Attendee names, duplicate names, flights, arrivals, departures, VIPs, costs, vehicle type, terminals…. all fragments of meeting planners' ground transportation headaches. Bring on the Excedrin headache reliever and the Calgon Take Me Away spa products. Planning ground transportation with unruly manifests is one of the top five meeting planners' frustrating tasks.
Wizardry – not usually a term used in meeting planning but the brilliance of a new, simple meeting planner tool has just exceeded my expectations (not easy to do!) and allows meeting planners to be ground transportation geniuses. Moreover, when a President of a company provides his testimonial on the benefits of his organization's use of this technology tool, we need to take notice.
Manifest Optimization Solutions (MOS) by Event Ground Global saves meeting planners 60%-80% of their manifest time and up to 30% of ground transportation costs by automating and validating the data so that meeting planners can make quick, intelligent decisions.
When I saw how MOS works, I immediately thought of how this tool can turn the meeting planner into the meeting consultant by providing immediate intelligence to their meeting requesters/clients. MOS makes the meeting planner look like the meeting hero. How much is it? For a limited time, MOS is complimentary for companies that sign up.
MOS, a web-based solution for meeting planners, works simply as it:
- Provides city ground transportation cost comparisons;
- Imports attendee data information;
- Identifies data discrepancies (e.g. highlights flight discrepancies and duplicate names) and validates flight data;
- Provides vehicle options and costs, automatically, within seconds based on your data and using your preferred suppliers and pricing (e.g. 200 attendees are grouped into the most cost efficient vehicles within seconds – and may be modified individual by individual or however you deem necessary); and
- Allows for custom reporting and various fields.
A partnership with Reardan integrates MOS with GGA and sends/integrates your data directly into your ground transportation provider's reservation system.
Just like my iPad streamlines my technology usage, MOS simplifies and automates ground transportation – it just works and I don't see any reason not to use it.
Paul Mears, President of Hello USA, said:
“The MOS platform has saved us a tremendous amount of time and money with manifest management.
Our program managers no longer have to spend hours cleaning excel spreadsheets, double checking flights and assigning vehicles.
The ground transportation process is now much faster and simpler and, manual mistakes have now been minimized.”
- Paul Mears, President, Hello USA
Ground transportation is a 4.5B business based on estimates by the US Travel Association. It may represent 3-5% of your meeting expenses, but often takes 20% or more of your time to manage. Why not use an automated, time-saving, cost-reducing tool to mastermind your ground transportation?
Event Ground Global will be hosting a free webinar on their tool on Thursday, June 28 at 1:00 p.m. EDT.
Register to join at: http://tinyurl.com/6smdfse
Learn more about Event Ground Global at their website: http://www.eventgroundglobal.com/
(Note that Debi is vendor agnostic and has no financial interest in MOS)
A BIG THANK YOU to all of the meetings and travel leaders who continue to support me through the T&E blog, LinkedIn groups, client engagements and most important, your friendship.
Thank you for visiting the T&E Plus Blog on expense management, travel management, business meetings, events, incentives, strategic meetings management, entertainment, virtual meetings, tickets, hotels, airlines, ground transportation plus more...
Debi Scholar, GLP, CMM, CMP, SSGB, CTE, CTT
• Author, Strategic Meetings Management: The Strategy Quick Reference Guide (2011)
• Co-Author, Strategic Meetings Management Handbook (2011)
• Meetings Management Mover and Shaker as selected by Corporate and Incentive Travel Magazine (2010)
• Top 20 Changemaker who influenced the meetings management industry by Corporate Meetings and Incentives (2008)
• Best Meeting Practitioner as selected by Business Travel News (2007)
*Debi is proud to be a regular contributor to Business Travel Executive Magazine.
*Debi is proud to be one of only seven 2011 Editorial Board members for Hotel Business Review at http://www.hotelexecutive.com/ for Conferences & Meetings.
*Debi created two LinkedIn groups (GBTA SMM and T&E Plus) that now claim over 2,000 worldwide members combined.
Visit me at one of my upcoming speaking engagements; Topics vary per conference
Some sessions include components of SMM Bootcamp© and/or SMM Challenge©
July 21 – GBTA Boston
July 23 – GBTA Boston
August 23- EMC Webinar
September 14 – PCMA
September 20 – BTN Webinar
October 25 - EMC Webinar
December 2 - EMC Webinar