AVforPlanners Launches New Technology For Event Planners At IMEX Tradeshow Oct 8 in Las Vegas

Sept. 6, 2012 - PRLog -- “Power to the Planner” is the motto of technology advisor, AVforPlanners.  The startup company provides a  simple summary service that aims to demystify the audio visual quotes for meeting and event planners by offering an independent and unbiased comparison of their quotes, and advice on the best choices to support meetings.

“Planners are concerned about choosing the best technology vendor support and often don’t have the time or resources to analyze quotes”, says Mike McAllen, co-founder and President of AVforPlanners, “We give them an independent opinion from two experienced AV industry professionals and a summary of each quote from a technical perspective to help them make a confident choice to get the best match and value for their event needs.”  

AVforPlanners offers a free RFP Builder for anyone to build a more complete RFP on their own. When AVforPlanners is chosen to support a planner, they refine the RFP and send it out to a planner-specified list of companies for quotes.  Because each office, even within the same company can have varying levels of support, AVforPlanners is building a database that will ultimately include every office of every company that offers AV Services. Once the quotes are returned, two experienced evaluators analyze each one using a custom rating system developed over the past two years, and making comments to explain the pros and cons of the choices offered by each vendor.  At the end of the process, the planner receives a summary, detailed scoring and comments as well as the quotes.  The planner has the opportunity to call AVforPlanners to discuss the quotes, summary and recommendations, so they can make their final decision with confidence.  

“Our evaluation team is comprised of project managers, technical directors and producers who have evaluated AV quotes for their own events for years. Jon Trask, co-founder of AVforPlanners with decades of AV industry experience said, “We have two evaluators look over the quotes separately, so the planner gets two opinions.  They agree on a recommendation, merge the comments and scores, and we create a summary that the planner can rely on to make the final vendor selection.”  

AVforPlanners offers on site consultation to insure the vendor is meeting the standards of the quote.  After the event, performance is evaluated and added to the database for future reference.
The second phase will add ratings, a discussion area and a custom dashboard with past RFP’s, evaluations and messages from  evaluators.

AVforPlanners is a summary service that helps event organizers build RFP’s,  analyzes and recommends the best AV company to support the technical needs.  AVforPlanners works directly on behalf of the planner/organizer and only at their specific direction, accepting no fees, advertising or commission from any AV company or vendor. The planner receives an unbiased assessment of the quotes and a recommendation.   

“IMEX America is the premier meetings industry trade show in the US.IMEX America is America’s worldwide exhibition for incentive travel, meetings and events, backed by the experience and resources of the IMEX Group of exhibitions.The show runs the largest hosted buyer program ever held in North America with over 2,000 qualified buyers expected – the guarantee to exhibitors of genuine global buying power on the trade show floor the moment doors open.