Bizly Looks to AI, Biz Model Innovation for Small Mtg. Future

Meetings technology provider Bizly recently became the first small meeting planning app listed in meetings technology giant Cvent’s App Marketplace. Bizly now is looking to AI for the company’s next frontier. Founder and CEO Ron Shah spoke with BTN’s Elizabeth West and Angelique Platas about the company’s next steps, business model, technology innovations and event trends. Edited excerpts follow.

BTN: Bizly recently announced participation in 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 acquisition by Blackstone, they are a giant in the space. Ever since we started in the enterprise space, all our customers had Bizly and Cvent. [Bizly] 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.

As of today’s date, we are the first and only third-party small meetings solution fully integrated into Cvent. I use “fully” a little lightly because right now I call it “bookends.” The front end is the meetings request form and the back end is the data. There’s lots of other touch points that we plan to build over time.

BTN: How are small meetings through Bizly different from larger meetings working through a more centralized process or platform?

Shah: Bizly launched on the idea, “Can we empower any person to be able to do the entire journey of building a meeting?” The biggest lesson in our first two years was that you can’t solve this problem 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.

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 with how distributed teams and workforces are [now]. So we really stuck to what we’re good at, which is helping individuals [build meetings]. 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. Then connecting the data 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: You rightly point out that cost will continue to be a factor for all meetings, including small meetings. How are companies leveraging Bizly to reduce costs—not just facilitate more small meetings.

Shah: Offices are running at 40 to 50 percent capacity. We see a big push to use these as venues, so people don’t book off site. Bizly was the first platform that allowed you to actually put office locations in the platform and use that office location as a venue. We did that pre-pandemic, and we have enhanced our capabilities. You can also leverage your preferred venue programs and preferred rates [through Bizly], which achieves about a 20 percent reduction in actual costs. There’s also indirect savings.

BTN: Like what?

Companies [often] staff a Cvent product with full-time employees—both internally and sometimes travel management companies they use for staffing. Bizly reduces that [for simpler meetings]. 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. We’re adding all those things to the mix right now to drive total overall spend reduction, both direct and indirect.

Support Plus will do commissions reclaim as well—and this is new. Many small meetings have room blocks, and those rooms are commissionable. There’s a way to put [a program] together that is cost-neutral. Everything is covered through commissions recovery. That’s the total solution. [Editor’s note: Shah is referring to Bizly platform and program administration costs, when he refers to “cost-neutral” programs, not the cost of the meetings themselves.]

There’s a business model innovation [when] putting all the pieces together [to] help clients reduce cost: use onsite [office] venues, use preferred venues, reduce full-time employees, and get commissions back. Those are the four pillars that drive 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 and help customers with the pain they’re facing around staff.

BTN: In terms of that commission-funded business model, is that still viable given the commissions reductions trends on the hotel side?

Shah: For now, it is. Hotels are still offering something. 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.

BTN: How will Bizly invest in the product or business for the remainder of the year?

Shah: There are a few big 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. 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.

We are also going to be the first platform in the market to have a full AI capability. You’ll be able to use natural language to say, “Hey, I want to do a meeting for 30 people in Denver and I want to do workshops during the day, then we want to have a fun lunch. We want to kind of wrap up and then we want to do a dinner and then we need 10 guest rooms.” You should just be able to write that in natural language and Bizly will generate the registration, the agenda planning and shortlist the venues to use. That’s going to be the big thing we launch this year.

Elizabeth West & Angelique Platas www.businesstravelnews.com