Six months ago, a friend of mine who works at a not-for profit, asked me to help her manage ground transportation logistics for an upcoming meeting. She was expecting less than 50 people. I recognize manifest management is one of the most time-consuming functions for a meeting planner, so I said yes. However, I did not realize how much time it truly was going to take until I was way deep into the project. Collecting flight schedules, trying to pair rides to minimize cost and managing flight changes takes constant communication with participants. I had created a chart on an Excel spreadsheet to try to keep all information in one place. Needless to say, my email inbox grew at a fast pace.
Last month, ironically, i-Meet asked me if I knew about their partner, miMeetings. I never heard of this company before and was not familiar with their undertaking aside from serving transportation needs in the meeting industry. I started doing research on the company. miMeetings does not have a large presence on the web yet. They filed a trademark registration in May 2017, and here is how miMeetings describe themselves on their LinkedIn page:
“miMeetings, is the innovative ground transportation platform that develops, markets and operates an advanced intelligent enterprise solution for meeting, conferences and events. Through our patented technology and full-suite of pre-meeting, real-time and post-meeting services, meeting professionals can plan, analyze, and optimize manifests for groups and events. The miMeetings solution includes prioritized best pricing from qualified partnering vendors, automated RFP, manifest upload reconciliation to augment groupings, bulk flight checking of all flights, and real-time passenger status.”
miMeetings has a patented ground transportation management software that verify manifests against the FAA database and produces a report flagging errors that might cause additional cost to a meeting budget and has another patent that does smart grouping, where planners can run manifest scenarios in a few seconds and provides an optimized vehicle utilization saving money on ground transportation.
I wish I would have known about miMeetings before I started with my friend’s project. I can see how it would have saved time and cut costs on transportation for her meeting.
You can check their transportation meeting solutions on their website at https://mimeetings.com and schedule a demo.
