Voracious acquisition strategy sees Cvent buck industry trends

Major provider of meeting management, site selection and web survey software for over 35,000 users across the globe, Cvent, experienced significant growth of its employee base in 2009, with 102 net new employees joining the company.

Cvent’s staff grew more than 25% in 2009 to over 500 employees worldwide. This growth comes as a result of the company acquiring more than 3,500 new business contracts last year across its four divisions, including major client acquisitions such as The Nielsen Company, Hyatt, Bayer Healthcare, JetBlue Airlines, Marriott Hotels and Wells Fargo.

In addition to its record-setting personnel growth, Cvent also announced a 33% year-over-year sales increase in 2009, and also celebrated its 10-year anniversary last year.

The majority of the new employees joined the Cvent Product Development team, where more than 100 people are dedicated to building and enhancing the company’s software suite. To date, Cvent has invested more than $25 million in research and development to build its Event Management, Web Surveys, Supplier Network, and Strategic Meetings Management toolsets.

Another major growth area for Cvent was in its Client Services department, which now boasts almost 100 employees.

“While most companies, particularly in the meetings and hospitality industry, were forced to cut back in 2009, Cvent experienced substantial growth within our organisation and client base. Our success can be attributed to the continued support of our existing clients and to the many new customers that adopted Cvent’s software solutions,” said Thomas Kramer, Cvent’s chief financial officer.

“As the market continues to improve in 2010, we’re going to be even more bullish with our hiring efforts. Cvent plans to hire 130 new employees in 2010, and in order to accommodate this and future growth, we are almost doubling our office capacity within the next 120 days. Thankfully, our retention rate among employees remains over 90% due to the strong company culture we’ve established.”