Cvent, the meetings-and-events company, has acquired SignUp4, the meeting planning software provider, for $22.4 million.
SignUp4, a 15-year old company based in Atlanta, offers event management tools for corporate meeting planners, travel planners, and event management agencies. Out of its several hundred (mostly US-based) customers, it claims many global 2000 enterprise clients.
It will become a subsidiary of Cvent Atlanta. It is expected to add $1.5 million in Cvent's revenue in 2015.
The move comes just months after the Virginia-based Cvent acquired hospitality marketing company Elite Meetings. That buy added to Cvent's roster of meeting planners and venue inventory and gave it access to a white-label group business sourcing solution.
It's also only been six months since it acquired hotel sales-intelligence software company Decision Street, whose tools help hoteliers manage group business with analytics tools.
Decision Street has a half-a-dozen customers in beta testing. It won't go live until late in the year or early next.
In early 2016, Cvent expects to deliver a suite that integrates acquired and internally developed technology.
Solid growth
Cvent aims to achieve a market dominance similar to what Concur has achieved for corporate travel expense management. It aims to offer MICE planners solutions for every step of the process, from picking a venue to building mobile applications that attendees will use.
Cvent is forecasting its 2015 sales to total between $181 million and $183 million. Its revenues are rising at a 30% year-over-year rate. Since last summer it has been in the process of hiring about 500 workers.
The company released its first quarter earnings today. It generated $41.1 million in revenue and a net loss of $2.4 million in the first three months of 2015.
Hotel spaces currently account for about a third of Cvent's sales. Platform subscription revenue and hospitality cloud revenue are also key.
During a conference call with investors, CEO Reggie Aggarwal said:
"In the first quarter, we signed a largest enterprise deal in our history. With this multi-million dollar, multi-year deal, three of the big four accounting firms are now Cvent Enterprise Solution customers."
Aggarwal added that his company now has enterprise customers among three of the top five pharmaceutical companies of the world and more than half of the top 15 IT companies in the Fortune-500.
Expansion plans
One of its pillars for growth is to enhance its tools that serve, essentially, as hotel customer relationship management systems.
Additionally, Cvent wants to make its CrowdCompass mobile apps more sophisticated, such as enabling them to reveal which attendees are at a particular speech.
A survey it conducted jointly with the Event Marketing Institute and released earlier this month found that about half of 300 US associations, exhibition producers and corporations that have major event, meeting and tradeshow have not yet created an app.
In mid-June, the Cvent Connect Conference will bring 2,500 planners, executives, and hoteliers together in Las Vegas over five days -- 50% more attendees than last year.
The company expects the gathering will add a seven-figure amount to its bottom line in the second quarter.
Given its line of business, it may be a model event for the industry.
READ THIS NEXT: CEO Reggie Aggarwal on The Event Effect – a tech-led future for meetings, conferences and exhibitions