Groupize’s new chief AI officer says the meetings management platform is “doubling down” on its AI-native strategy as “most RFPs now want an AI solution to replace the incumbents”.
Sandeep Aramalla has been named chief AI officer at meetings platform Groupize
Sandeep Aramalla, who was previously the company’s enterprise architect, will lead the company’s AI strategy in the new role. A key focus will be the evolution of Groupize’s aime platform, which uses AI agents to support venue sourcing, planning, approvals, registration, logistics and reporting.
Charles de Gaspé Beaubien, founder and chief commercial officer, said “[Sandeep] helped rebuild our technology as an agentic system, so he knows exactly what aime can do today and where it needs to go next.”
Speaking to BTN Europe, de Gaspé Beaubien said of the change of corporates’ focus, “Six to nine months ago, most corporations weren't ready to adopt any AI. Now we are seeing an influx of our classic customers moving to the new aime platform.”
He added, “I think the industry is just learning what agents are. The first AI products were prompt-based and failed to deliver on the potential of what this technology can actually do. They are starting to see the real value in efficiencies and company-wide adoption.”
Charles de Gaspe Beaubien is Groupize's founder and chief commercial officer
At August’s Global Business Travel Association convention in Chicago, Groupize announced a closer integration with Concur which enables the online booking tool’s Meeting Planning Agent to bring in room block proposals through a handshake with Groupize’s platform.
de Gaspé Beaubien said the company was currently integrating two more OBTs.
“Integrating meetings with transient travel is now a focus for travel managers,” he said.
The company also recently announced a partnership with Thrust Carbon.
“With Thrust Carbon, aime can answer sustainability questions with credible emissions data for different transport and accommodation choices. In turn, Thrust Carbon’s EngageAI gets real-time event, itinerary and attendee data from us to personalise its guidance. That’s genuine agent-to-agent collaboration, with real data flowing in both directions,” said Aramalla.
Further integrations are on the roadmap.
“We’ll focus on two kinds of integration,” Aramalla added. “The first is the enterprise systems our clients already run on, so aime fits into existing workflows. The second is specialist data partners whose expertise makes our agents’ answers more accurate and trustworthy. Areas like venue and supplier networks, payments and reconciliation, and traveller safety and duty of care are natural next steps.”
Aramalla says corporates are now asking for specialist agents that can turn a simple request into a structured brief and send it down the right path instantly. There is also demand for sourcing and negotiation agents like aime Smartbids, which find venues, compare proposals and negotiate on the client’s behalf.
“In regulated industries like life sciences, compliance agents are often the very first ask, because the cost of getting it wrong is so high,” he said.
Security will be a big focus under Aramalla and the company has been working on US Government FedRAMP accreditation.
de Gaspé Beaubien said, “We had to build security infrastructure that the auditors said it was the best implementation they have ever seen. There is a misconception that AI platforms are more risky. It is 100 percent the opposite. In this new cybersecurity world, AI platforms are the only ones that can keep up with AI attacks and the daily changes required to stay out of the news. Legacy products will be the victims.”
Aramalla says there will be three priorities under him: interoperability, trust and governance and measurable outcomes.
On this last point, he told BTN Europe, “AI has to prove its value in terms clients care about: savings on meeting spend, time given back to planners and assistants, better policy compliance, and full visibility into a meetings programme that has historically been fragmented and hard to track.”
Aramalla has nearly 20 years of experience building customer-facing platforms, including at financial services firms CreditSights and JD Power.