Meetings industry leaders Maritz Travel Company and Freeman have signed an agreement to collaborate on and expand the services provided to their clients, they announced yesterday. According to the companies, they are "combining their expertise to help clients achieve more effective results from meeting and event investments that drive business performance.""Maritz continually adapts its services to meet the changing needs of its customers," Maritz Travel President and CEO Christine Duffy said in a statement. "Given current market conditions, we believe alliances with leading organizations like Freeman provide us the opportunity to integrate our solutions to provide more turnkey offerings and higher value to customers."Under the terms of its new partnership, Maritz has selected Freeman as its preferred supplier of audio/visual services and ProActive, a division of Freeman, as its preferred supplier of multimedia production and creative services. Freeman, meanwhile, is expanding its virtual meeting services and has introduced Maritz solutions—Maritz LIVE and Meetings Effectiveness—in order to enhance its offerings."Our goal with this alliance is to offer an even broader line of services to our clients and do it more efficiently, which is particularly valuable as we help our customers' increase the ROI in their event spend," Freeman Vice Chair Carrie Freeman Parsons said in a statement. "Maritz is an outstanding company and we share many of the same values, including a long history of innovation and commitment to excellence. They are perfectly suited to help our clients in the association and exhibitor space."