes filling out a Meeting Request Form just to get the process started,” explains Charles de Gaspe Beaubien, CEO of Groupize. “Our customers challenged us to create an improved workflow for the industry that meeting owners could easily adopt while leveraging existing professional planning resources when meeting complexity requires. If we’re successful, Groupize will do to the Meeting Request Form what Concur did to the Air Request Form.”
By launching Expert Assist, corporations can now capture 60%-80% of their rogue meetings cost-effectively without adding any additional resources. Benefits include efficient turnaround times calculated in minutes not days, read-only and collaborator roles, a user experience that engages the event owner in the decision-making process and the proper amount of visibility and controls to deploy company-wide meetings programs strategically.
The Groupize end-to-end platform empowers a corporation to define up to three workflows for a Simple Meeting vs. a Complex Meeting. The rules engine combines event type parameters with size parameters such as budget, number of attendees, and number of sleeping rooms. This allows a corporation to pre-determine whether the event owner can be in a self-service mode and work directly with the suppliers, or enable the new Expert Assist mode where they require some support at defined moments or be directed to the existing Meeting Request Form (MRF) for the full-service process from internal or 3rd party planners.
“Size doesn’t ultimately dictate the workflow,” adds de Gaspe Beaubien. “For example, an extended stay of 8 sleeping rooms can be done in real time by a project manager, a training of 250 people can be handled online by the training department working directly with the hotels, while a customer facing meeting of 50 people might be routed to include Expert Assist support in sourcing and registration set-up. A board meeting, although small, could be routed to a meeting request form for full service and white glove support.”
Groupize is the only easy to use, end-to-end platform for simple meetings which includes a direct booking engine for sleeping rooms, ebids for meetings and extended stays, attendee registration, housing management, instant blocks for projects and engagements, air management, GDS integration, Duty of Care and Concur integrations. The company works with a growing list of Fortune 500 brands and is licensed by 50 TMCs and Travel Agencies to better support Simple Meetings and is on track to work with 75 agencies by year end.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
