Active Network’s MarketView 3.0 Helps Venues Cope with eRFP Volume

Technology can be both the bright spot and the bane of event-industry planners and suppliers.  One woman’s efficiency tool can be another woman’s nightmare scenario. Such is the conversation around using electronic RFPs. Planners love the efficiency of the tools, but some hotels struggle with the volume of inquiries. Active Network Business Solutions aims to correct that imbalance with the unveiling of Active MarketView 3.0.

Active MarketView is the supplier portal into the company’s solution set. The redesign enhances suppliers’ abilities to manage and respond to eRFPS, as well as update information about their specific properties. The last major upgrade of the platform, a holdover from Active’s acquisition of Starcite, was three years ago. The new release offers sellers a number of enhancements:

•    Intuitive, contemporary user interface with visually friendly summary of the request for proposal
•    Callout of the planner’s special instructions for quicker qualification and response from the seller
•    Responses consolidated on one page (vs. seven pages in the previous version)
•    Response tool linked to room specifications (data is pulled directly into the response)
•    Memory of planner’s previous inquiries (system pre-populates response with the known preferences of specific planners)

The end result—an average time savings of 60 to 70% for sellers—goes a long way toward mitigating the problems sellers experience from the barrage of electronic requests. “Sellers can allocate less resources and respond more quickly,” says Rick Binford, vice president, strategic marketplace development, at Active Network Business Solutions.

Active’s work on the volume issue will continue with next release of MarketView, scheduled for Q2 of 2014, Binford explains. “We want to enable the system to be intelligent based on the past behavior of the buyer. We will begin to provide more information to the seller around who the buyer is and how they behave in an online channel.”

Read the full media release here.