Topic
11 facts from 1 episode, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2023
Cvent is a hospitality and event software company with about 30,000 customers and 5,500 employees, and has been part of the Blackstone portfolio since about 2023.
“Cvent is a leading SaaS hospitality and event software company, about 30,000 customers, 5, 500 employees, over 6,000 agents, and since about 2023, we're part of the Blackstone portfolio.”
Undated
Pradeep Mannakkara says Cvent's pilot and rollout of Glean bought the company about nine months of time by satisfying business users' needs for self-service.
“one of the things that we realized with Glean as we kinda did that pilot initially and then rolled it out was that actually bought us probably about 9 months of time, candidly speaking”
Undated
Pradeep Mannakkara estimates that only 15 to 20 percent of Cvent employees had taken AI training before the company mandated it.
“we haven't baselined our employees. We've maybe we have 15%, maybe I'm being generous, I'll say 20% that, for whatever reason, have taken training.”
Undated
Cvent's CEO attended the first session of the company's mandatory AI literacy training.
“Actually, our CEO was in the 1st session. Right? Just to kinda tell you how important this was.”
Undated
Cvent created an AI intake flow with its project management office and finance organization to evaluate AI ideas.
“we've also actually partnered with our PMO office and actually created an AI sort of flow, which thanks to our partnership with our finance organization”
Undated
Pradeep Mannakkara says new AI investments at Cvent must show some return on investment in partnership with the CFO organization.
“Now, partnership with the CFO organization, you've gotta have some sort of ROI if you're talking about some new investment”
Undated
Pradeep Mannakkara says Cvent's test-and-learn stage uses sandboxes that are not full production, do not use production data and are not integrated with the wider ecosystem.
“it doesn't mean full-blown production, it doesn't mean production data, it doesn't mean integrating it with the rest of our ecosystem, which has higher risk”
Undated
Pradeep Mannakkara says Ben Mayrides's security team and other teams at Cvent have created AI bots to perform part of the risk assessment.
“Ben's team, among other teams, have actually created AI bots to kinda do some of that risk assessment”
Undated
Pradeep Mannakkara says he is requiring a task-level catalog of what each agent does, which privacy, legal and security teams can query.
“a task level, activity level catalog of what is an agent doing, which the business or tech or whoever can essentially document”
Undated
Pradeep Mannakkara says Cvent's agent sprawl happened because the Glean platform enabled employees to create agents.
“the sprawl, so to speak, happened because of the Glean platform, and it enabled them.”
Undated
Pradeep Mannakkara says Cvent asked Glean for moderation capabilities and they arrived within roughly three to four months.
“we also worked with Glean, said, Hey, we need a way to moderate this stuff, cause it's going to be a hot mess. And I call it within a 3, 4 month time, the capability came in.”
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