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Cvent of McLean, Virginia USA recently won a Stevie Award for Management Team of the Year in The 2010 American Business Awards. Here we look at how the company’s management has turned the experience of tough times in the '90s into an opportunity during current times.
 2009 was a milestone year for online event-registration company Cvent. Despite the worst economy in 80 years and a paralyzed meetings industry, Cvent experienced its most profitable year, celebrated its 10th anniversary, added staff, and increased sales revenue by 33% over 2008 (the previous best year on record).
Cvent has been no stranger to tough times. In 1999, when the company was founded, Cvent raised $17m in venture capital and rapidly expanded from 8 to 125 employees. The media buzzed with over 100 articles about the company in national publications like Forbes magazine and USA Today. It seemed as if nothing could stop the company’s momentum … except the dot-com meltdown.
Within months, Cvent had dwindled to just 27 employees, and its funds were dissipated. But Reggie Aggarwal, Cvent’s CEO and Founder, together with the Cvent management team, buckled down and fought hard for the company’s survival.
It appears they achieved this, because the company successfully emerged from the downturn and has been watching its competition in the rearview mirror for the past nine years. Cvent has been profitable for thirty consecutive quarters, continuously surpassing its own goals, and growing the company 30-50% each year. Today, Cvent boasts a global workforce of 650 employees, five product lines, and more than 80,000 users of its software products in 34 countries.
A Cohesive Management Team
One of the most important factors behind this success has been that eleven of the twelve senior managers at Cvent have been with the company since its inception—quite a feat when less than 2% of Internet companies from the 1999 vintage retained their original management team. In spite of the challenges of the company’s early years, the Cvent management team has maintained a strong belief in their company and shares the same dream: to become the market leader in online event management and meeting site selection.
The cohesion of this group is evidenced by the synergies across departments and a collective commitment to customer service. For example, Co-Founder and EVP of Sales and Marketing, Chuck Ghoorah, and SVP of Client Services, Manjula Aggarwal, coordinate their teams so that for each new client the sales team signs, there is a dedicated relationship manager to ensure the client’s smooth adoption of Cvent’s software. The Client Service team in turn coordinates with Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, David Quattrone, to ensure that client recommendations for technology enhancements are incorporated into the product. This 360-degree feedback loop and its effective implementation have been integral to Cvent’s success.
Growth in Tough Times
At a time when most companies were cutting back, Cvent grew. In 2009, Cvent hired 102 new employees, growing the company’s employee base by 26%. Cvent also doubled its existing office space to make room for the new employees and prepare for further growth in 2010. (Cvent remains optimistic about its future growth, having recently acquired office space for more than 900 employees worldwide.)
While 2009 was challenging—event planners canceling meetings, companies cutting back on live events, unprecedented attrition rates across all industries—Cvent’s marketing team came up with innovative ways to maintain growth. The company hosted over 400 live product seminars worldwide to demonstrate the value of its software directly to meeting planners. How many companies have had lunch with 30,000 of their prospective customers?
Competitive Bids for Group Hotel Reservations
In early 2009, Cvent launched the Supplier Network, a free tool that enables event planners to easily compare bids from venues for their events. Essentially, it’s like Expedia for professional meeting planners, but instead of booking a “transient” hotel room, meeting planners use Cvent’s Supplier Network to search for and receive competitive bids for their group meetings and events.
In 2009, Cvent’s management team devoted time and resources to grow this network to over 100,000 event venues. In just one year, over 130,000 Requests for Proposals (RFP) were sent through the network to event venues around the globe, revolutionizing the way the hospitality industry handles group business. (RFP volume in the first quarter of 2010 has already surpassed all of 2009 combined.)
Since its launch, every major hotel chain—from major players like Marriott and Hilton to international brands like Accor and Taj—has established a marketing presence on the Cvent Supplier Network, and many of them have purchased seven-figure marketing packages. Cvent has trained more than140,000 hotel managers to utilize its software in order to respond to group business leads, and the company expects to generate over $1.5 billion in group business for suppliers by the end of 2010.
Every major event organization—including Meeting Planners International, the
American Marketing Association, and the International Special Events Society—has adopted Cvent’s software, with hundreds of thousands of members using the
software every month. Major organizations such as JetBlue, Prudential, and Hyatt also purchased Cvent’s software in 2009, helping to achieve record-setting
sales.
The Buzz is Back
Cvent has established itself as a total enterprise solution in the $100 billion meetings industry and anticipates sustained growth in the decade ahead. The company has already hired more than 130 employees in 2010. T he media are buzzing again, and not just with articles but also with awards. The company was recently listed among the best places to work in the DC area by Washingtonian Magazine and the Washington Business Journal; StartUpHire.com recognized Cvent as a Top 10 venture-backed company in DC; and Cvent’s CEO and Founder, Reggie Aggarwal, was named both Entrepreneur of the Year in the DC area by Ernst & Young and a Top Tech Titan by Washingtonian Magazine.
On winning a Stevie Award for Management Team of the Year, Cvent’s EVP of Sales and Marketing Chuck Ghoorah commented: "We know that strong leadership and collaboration are essential when it comes to delivering the very best technology and service for our customers, but our success over the years should also be attributed to our more than 650 dedicated employees who build quality technology and provide the top-notch service our customers have come to expect."
About Chuck Ghoorah
Chuck Ghoorah is Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Cvent. He is a meetings industry expert and has spoken at over a hundred conferences about event marketing and registration. Ghoorah has been with Cvent since inception. He has advised dozens of Fortune 500 organizations and large associations on strategic meeting planning and marketing. Prior to joining Cvent, Ghoorah was a corporate attorney with Hale and Dorr, where he specialized in venture capital financing and technology transactions. Prior to that, he was an Associate Director at the Advisory Board Company (NASDAQ:ABCO), where he gave numerous presentations to CEOs and senior executives as an Associate Director. He holds the distinction of becoming a national meeting speaker faster than anyone in that company's history. Ghoorah also worked as an attorney at Williams & Connolly, one of the top-rated litigation firms in the country.
Ghoorah's interest in event marketing started at Duke University, where he was elected class president three years in a row and was also selected as Special Events Chair for the Duke University Union. In these roles, he planned major indoor and outdoor events. He graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He also received his MA in political science from Duke University Graduate School and later earned his JD with honors from Duke University School of Law, where he w as an Articles Editor on the Duke Law Journal.
About Cvent
Founded in 1999, Cvent is the world's largest meetings-management technology company and has over 650 employees worldwide. Cvent offers web-based software with features including meeting site selection, online event registration, event management, e-mail marketing, and web surveys. Cvent helps over 80,000 users in 34 countries manage hundreds of thousands of events, surveys, and e-mail campaigns. Cvent has processed over $1 billion in online payments and has managed over 30 million event registrations and survey responses for its clients. For more information, please visit www.cvent.com. |
