BTN: Bizly recently announced it will be integrating within the Cvent marketplace. What was the process there? Is that a new strategy, or has it been in the works for a while?

Ron Shah: We all recognize, especially with Cvent’s [announced] acquisition by Blackstone, they are a giant in the space. Ever since we started in the enterprise space, all of our customers had Bizly and Cvent. We kind of rigged a way to [integrate] even before this announcement. People were using Cvent and then punch out to Bizly, and we were kind of connecting the data. But when the opportunity arose to make it official and make it even easier and more seamless—it was an opportunity we could not give up. 

Cvent has their own simple small meeting solution, but I think most customers had found that was not receiving as much attention and just wasn’t developed as much. So we just felt like this might be a great opportunity to work together.

BTN: Tell us a little bit more about the dichotomy between larger meetings and centralized planning going through the event tool. What are those different needs?

Shah: After the pandemic, we entered a new world. The idea that Bizly launched on was, can we empower any person to be able to do the entire journey of building a meeting? The biggest lesson we had in our first two years was that you can’t solve this problem with sourcing venues alone. You have to have some way of doing registration, understanding the attendees, their needs, if they are coming virtually or in person. … So we learned early on that you had to do lightweight attendee management. 

What I think has changed is that, even before the pandemic, small and simple meetings were considered to be 50 to 60 percent of overall volume. That number has increased a lot, especially with how distributed teams and workforces are. So we really stuck to what we’re good at, which is helping individuals do this. Now you have your program manager saying, ‘I need to do central decentralization, I need a way to let all these people do their thing, but I still want to see the data.’ 

Our biggest lesson this year is about how enterprise managers are looking to optimize their entire worldview. It’s not just about what’s the best product. There’s pressure to reduce costs [and] to consolidate. The lesson is, [driving] a total solution that reduces costs for programs—how do you streamline it? That’s why the connectivity makes sense because now you can have this home base, which could be your [Cvent meeting request] form and then you can punch out to a Bizly. And then because the data all connects together, you have the best of both worlds. You have a centralized program, centralized visibility and then decentralized usage and capabilities. That’s the hybrid world we’re creating.

BTN: With the recent push to return employees to the office, do you think these internal meetings we saw flourish are going to be curbed?

Shah: There’s direct and indirect cost. We were the first platform [to market] that allowed you to actually put your office locations in the platform and use that office location as a venue. We did that pre-pandemic, and we have enhanced our capabilities. There is a big push to use offices that are not being used as venues so people don’t book off-site. That’s one area of direct cost avoidance. 

The second is the centralization of the program and connecting the dots. You can leverage your preferred venue programs and preferred rates. So there’s 20 percent-ish reduction in actual costs through this kind of program. So those are the areas of direct savings. There’s also indirect savings. We’re finding the way people have to staff a Cvent product is to get [full-time employees] to support it. They have FTE both internally and sometimes [travel management companies] that they use for staffing. Through a Bizly solution you can actually reduce that. We have an optional offering, Support Plus, that we’ll do some of that human touchpoint, such as contract review and negotiation, routing for signature, and making sure the right payment is being applied and getting that final spend. … All of those are things we’re adding to the mix right now to drive a total overall reduction in spend through both direct and indirect. 

The last piece of that is something new. Part of Support Plus is going to be commissions reclaim as well. A lot of these small meetings have room blocks attached to them, and those rooms are commissionable. Customers are often surprised to learn that a lot of the things they’re doing, there’s commissions available. So even if they’re not a [ARC-accredited Corporate Travel Department] and they have a third party do it, there’s a way to put this together and become cost-neutral. We have customers that are completely cost-neutral on their entire program. Everything is covered through commissions recovery. That’s the total solution. 

We’ve done a lot of innovation on the product, but there’s a business model innovation [about] actually putting all the pieces together and driving overall cost reduction. That’s where I think we’re extremely unique and have a deep insight that [led us to] put all the pieces together and help people reduce cost. Using on-site venues, using preferred venues, cutting down on FTE requirements and then getting the commissions back: Those are the four pillars that drive the cost reduction.

BTN: Did you go this direction of Support Plus because of the labor shortage? Did you see a void that you could fill with the service that you already had and build on top of it? 

Shah: Prior to us having a fully developed product, we actually started with a full concierge [offering]. Then we built self-service capabilities and stopped offering it. More recently, people are saying there’s a labor shortage, so that led us to actually bring back the concierge [Support Plus] and help customers with the pain they’re facing around staff.

BTN: In terms of that sort of commission-founded business model, is that still viable?

Shah: For now, it is. Hotels are still offering something. I think they they’ve made a big attempt with Groups360 frankly to say there’s no commissions. They’ve tried to make that push, and I don’t know if they’ve been successful. I think they are still trying to figure that out. And while the game is still being played with commissions, there’s a huge ecosystem of companies that live on that model. So we are going to play with the ecosystem as it exists today. I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. It may at some point. But I think at that point we’ll also have AI that helps you price it properly. 

BTN: Can you elaborate on Bizly’s focus and investments for the year? 

Shah: There are a few big in investments and optimizations for this year. We became a lot more global in our scope. Now we have [Europe, the Middle East, and Africa] and Asia-Pacific, it’s completely a global platform. The we also added language translations for eight languages—mostly the European languages, but we’ve had multiple clients expand to EMEA and other regions as well. 

The other part of our big story for this year is going to be around how we connect, like business model innovation, connecting the dots to reduce the cost and actually push the ball forward as an innovator. We are also going to be the first platform in the market to have a full AI capability. That’s coming out hopefully this quarter.

BTN: Have you seen any other trends among your corporate clients?

Shah: I would say that on-site meetings are a big piece of what customers have been asking for. The bar has gone up. I think it’s software. We’re all using ChatGPT. We see the power of it. Now we want to have just an incredibly easy experience for users. We’ve always been at the cutting edge of that. A lot of customers will say, ‘Look, I don’t care as much about cost. I just want the best user experience.’ Create a great employee experience, I think that’s what a lot of customers have asked for. But then on top of that, there is pressure on business model. So that’s why we’ve been innovating on the business model side.

The dollars and cents of the ROI model, No. 1 is visibility. Small and simple meetings, 60 to 70 percent of that is rogue activity. People are just doing their own thing. Then it’s leveraging preferred venue programs, even if you only have a business transient program, try to leverage it and get those rates applied so you can get 20 percent savings on that. You can get 30 percent cost avoidance on FTE staffing.