Meeting News - September 21, 2009 - (Page 6)

Newsmaker StarCite Gains In Fighting Against Meetings Slump Gregory Dukat, CEO of meetings technology company StarCite, spoke last month to MeetingNews editor Michael B. Baker about strategy and demand. MeetingNews: Are we past the worst of the AIG effect? recently a record quarter relative to customers expanding the use of our application throughout their environment. It’s really beginning to crystallize to where it’s no longer a nice thing to have, but a necessary thing to control. source that meeting and really enable the savings with better planning and a better process. MN: How are StarCite’s acquisition and partnership integrations progressing? Dukat: We have worked very diligently over the last year in bringing the technology platforms together. Completing the transaction process was the goal for this past year.We’re in the 98th or 99th percentile of completion on this. There were some growing pains in bringing multiple applications and platforms together, but we’re very proud to say we’ve done a great job with our development team and customers to bring everyone together on a consistent platform. Our work there is nearly complete, and we’ve done a lot of work to improve the performance of the platform and make enhancements. Now the focus is on the innovation and the product, things like telepresence and integration to other key systems in a customer’s enterprise. The technology enables some of the partnerships we have. We have long-standing partnerships with American Express, Carlson, Maritz and many others, but we’re looking at some new partnerships. MN: Will you look at more acquisitions? Dukat: Absolutely. We’re not out to continue to acquire just for the sake of acquiring, but we do think there are some things in our future that will be very appealing for us to broaden our platform, make it a robust offering and open new market segment doors. MN: What does 2010 hold for meetings? Dukat: On the customer meetings side, it will be slower to rebound on the quantity of meetings and attendees. It’ll be slightly up from where it is today, which is clearly lower than it was a year ago. People will be careful about adding meetings back to where they were before all the challenges really hit. We’ll continue to be quite successful, even though those numbers will be down a bit. People are looking for someone to be the expert and answer the questions, and through what we offer and the partnerships we have, we couldn’t be in a better place right now to be that company. H www.meetingnews.com Gregory Dukat: Yes, our percepMN: You’re benefiting even tion of that would be that peothough meetings are down? ple can meet again, and they are beginning to meet again. Dukat: Executives in a lot of However, there’s a much cases already have tackled some greater level of comfort doing of the other spend categories, that where there’s an underwhether it’s direct or indirect standing of control, visibility spend, and meetings are one of and savings. Companies know the last areas that haven’t been StarCite CEO Gregory Dukat they have to have meetings. controlled in any way, shape or Whether it’s a training event for form. It’s a positive for us, their sales team or an event for prospective cus- because there’s greater visibility. tomers, they have to have those to be a successful company. They deﬁnitely want to put controls in MN: Will this shift endure when the economy place so they can get back to business and stop rebounds? worrying about this. Even if it’s questioned, they know they’ll have their ducks in a row. Dukat: We’ve crossed the chasm on that. Now, it’s on the radar screen of these executives, MN: How has meetings management changed whether they’re in finance or procurement. There are some other issues that are hitting in this economy? from a compliance standpoint. If you look at the Dukat: Controlling meetings sounds like an easy financial marketplace, or the pharmaceutical thing, but organizations have been exposed par- and healthcare industry, you’ll see that there are tially through the media trying to hype people new laws coming into place, like the sunshine having meetings. Relative to the economy, our cus- laws that require visibility into spend and martomers are coming to us and saying they want keting to doctors. These have helped us tremensomeone to take the leadership role and be the dously. Culturally, we’ve changed. Now we’re expert in this category. The expertise is centered on seeing the same types of things beginning to the technology, but also best practices, compliance, happen in Asia and Europe, the Middle East and Africa, maybe a little behind the United States, visibility, reporting and analytics. A year ago, when I ﬁrst came on board, it was but not that far. more of a situation where it was push-oriented, by which I mean that travel managers or someone MN: How will the increasing emphasis on heading procurement was pushing the organiza- remote conferencing affect business? tion to think about these things. Now, we’re seeing the executives going back to those people and say- Dukat: We see videoconferencing as just another ing they need to cover these bases. It’s moved from alternative to a live meeting, and we’re working on someone lower in the organization trying to push technologies and are in discussions with several up to what I’d call pull, where executives are calling partners that would enable that. We want to allow for greater compliance, visibility and control. our customers to better analyze attendees—who It’s led to us to have, in the last three quarters, should be there in person and who should attend two record quarters for our company and most via another medium—and help them plan and 6 MeetingNews September 21, 2009 http://www.meetingnews.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - September 21, 2009

Meeting News - September 21, 2009

Contents
Pricing Forecast
Newsmaker
Meetings Spotlight
Event Profile

Meeting News - September 21, 2009

Meeting News - September 21, 2009 -

Meeting News - September 21, 2009

(Page Cover1)
Meeting News - September 21, 2009 -

Meeting News - September 21, 2009