Corporate Travel Manager

This week I was in Charlotte, N.C., attending ProcureCon Indirect, a conference for executives who manage procurement of indirect spend, such as travel and meetings services. It was a great opportunity to meet and network with these folks (About 100 procurement executives came from over 44 companies!) and learn what kinds of challenges they face in reaping system-wide efficiencies and savings from procurement.

I sat on a panel, "Driving Change from the Bottom Up Towards Strategic Indirect Sourcing," along with Brett Mauser, Director Sourcing Strategy & Best Practices for Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc., and Jason Kwan, CPO, VP Global Strategic Sourcing, Manpower, Inc. Judging from the
questions the audience posed to the three of us, I'm certain attendees picked up some great best practices for change management -- what works, what doesn't and the landmines to avoid along the way.

At ProcureCon, I did a lot of thinking about my days at Hewlett-Packard, where as a Global Category Manager for Corporate Card, Hotels and Meetings, I worked with HP’s management across the world negotiating travel contracts and creating and implementing worldwide purchasing and supplier strategies. One of the significant best practices I could share was to be aware of the myth of the "M" word, that is, "mandate." A lot of procurement folks get a false sense of security that once they get an executive mandate that directs employees to comply with a new strategic initiative, such as using preferred suppliers only or following a designated process, then everything has fallen into place.  All is and will be golden.

WRONG! In my experience, even with a mandate, people still operate like there is none. Even if you have CEO-, CPO- or CFO-level support for your project or initiative, it doesn’t guarantee that your offices overseas will comply -- and that's due to a lot of reasons. It might be due to laws or regulations in place in a particular country or region. Or, it could come down to a simple case of who's got more authority; a lot of times a country's general manager or highest level executive has more influence over employees there than a C-level
executive back in the U.S. -- home to headquarters.  Bottom line is, you can’t assume everyone will fall in line and comply without any resistance or change management plan in place.

In Germany, for example, nothing can move forward without approval of employee representative bodies called Works Councils, present in nearly all companies larger than 250 employees. So, even if you're armed with the "M" word from headquarters, you're still required to get local-level sponsorship and support.  Bottom line: there’s no magic and immediate panacea for change management -- with or without the "M" word supporting you.  You still have to do targeted communications regularly, as well as engage and enlist support from various countries and regions around the world.

Going beyond the issue of a mandate, remember that every company, based on their own corporate culture, has varying degrees of acceptance when it comes to change management.  The most successful makers of change pro-actively survey the landscape for points of pain, potential pushback areas, managers and others who may offer resistance. Successful change-makers seek critical feedback and information from stakeholders and internal customers, and then they carefully craft project plans, timelines, milestones and deliverables -- along with appropriate communication -- to ensure that all stakeholders on whatever level of authority are aware of both the benefits and progress of the project or change management process.

At the conference, someone asked if it was better to carry a stick or carrot to drive change.  Actually, the answer is both!  At HP, I always positioned senior management as the stick bearers, while my team and I positioned ourselves as carrot bearers -- actually it was
more donuts, bagels and Starbucks coffee (When meeting with stakeholders, food goes a long way towards establishing a collaborative environment and an atmosphere of trust.).

If more procurement professionals accepted the reality that they also have to be sales people in order to get optimum adoption and maximize change management, the process itself would be less laborious and definitely more successful.

To read about some other procurement best practices, click on this whitepaper link that covers integrating corporate travel, procurement and meetings management strategies.

When I think of Debi Scholar, two things come to mind. One is waiting for her in an airport-bound overheated black sedan in Dallas. But another, more significant thought is about her long, distinguished career in the business travel and meetings industry, and how much she's helped corporate and meetings managers build best practices.
 
Debi, who for 13 years was PricewaterhouseCoopers' (PwC) Lead for Travel and Entertainment Expenses strategic management and cost reduction, late last week sent me and others in the industry a note to say she's decided to go solo and open her own consulting practice.  Debi is someone that I have tremendous respect for and admiration. At PwC, Debi became a sought-after industry expert on both SMM and virtual meetings, and she emphasized the difference between SMM and meeting planning management (SMM takes an enterprise-wide approach to managing meetings). Many of you know her as an industry thought leader, and she was recently recognized by Corporate Meetings and Incentives magazine as one of the founding thought leaders for SMMP.  

Now, Debi's embarking on a new phase of her career, launching her own independent consulting practice, and I want to wish her the best of luck, not that she will need it, as she is so well respected in this industry and is known for her in-depth knowledge of the travel industry and suppliers.  She consults with Fortune 1000 companies on expense management categories such as airlines, hotels, meetings, ground transportation, corporate card programs, travel management companies, and entertainment assets such as country club memberships, venue suites, boxes and tickets. Debi is a pioneer in the face-to face and virtual meetings industry; she began using virtual tech a dozen years ago to connect distant participants. She was the first Meeting Director to have included virtual meetings under her direction back in 2002, and since, has become a leading expert in how to effectively drive virtual meeting adoption to reduce travel costs and complement or reduce face-to-face meetings.

There’s so many great things about Debi that I could share -- but I'm sure that many of you already know her well, as she's rarely out of the public spotlight. So what I will share is this: there’s no one with more passion about SMM than Debi.  She’s a master educator and presenter, and her depth of knowledge is tremendous.  I know she will do well in her new career endeavor because her name immediately comes to mind for people who seek the best consultation.  

Oh, and by the way, I won't leave you hanging about the overheated limo story. Here it is: I first met Debi while impatiently waiting for her in a sedan waiting to embark for Dallas Fort Worth airport.  We had both been on the speaker’s agenda for the annual Texas BTA Education Day, and I had presented earlier. The chapter organizers had efficiently booked Debi and I into a single sedan bound for the airport, and she was scheduled to leave directly after her panel.  Of course her panel ran late, and my airport security clearance time was diminishing minute by minute. The sedan was hot, and I was getting cranky and impatient. The driver finally turned on the air conditioning because I threatened to start stripping to stay cool and dry. Finally, we both saw a petite blond woman with her roll-aboard baggage exiting the hotel looking like she was running late and looking for a ride, and sure enough, it was Debi.  Long story short, she settled in the car; we introduced ourselves, became instant friends and managed to make our flights home.

Congratulations, Debi, and I look forward to seeing you in New York on March 15-16 at the upcoming NBTA Strategic Travel Symposium (I'll be moderating a session on Building a More Strategic Meetings Management Program, and Debi will participate, along with Tamara Gordon, formerly with Boston Scientific and United Healthcare, as well as Jami Stapelmann of Estee Lauder.  You’ll get a chance to hear some SMMP wisdom firsthand; so see you all there!).

More signs that meetings are on the mend!

A MeetingNews story about their recent survey of 220 meetings managers has put it this way: "The findings represent the first time in more than a year that the majority of group budgets are growing or holding steady, and support a growing sense that things are improving in the meetings business shared by hoteliers, industry associations, corporate travel buyers and meetings planners."

The survey found that, while 40% of respondents decreased meetings spending in the past six months, only 19% plan to do so in the next six. More than half expect meetings spending to stay flat in the coming half-year period.

I wasn’t surprised to read, too, that 17% had actually spent more on meetings in the last six months -- as I've been seeing a lot of anecdotal evidence of more activity at companies I talk to. Our bookings growth in 2009 certainly testifies to that.

And a separate survey of 26 corporate travel buyers at the recent NBTA Masters Program
found that, in 2010, 35% planned to spend more on meetings than last year.  

These and other encouraging statistics, such as some recent positive news by individual hotel companies, all point to an opportunity to get really focused on capturing all your meeting spend through a single solution for budgeting, sourcing, booking and other strategic tasks, such as attendee management.

Because if a turn-around is coming, there's no going back to unmanaged meetings. It's just not smart.

Out of a discouraging new story on Purchasing.com, comes a bit of good silver-lining-type news for 2010 -- in terms of business and meetings travel.

Purchasing magazine reports on a new USA Today-sponsored Gallup poll that says Americans aren't likely to travel more than they did in 2009 -- despite the "optimism being expressed by travel industry leaders and market analysts who have said the slowly improving economy would increase demand for airline tickets, rental cars and such services as hotel meetings and business-gathering catering."

The story made reference to NBTA's recent forecast that corporate travel would grow next year (69% of buyers thought corporate travel would grow), but also features a quote from American Express, which this fall had forecast rising business travel spend and more sophisticated meetings management as 2010 trends, now predicting that demand for most travel services likely won't return to pre-recession record levels anytime soon.

OK. So, despite the positive signs we may see around us, such as Wall Street's climbing numbers, it's still going be a struggle getting business travelers in the air and meeting rooms filled. But there's a silver lining. Featured in the story was PricewaterhouseCoopers' U.S. lodging forecast that American hotel occupancy levels fell in 2009 to 55.2%, versus a peak of 63.3% in 2006. And that metric will rise to just 55.8% in 2010.

Not such good news for hotels but better for organizations looking to negotiate favorably on sleeping and meeting rooms. As I've said a few times in this blog, if you're a meetings or procurement manager, with numbers like these, it's never too late to approach preferred vendors and work out more favorable deals. You'll both benefit -- and that's the best kind of arrangement.

If you're a meetings manager at a drug company or medical device manufacturer, it would be a smart move to get up to speed on just how the so-called Sunshine Act, a bill sponsored by Senators Charles Grassley (Republican-Iowa) and Herbert Kohl (Democrat-Wisconsin), is going to affect your strategic meetings management program...and what you should do to prepare if it passes and becomes the law. 

And let me forewarn you, there’s good and bad.

The Sunshine Act requires drug companies and medical device manufacturers to disclose quarterly to the Secretary of Health and Human Services details on anything of value given to physicians, such as payments, gifts, honoraria, or travel. It applies to companies with more than $100 million in annual revenue, and it aims to create a single, national system for the reporting of information (versus the current hodgepodge of individual state and industry regulations that now exist).  The bill would set up standard processes to report on the:

- Identity / location of individual
- Amount spent
- Dates of spend
- Type of expenditure (e.g. food, travel, gifts)

If it passes, the Sunshine Act will require a sea change in the way meetings managers at health care providers capture and collect the meetings-related spending that their companies need to comply with new federal HCP reporting rules. The bill will affect our industry in particular, as meetings and events are, by far, the largest type of health care provider-attributable spend.

Right now, many pharmaceutical and health care companies with their own HCP reporting solutions pay huge sums to third-parties to capture meeting spend information. Or, worse, companies are using old-fashioned, paper-driven processes to store and capture data. But clearly, if health-care providers don't wish to be overwhelmed by the demand for comprehensive meetings data aggregation, they'll have to adopt new, more efficient and automated ways to get the information they need to be in reporting compliance.  This is especially risky for companies who do not have a consolidated meetings/events program nor any technology solution to assist with all of the data capture and reporting.

My advice for meetings managers at health care providers is to:
- Work with your purchasing and compliance officers and others (for example, generals counsel and travel managers) to nail down the specifics of what the Sunshine Act will require from you;
- Investigate technology that will easily and efficiently capture the meeting spend data you need and integrate with your own HCP reporting solution; 
- Make sure that the HCP meetings reporting technology you're considering can also be configured to specific policies that your compliance organization sets around how regulations are interpreted and followed (because this can vary from company to company).

Also, it's very important to consider whether the automation you're considering will work smoothly with your existing, overall processes for HCP regulatory reporting. For example, StarCite's HCP reporting for meetings tracks all meetings spend on behalf of HCPs, utilizing the tool's Attendee Management, Spend Management and Business Intelligence Reporting modules. HCP meetings reporting integrates with your company's own HCP reporting solution.

In the very near future, watch for a new StarCite whitepaper on changes to come in HCP meetings-related reporting! Once it's published, I'll share a link to it here. 

As we begin 2010, I want to take a moment to mention some of the tremendous accomplishments of some very exceptional meetings managers during 2009.

Last year was truly the 'Year of the Meeting!' as our own business travel industry, the major media and the government all put a huge focus on corporate events and strategic meetings management. Some of it was positive, like the launch of NBTA's Strategic Meetings Management Certification (SMMC) program. And some of the attention was negative, like the misguided focus by the press and in government circles on corporate events as extravagant investments in recessionary times (when in fact it's been proven that meetings contribute enormously to a company's bottom line.

But aside from these major trends last year, were stories of some very hard-working and talented people who created or improved upon innovative strategic meetings management programs (SMMPs) at their companies. While I don't have large enough space in this format to mention them all, I want to draw your attention to some highlights:

Many were featured in Corporate Meetings & Incentives magazine's "20 Changemakers,” including:

- Louann Cashill, Meeting Services Manager at Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. (Louann significantly expanded centralized and automated hotel sourcing throughout her organization and worked pro-actively with hotels to re-book contracted space that planners had canceled for future meetings and re-negotiate credits.

- Lee Ann Adams Mikeman, VP, Conference Planning & Special Events, Science Applications International Corp. (Lee Ann and her team are streamlining the meetings payment process to track payments and reconciliations via their meetings technology system. She's also integrating her firm's online booking tool for air ticketing with the meetings technology platform.

- Other "Changemakers" who created outstanding meetings solutions for their firms included: Debbie Andersen, Senior Manager, Americas, Meetings & Conventions at Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics; Jeff Calmus, AVP, Conference & Event Planning at MetLife; Susan Lichtenstein, Director of Travel and Global Meeting Solutions at Cisco Systems Inc.; Donna Foppoli-Patrick, Manager, Group Meetings, Events, and Travel, Medtronic Inc.; Marybeth Roberts, Director of Global Meeting Management, Amgen; Tom Tolvé, Senior Manager, Meeting Operations, Novo Nordisk; Tracey Wilt, Manager, Global Travel & Meeting Management for Xerox; Alice Woychik, Director of Meeting Solutions at Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation.

Learn the full details of how these meetings executives enhanced their management programs by reading the full article in Corporate Meetings & Incentives!

And then there were others, singled out elsewhere, such as in Business Travel News, both for their outstanding contributions to their own companies and the industry at large, including:

- Debbie Dayton, Global Head of Travel Related Services at Deutsche Bank, who was named BTN's 2009 International Travel Manager of the Year. Debbie, along with VP and meetings program project leader Shawn Radek, made great strides last year consolidating and automating business and meetings travel processes worldwide. The bank, automated budgeting, requests for proposals  (RFPs), reporting, reconciliation and data modules. In just one improvement, Deutsche Bank's automated budgeting now projects the total cost of an event, including transportation spending -- before the meeting is approved. Further, the bank stays on top of things by pre-loading average negotiated hotel rates, airfares, F&B costs and other metrics biannually.

-  Cynthia Shumate, Executive Director of Global Travel and Meeting Services, Estee Lauder, who was featured in BTN's 2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report for creating a new SMMP. Cynthia's program now covers U.S. meetings -- about 12 large, annual gatherings of up to 350 attendees, plus thousands of smaller meetings for employee training and product launches. Expanding internationally is on the horizon. Among accomplishments, Shumate has centralized registration and sourcing of meetings, deployed a single meetings technology platform, created a central policy and  launched a meetings charge card.

There are so many other meeting, procurement and travel executives that brought strategic meetings management improvements to their firms in 2009. In doing so, they elevated our whole industry. It's unfortunate that I can't mention them all -- because you'd be reading this post all day. But my sincerest appreciation for being leaders in our industry goes out to you all, even if you're not singled out here. You know who you are!

Let's continue the progress we're making in creating new, higher standards in indirect expense management for corporate meetings and events, and let's make 2010 another  'Year of the Meeting!'

 

Whenever I speak with companies about their travel and meetings programs I always ask about their future projects and initiatives. I also ask, "what’s the hold-up?" 

The usual answers are lack of budget, no support from senior executives, lack of bandwidth and resources and inability to articulate ROI.  These are all challenging situations and each have their own requisite due diligence and work attached. But I have to be candid and say that, in this current economic climate, if you are not taking advantage of the existing buyers’ marketplace, you may be losing an opportunity to help your company leapfrog its competition when the economy turns around.  You will also miss a rapidly closing window of opportunity to leverage your buyer’s advantage, as all signs are pointing to the economy recovering mostly in 2010. Don’t believe me?

The latest news from the Airlines Reporting Corp is that corporate travel finally seems to be in recovery mode. A story in Management.travel reported that ARC transaction figures from the largest travel management companies in November improved 6% year-over-year, the first positive numbers from that group in more than a year. Also, the story said that most of the largest U.S. carriers reported year-over-year growth for system-wide traffic in November.

Even though this is just a measure of airline traffic, there are other signs out there that a business travel recovery is in the making. Take the BTN story on the latest American Express Business Travel Monitor. It notes that while hotel rates in the third quarter continued to fall on a yearly basis, the pace of decline quarter-over-quarter has slowed substantially. And, in October, the average domestic daily hotel rate registered its first monthly growth since the fourth quarter of 2008.

Don't you think it's time then to take full advantage of the still-existing buyer's market to push through deals for 2010 and beyond -- while the pendulum is still swinging in your favor?  

Here are my top reasons to make haste:

1 - The most obvious is budgetary. If we're in a recovery, it's still nascent. Besides, your meetings budget has probably not received any great infusion of new funds, if you're like a lot of meeting managers I know. So, there are still plenty of opportunities out there with suppliers, for example, hotels, to lock in relatively low rates as the recovery strengthens. This will allow you to do more with your budget, whether it's more content, upgraded F&B or even more meetings.  Another point: If you wanted to establish a standard addendum with the hotel chains, now is the right time -- when they are looking for ways to lock up customer loyalty and revenues.

2 - Perhaps your competitors won't miss this buying opportunity (a window that appears to be rapidly closing). That's something to think about as they – with their limited budgets -- are pushing ahead and negotiating more training sessions, internal meetings or conferences with customers. All those extra meetings they were able to buy could play a key role in producing smarter employees or better products, and your company could lose its competitive edge down the line. 

As we seem to be turning the corner, it's more important than ever to examine your meetings sourcing and buying habits -- not only to make sure they're as efficient as possible, but also so that you can find the most competitive rates and best value out there. Time and again, e-sourcing has proven the best solution. In fact, research shows that companies that use automated sourcing can reduce strategic sourcing costs from 4.8% to up to 8% of their meetings outlay. To find out more about e-sourcing and its benefits, check out this StarCite whitepaper.

Don’t procrastinate!  Your opportunity to drive through backburner initiatives and projects is NOW. When things are slower, suppliers are more open to new and different ways to do business, and your  senior management is also looking for ways to be more efficient.  If you miss this window, you will pay the price when the economy recovers.  Remember, everything is cyclical and if you miss this cycle, who knows when the next buyer’s market will come around.  You don’t want to be doing the “shoulda, coulda, woulda” routine when this cycle is over.

Has your organization staged a virtual meeting in the past year? What's more, has your company bought or leased collaboration/virtual meetings tech?  More importantly are you managing the strategy, policy creation and compliance tracking for all virtual meetings technologies as part of your travel and meetings portfolio?

Well, now we know that more than 42% own or lease this type of tech, for example, Hewlett Packard's Halo and Cisco's TelePresence systems (which represent the high end pricier technology). That's according to a new whitepaper that summarizes a poll – the 2009 Executive Travel Survey. The whitepaper is produced by ProMedia.travel and commissioned by GetThere, Sabre Travel Network and Travelocity Business. Meetings tech is just one of the areas the survey addresses, and it's based on the views of over 200 professionals who are directly involved in managing corporate travel policies and budgets -- everyone from CFOs to CPOs to travel managers.

I actually saw a presentation based on these findings when I was in Prague for the ACTE Educational conference this Fall, and I've been itching to write about it since. The whitepaper adds that "a confluence of factors, including lower cost of entry and pressure from executives to reduce travel, allowed many companies to invest in technologies that once seemed too specialized." Yet, the survey finds that more than half polled hadn't yet invested in virtual meetings tools, many citing the expense or "not enough travel to justify the expense."

Interestingly, nearly 20% said that the tools' effectiveness versus "meeting face-to-face is unproven." That could be partly due to the fact that a full 40% who do use these tools either don't know if their firms are measuring ROI or that their companies are not measuring.

As I've said in this blog before, virtual meetings, such as the high-def, life-size and realistic-type made possible by HP or Cisco, have their place in the wide-world of meetings (alongside face-to-face events). 

But like every kind of event, virtual meetings needs to be measured and reported for ROI -- as part of a good strategic meetings management program. You need to know the value of your meetings (especially these days, when so many have to justify their jobs to senior executives).

But I'm wondering if most companies even know how to measure ROI for virtual
events. Indeed, the whitepaper says it could be blamed on "a lack of support in the managed travel marketplace to help companies better understand strategic uses for these technologies and how to calculate their travel savings and/or revenue potential."

My advice: seek the knowledge of peers at professional organizations running virtual meetings, for example, NBTA and ACTE. Next time your attending an educational session, stand up and ask how others are measuring ROI for virtual events. If you’re a StarCite customer or potential customer, we have a Value Analysis process lead by a former CFO.  Reach out to us to assist you determine your program ROI.

The old adage of “you don’t know what you don’t know” doesn’t fly anymore in the business world; you need to know or risk job uncertainty.

OK, I need to vent. I'm saddened and disappointed about the shrinking salaries of travel and meetings managers. Yes, I recognize that we're in a recession, but travel and meetings managers' responsibilities are growing and they have to operate with less resources and support.  Can I just point out to senior execs that cutting heads, budgets and resources doesn’t make the work that needs to be done go away?  Hello???  The surviving managers and employees have to absorb the workload and responsibilities of the furloughed.

My outrage is due to data in a new survey that I highly recommend you check out; it's from the NBTA Foundation, which polled 274 corporate travel and meetings managers in North America this Fall. On the surface – it doesn’t seem like bad news: respondents' average base salaries inched up about 2% versus 2008. But total compensation, including bonuses and stock options fell nearly 6% over the same period!  Some subsets of the survey population saw even greater drops, such as 14% for coordinators and specialists!  Unless the intent is to punish those who remain in the workforce with more responsibilities and less compensation, I’m just not getting how management thinks that they’re saving money by burning out their best people and negatively impacting morale.

Wake up Mr. Executive!  It’s time to realize that these hard-working professionals and their management programs are significant contributors to the bottom line at their firms. (The average return for every $1 spent on business travel is $15, another NBTA study has found!)  You need to be rewarding these bottom line contributors NOT penalizing them.

A bit of good news is that travel managers with professional certifications (such as CCTEs and GLPs) made more in total compensation than those who didn't. That finding shows the value that professional development brings, not just to an organization, but to
the professional who invests time to go for it.  I'm confident that this will prove true for the new SMMC designation as well. On the dark side, full reimbursement by companies for association dues, convention attendance, professional publications and continuing education all dropped from year-ago levels.

I think it's a shame that professionals who work so diligently to make cost-control and savings a reality for companies aren't being rewarded and compensated as they deserve. Many a travel and meetings manager has risen to the challenge of revamping or creating new strategic programs during these tough economic times.   They are your corporate heroes who should be recognized, valued and compensated accordingly.

Here’s some recommendations that career professionals and I have identified to help those in the workforce who have been negatively impacted by this recession or furloughed:

1- Always keep your resume and list of references updated;
2- Even if your job is secure, continue to look for better opportunities internally and externally;
3- Networking makes a big difference when it comes to career development success and job hunting; take the time to build your network via social activities, association meetings and conferences, and use of social tools like Linked In, Facebook, etc.  But remember that social networking is used more and more these days by HR and employers, since there are many limitations to interview questions and background checks.  When you divulge information about yourself via social networking, you’ve voluntarily waived your privacy protection by making details of your life public.
4-The NBTA Foundation survey validates that those who have invested in higher education and certification programs have been more successful in protecting their income levels.  Investigate your company’s continued education programs, and with or without company subsidy, apply for scholarship funding (the NBTA, its chapters and Foundation offer many scholarships).  Speak to your supervisor about allowing you time to take courses and classes to improve your skills and abilities which will benefit your company;
5-Demonstrate that you are a team player – managers dislike and target “superstar” individuals;
6-Ask to do more in your job; expand your scope of responsibilities – let your management know that you are willing to manage a team or take on projects.  At the end of the day if you are more valuable and possess better skills than your co-workers, you should be able to survive furloughs and workforce reductions;
7-Lastly and most importantly, be flexible and adept at change management – your employer will want to keep you if you always maintain a positive disposition and outlook, willing to help team members and don’t dwell on “the good old days.”  The sad reality is, whatever wonderful work environment you experienced in the past most likely has changed over time with management and leadership changes.  When a corporate culture changes either for the better or worse, what happened in the past is just that, it’s the past and those who waste time and energy wanting things to revert to the way they were inevitably become casualties whenever there’s a workforce reduction.

Hang in there everyone – it’s more important than ever to be able to articulate the value you bring to your companies as well as to continue to improve your skills, knowledge and experiences.

This week I attended Aberdeen's annual Chief Procurement Officer Summit in Boston and the weather was perfect, though I spent my whole two days there indoors at the new Seaport Hotel and Conference Center. The summit is a must-attend event for procurement executives -- everybody from chief procurement officers, chief financial officers, chief operating officers, to VPs of procurement, finance, supply chain, operations, logistics and manufacturing.

Broadly, these executives get together to discuss best practices in supply management -- and strategic meetings management now figures prominently in that.

It's a plain fact that meeting and travel managers are working more closely with procurement executives these days. The directive is typically from up above, as all kinds of indirect expenditures are increasingly coming under senior executive scrutiny and being targeted for improved oversight. From the moment I arrived at the summit, it was wonderful to interact with procurement executives and discuss how to rein in meetings costs, improve processes with technology, improve sourcing efficiencies and -- something near and dear to my heart -- risk mitigation! Indeed, it's no exaggeration to say that this year at CPO, meetings management was front and center.

I was at the front table for an excellent panel discussion on "Strategic Meetings," which featured industry veteran, Lynn Ridzon, Director, Global Strategic Sourcing - Travel, Meetings & Events at Amgen (at right in the picture) and Shirley Kuhloie, Global Meetings Program Leader at Hewlett-Packard (on the left). Forgive the quality of the photo, as I used my Blackberry to snap this shot.  I want to commend them both for their advice (and they used layman's terms) on the how and why of putting together a SMMP. They were candid enough, too, to articulate that, yes, there'll be some pain points over the life of developing, winning support, communicating and implementing an SMMP, but the ROI outweighs any difficulties. And that's something that will get C-level executive attention, especially in these challenging economic times! They also stressed the importance of SMMP technology in making changes happen uniformly, streamlining tasks and winning with suppliers.

Congratulations to Lynn and Shirley for a terrific job in articulating the merits of strategic meetings management.

If you're a meetings manager and considering how to coordinate with your corporate travel and procurement departments to create an organization-wide SMMP, I suggest you read this helpful white paper that lays out some best practices and will help you get started.

I'm so proud and gratified about Deutsche Bank's global head of travel-related services Debbie Dayton being named 2009 International Travel Manager of the Year. Business Travel News bestowed the honor on Debbie at the ACTE educational conference in Prague.

About two years ago, Debbie and her team of 12 began consolidating and automating business and meetings travel processes worldwide. A major component of the program was re-engineering meetings globally -- not an easy task, speaking from experience creating a standardized global program at Hewlett-Packard. The bank, working with StarCite, automated budgeting, requests for proposals  (RFPs), reporting, reconciliation and data modules.

"Dayton and the bank's travel and events teams in the past two years led immense global changes by bringing worldwide consistency in automation and processes and arming the company for negotiations with hundreds of data elements," BTN's article says.

I'd also like to highlight the accomplishments of Shawn Radek for special congratulations. Shawn is the banks' VP and project leader for the meetings program. Shawn did a lot of the hard work overseeing the transformation of the firm's legacy system of managing meetings by spreadsheet to the new automated tool.

In just one improvement, Deutsche Bank's automated budgeting tool now projects the total cost of an event, including transportation spending -- before the meeting is approved. Further, the bank stays on top of things by pre-loading average negotiated hotel rates, airfares, F&B costs and other metrics biannually. 

Read more about Deutsche Bank's new SMMP -- continuing to spread to more of its operating regions across the globe -- on BTN. Congratulations to Debbie and Shawn for setting the benchmark for how a global implementation and program should be.  For any naysayers out there, Deutsche Bank proves you can successfully implement and manage a global meetings program.

Look to the East for a business travel recovery!

According to a recent magazine story that I read, American Express released results of two separate survey findings -- one of its global clients and the other of 180 clients in China -- and predicted that China will lead a business travel recovery. Plus, investments by companies operating in China should increase over the next year.

I can confirm. Whenever I talk with clients in China and the rest of Asia, or when I get the opportunity to travel there, I see a huge amount of interest among companies in learning and implementing strategies to better manage travel, meetings and other indirect spend. It was especially evident during my recent trip to Thailand for the Incentive Travel & Conventions, Meetings Asia & Corporate Travel World.

Among Amex's findings from Chinese companies: a vast majority have consistently focused on monitoring and controlling travel expenditures. For example, near 80% have formal policies in place, up from 70% last year. Also, 78% of Chinese organizations have negotiated rates with airlines, while 79% have them with hotels.

These are all great, best practices for managing business travel, and they are key parts of an overall SMMP, as well. I'm very excited about the spread of travel and meetings management strategies and automation across the globe, especially in the vast Chinese market, and I'm looking forward to playing a helpful role in spreading the knowledge.  

Amex's survey findings give us encouraging news.

I read with much interest yesterday's release of something called the Hotel Negotiability Index by Egencia for 2010. Egencia, the travel management arm of Expedia, says its Index is an indicator of the overall supply landscape and other factors in top cities globally. The data indicates that, at least across North America, it'll continue to be a buyer's market up until at least the last two quarters of next year.

Yet the survey rates different areas of the country on negotiability strength. For example, even though Egencia says hotels in the majority of U.S. cities will be ripe for bargaining, it's different for Boston, which has been less affected by the recession."...The anticipated
influx of business travel and limited new capacity could make negotiations for that region more challenging." Likewise, Washington D.C. "will be a challenging destination for negotiations" -- due to the government's growing role in managing the nation's economic
recovery.

Interesting stuff. But I can't overstress the buying power that can alter your company's negotiating standing when you're able to collect and present comprehensive evidence of meeting spend at hotels...that is, spend across your corporation -- organizationwide. That's a byproduct of putting strategic meetings management in place and centralizing such areas as planning and reporting and sourcing.

In fact, in Egencia's study, a section on travel management trends notes that: Strategic meetings management has been gaining traction in 2009, and "there is healthy opportunity for further consolidation between meetings and business travel programs into 2010. As companies resume investment in meetings and incentives, there is a greater focus on budget management and delivering significant ROI on meetings spend."

You can get a look at more details from Egencia's Index here.

Tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 22nd, I'll be speaking as part of a distinguished panel of corporate travel and procurement professionals in a new StarCite webinar: "Navigating the Managed Meetings Landscape -- Working with Strategic Meetings Buyers."

The folks at ProMedia.travel are hosting, and we'll be discussing how hotel sales reps can work with corporate travel, procurement and finance departments to win business in the new, tougher purchasing environment. More than ever, corporations are looking for preferred supplier partnerships, volume purchasing and pre-negotiated meetings packages that will streamline meetings purchasing, increase control and drive savings.

The webinar is free, and it starts at 12 p.m. EST (9 a.m. PDT).

Buyers and suppliers are both welcome to join us! I promise it'll be a great session, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions and share your stories about how you're creating deals these days.

To register, click here!

Another forecast is out that predicts lower hotel prices in 2010. That's good news for meetings buyers. But getting to your event destination will be pricier.

A BTN story summarizes a new forecast by Advito (the travel management consulting arm of BCD Travel) that said airfares globally will rise 1-6% versus 2009 prices, including a 6% hike for North American economy-class trips.

An interesting point about the forecast, it warned that in 2010, elongated low-fare booking windows will shorten. What will that mean for meetings? Depending on how it all plays out, it may well be advisable for meeting managers to re-examine corporate policies and spell out or toughen language around allowable time windows for booking flights for events.
      
The forecast also notes that buyers will continue to see declining prices at hotels in major business travel markets, including the U.S., where average daily rates will fall just under 1% from 2009. Looks like the free-fall in rates may be close to hitting bottom. 

Pointing out another opportunity for travel and meetings buyers, Advito says that, because luxury hotels have done so much discounting, the price premium between upscale, upper upscale and luxury "is actually less now than it was 18 months ago," said the firm's vice president of business solutions Bob Brindley, in BTN. "The discounting moved all of the tiers a little bit closer together and reduced the premium clients were willing to pay when they were moving from one tier to another."

Maybe it's time to examine whether you can broaden your scope of hotels to include more luxury properties that offer moderate pricing and good value. Now, with web-based sourcing, its a snap to compare RFP responses online and the results might surprise you.

Have you been able to negotiate better deals for events at high-end properties? If so, tell me about it.

I just endured a long journey to/from Bangkok, Thailand, where I moderated a panel of experts on the rewards of face-to-face meetings. I was there attending the Incentive Travel & Conventions, Meetings Asia & Corporate Travel World (IT&CMA & CTW) show, and I had an opportunity to continue my global evangelization of the benefits of SMMP.  The Asia-Pacific marketplace is vibrant, and there's a real demand and thirst for knowledge and new technologies.  My colleague, Colin Knell (VP Asia-Pacific) and I, spoke to the regional media as well as a lot of customers while we were there, and it never ceases to amaze me how different the Asia-Pacific market is.  Their regional needs and level of acceptance for new technology and ideologies remain a curious mix of quick change management adoption, but they move slowly to ensure that acceptance of anything new is solid, tried and true.

For those of you who haven’t attended IT&CMA & CTW Asia, it is the strongest industry conference in the APJ region. Delegates attend representing corporations, MICE suppliers, associations, etc. I also keep hearing from the folks in APJ how many U.S. and even European corporations try to manage the region from their own countries without consideration or regard for any regional challenges or scope issues. Functionality and process-mapping needs are often ignored or not even considered during implementation of suppliers and policies. 

As a former travel manager who spent many years developing and implementing programs in the APJ region, I would have to sadly agree.  I’ve seen companies miss the mark in their APJ implementations because they tend to look at the region as a common bloc and forget to consider that each country in the APJ region is culturally different. Simply consider the vast distances that exist between countries: a simple plane trip from Tokyo to Bangkok is about 5-6 hours.

Change management in the region is slower than anywhere else on the globe because of the vast cultural and language differences, as well as the varied degrees of technology available per country. Believe me, it’s all different!  If you are in the midst of planning an APJ meetings program implementation or process change, you would do best to look at each country, determine the change management requirements, then map out an 80-20 strategy of implementation.  And by the way, if you don’t engage a champion in each country as well as for the entire region, you are not going to be successful.  Talk to the locals in each country before you map out any regional strategies and project plans, and most importantly, as I say to travel and meeting professionals everywhere, NEVER under-plan for change management.

Oh, another item: If you are sick and have to travel for business or whatever, do everyone on the plane and on the ground a favor and STAY HOME.  I had the displeasure of sitting next to a senior businessman who hacked and coughed without bothering to cover his mouth for 10 hours.  It’s one thing to be inconsiderate, but in this age of H1N1, SARs, Avian Flu, etc. it’s just irresponsible and dangerous to spread your germs and sickness to others in a confined environment. Thanks to that rude businessman I’ve spent the last few days taking Airborne, zinc and Zicam and chafing my hands with Purell to make sure I don’t succumb to his illness…ah the joys and glamour of travel…Not!

Only a month away until NBTA's Core Week #1 of its Strategic Meetings Management Certification (SMMC) program, and I can hardly believe all the years of preparation by the Groups & Meetings Committee is coming to fruition.  It’s truly difficult to grasp for me. It started out with my initial belief that the business travel and meetings management worlds were converging, and NBTA, as the premier business travel association, had a duty to our members to help them cope with and facilitate this convergence. Now, here we are, at the official launch of the SMMC certification program for meetings management, and SMMC is taking its rightful place among the NBTA's other leading certifications, like the CCTE (Certified Corporate Travel Executive). 

The SMMC couldn't come at a better time, too. Strategic Meetings Management Programs (SMMPs) are sorely needed now in an environment of increasing regulatory oversight of meeting spend and corporate mandates from senior management for more holistic oversight of events. It will provide professionals with training in meetings management best practices and prepare them for the challenges of creating system-wide oversight of meeting planning, budgeting, sourcing, purchasing and spend data management.

Core Week #1 is set to take place November 2-6 at Emory University in Atlanta (pictured at right); here's a short description of what will be covered:

- An overview of SMMP
- A guide to identifying and recruiting internal stakeholders, and how
to manage customer expectations
- Training in communication and leadership
- How to integrate business functions with select SMMP components
- Building a business case for an SMMP
- Policy development and compliance

After Core Week #1, there's a second week (to be announced) and then three elective classes. Graduates earn the SMMC designation, indicating a proficiency in developing, deploying and improving an SMMP.

This is the start of something big in the meetings industry, and I predict increasing value and demand from travel and procurement managers for the SMMC designation in conjunction with establishing a corporate SMMP. 

Congratulations to all the present and past dedicated and hard-working volunteers on the Groups & Meetings Committee who have made this possible. Forgive me for gushing here; but I feel especially proud having created this committee myself back in 2001. And I want to offer praise to some of the lead developers of the SMMC and SMMP ideology and design:

-Kari Knoll Kesler, who just ended her term as NBTA Board Director, former co-chair of the Groups & Meetings Committee and lead thought developer of the SMMC, who I often refer to as the "Mother of SMMP,”

-Joni Miyashiro, former Global Travel Category Manager at Amgen, Inc., my cousin and a very instrumental person in laying the groundwork for SMMC,

- Tracey Wilt, manager of Global Travel, Meetings & Conference Solutions at Xerox, also a strong voice for meetings management, an original co-chair of the committee and an SMMC task force member,

- Madlyn Caliri, Global Procurement Director at Reed Elsevier, one of the original co-chairs of the committee and someone who dedicated incredible time in making the committee and its educational resources what they are today, 

- Debi Scholar, Assurance Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, whose strategic meetings and business travel expertise and thought leadership helped crystallize all of the bright ideas and concepts.

Curious about what a strategic meetings management program can do for your company? Check out this whitepaper on how hidden meetings expenditures can hobble your cost-control efforts. And, please, if you're participating in this ground- breaking and watershed moment, please drop me a line, and let me know your thoughts and feedback.

Last week I traveled north to be the featured speaker at the Toronto Travel Executive Symposium, hosted by NBTA Canada. I really enjoyed getting together with the nearly 50 corporate travel professionals who came to learn about global business travel trends -- including the growth of strategic meetings management (SMM). You know I’ve traveled the world, and I must admit that Canada has always felt like home to me.  I love the cultural diversity, the beauty of the landscape, but more importantly, I like the people.

Tanya Racz, President of NBTA Canada, was there, and she explained that the event was designed to provide the Canadian corporate travel community with "insights from industry experts on the final frontier in managed travel -- strategic meetings management. Using SMM core competencies, travel professionals can continue to drive costs, increase compliance and gain control over meeting spend.”  Tanya and I go way back when she was starting her own corporate travel buyer association called the Canadian Alliance of Business Travel (CAoBT).  I was NBTA Chairman and Past President at the time and noticed what a great job Tanya was doing organizing Canadian business travel buyers.  So when the opportunity arose to create a partnership with CAoBT, needless to say NBTA embraced it. I remember speaking at her first Canadian conference as the keynote speaker, and I marvel at how much she and her team have grown the organization.

But I digress, for my part, at the event, I covered the concept of SMM and its value to a corporation. An SMM program captures more meetings spend data that companies can use to leverage in supplier negotiations, monitor costs more closely and, ultimately, save. And I also talked about how creating and managing an SMM program can provide an extra measure of job stability to meetings managers in this difficult economy.  I also pointed out the need to have the right technology to support and enable all of the elements of the NBTA-defined SMMP model.  The worst thing any company can do is have divergent data sources, then pay to consolidate the data into meaningful metrics.

The audience was very engaged in the topic, and they wanted to learn more about SMM and its components. We talked about everything from how to create and establish a plan to implement an SMMP, to how to mitigate risk and reap the savings available.  The SMMP buzz is alive and growing in Canada for sure and I’m happy to do my part evangelizing!

Thank you, and congratulations to Tanya and NBTA Canada for a successful day!  I look forward to participating in the NBTA Canada 6th Annual Conference & Exhibitor Showcase. 

I’m getting ready to leave for the largest Corporate Travel and MICE conference in Asia Pacific: IT&CMA and CTW Asia 2009. More than 2,000 attendees come annually, and if you want to find out how business and meetings are being transacted in the Asia-Pacific region, this is the conference to attend.

I’ve had the unique and privileged opportunity of being a speaker, panelist or moderator for 11 consecutive years and have made many wonderful friendships and relationships during that time with travel & meetings professionals in the region. 

This year, the conference is taking place at the Bangkok Convention Centre at CentralWorld, and on Wednesday, October 7th, from 8:00-9:00 am, I’m moderating a panel of distinguished experts called "Meetings Still Matter." We'll discuss the many values of face-to-face meetings versus virtual and how to run successful meetings in Asia/Pacific countries.

Panelists will include:

- Richard Holmes, International Director of Meetings, International League Against Epilepsy
- Sharon Hudson, Founder, Talent Tools
- Simon Pryor, FSAE, President of AuSAE & CEO of The Mathematical Association of Victoria


So if you’re attending this conference please come to our session, I promise that you'll take away some valuable learnings.

I’ll be blogging my experiences from the road...so stay tuned!

In its 22nd annual Corporate Travel 100 benchmarking report, Business Travel News confirmed the phenomenon that we in the business travel and meetings industry have been witnessing over the past several years -- significant drop-offs in travel spending. BTN's report showed a decline in overall spend by the largest buyers of travel to $10.3 billion last year, from $11.2 billion in 2007.

Further, companies participating in the survey reported that declines in travel spending will wind up being more dramatic this year -- due to aggressive budget cuts, tightened policies and greater use of virtual travel technologies. I was struck by the magnitude of some of the information in BTN's report: of 94 corporate participants, 48 showed a decrease in U.S. booked air spend in 2008. A few reported declines of 70%, and many put the fall-off in the 25%-30% range.

Bad as that news may seem, the report unearthed some positive indicators for business travel and strategic meetings management. For example, many put new restrictions on their travel policies -- some of them even mandating rules.  More than a dozen respondents have stepped up use of remote conferencing options, including high-definition telepresence systems, BTN reported.

As I’ve said publicly many times over, I don't believe we'll see a return to the old free-spending days of business travel -- even if we climb out of this recession faster than anticipated. But that's not necessarily a negative. Increasingly, we are seeing evidence, as BTN's report shows, that companies are recognizing the value of solid and careful spending rules. Heck, even TARP recipients have been mandated to make their spending policies public.

But travel and meeting spend policies don't just ensure that employees and meeting planners follow the rules to save companies money. Good policy also supports good relationships with preferred suppliers. When planners book at preferred hotels or re-use cancelled space, they support suppliers who depend on corporate business. Strong, well-communicated policies, supported by senior-executives and, yes, sometimes mandated, are a win-win.

Here is more guidance on how to build strong meetings policies and other best practices for an SMMP.