Event Registration Software

When I first wrote about using social media tools, such as Twitter at meetings, attendees were using the technology to tweet back and forth during event sessions about how the presentation was going, exchanging opinions and then collaborating to propose questions to the panelists or presenter. How industrious and efficient!

Now, social media tools are taking on greater importance in overall strategic meetings management, according to an article in MeetingNews. While planners have been busy using social media to do things like integrate the tools into their online registration and conference sites and send out speaker and logistical information, organizations are making broader decisions about how and why to use the tools in their meetings programs.

That's a smart move because you'll want to make sure planners and their attendees are using social media to support your SMMP goals and increase your program value -- as well as adhere to corporate guidelines and policies around internal and external communications.

The article quoted a meetings tech consultant who said that companies are formulating policies on who will be responsible for the technology, which tools to implement and how to attract users. I work with some of our customers to accomplish the same thing, encouraging them to own this space as part of their travel and meetings programs; it’s all about enterprise mobility remember?

Understandably, there's a certain degree of cautiousness out there to implement an organization-wide tool. In the story, one association executive which used Twitter to satisfy members' needs to communicate in real-time and distribute conference material, acknowledged that "there is a fear of lack of control, and you don't have control over social media. It is an open forum, people can say what they want to say, and that makes people nervous. Our strategy is definitely cautious, but we are getting there."

In the meantime, social media continues to revolutionize how people and organizations communicate. Consider some of these statistics I found on the blog Socialnomics:

- 96% of "Generation Y" members have joined a social network;
- It took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million listeners, but Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months;
- 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, but only 14% trust advertising.

Yes, social media is cool, and it can streamline planning processes, enrich content, facilitate instant feedback to help you measure ROI -- and even attract new event sponsorship opportunities. But be careful to choose tools that match your SMMP goals and company policies, and make it a priority to appoint a watchdog who monitors how your employees or association members use -- or abuse -- the tools.

I'd call it exercising "enthusiastic caution." 

Doing more with fewer dollars and less support staff is a common theme in the meetings management industry these days (Actually, this is pretty common among most industries -- at least judging from complaints I hear from friends in other lines of business.). So I wasn't surprised to read a new FutureWatch study that found one in five corporate planners polled are doing more with less, and 14% are concerned about a lack of staff and too much responsibility.

FutureWatch, an annual study by Meeting Professionals International (MPI) and American Express, says that these issues have replaced last year's worries over the economy and falling attendance. So the realities have sunk in, and we're dealing with them, says a summary of FutureWatch, which I read about on management.travel.

But the good news for our industry overall is that the 356 corporate planners polled are expecting nearly 4% more meetings and and 11.7% more participants at their events this year versus last (although, ironically, that'll mean even more work for the already over-stretched). And a good amount of both suppliers (41%) and planners (28%) interviewed expect industry conditions to improve gradually this year.

And if you don't already know this from your own experience, meetings will not return to the way it was before the Great Recession, says the survey. The majority of planners (967 overall meeting planners were polled) expect this year to concentrate on more stringent budget controls, improved operating efficiencies and closer attention to value and ROI of meetings, among other things.

Those are good developments and reflect increasing awareness of strategic meetings management and the planning, budgeting and meetings management software behind it that drives results. Another bonus from technology is that it actually cuts planners’ and managers’ workloads – as it automates routine sourcing, budget-making, attendee management and other tasks.

So, from my perspective, the main message of this year's FutureWatch is that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. And even though we've got our hands full, we as an industry have come to a healthier respect for doing meetings right – the managed way!

Check out this whitepaper on how meetings technology can reduce your work load and help you better manage meetings, too.

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!'

 

Ever see yourself conducting business meetings on a cloud, yes, a cloud?

The growing trend of cloud computing, which enables companies to stop pouring resources into internal servers and instead run applications and databases on the web (accessible virtually from any computer), is helping organizations cut down on the need to travel. According to a recent article I came across, 34,000 municipal employees of the city of Los Angeles will now be using cloud-based Google Apps (e.g., Gmail, Google Docs and other collaborative programs) in place of software previously loaded on their internal servers.

If this sounds like it's getting too techie for a strategic meetings management post, let me quickly make the link to how this is going to affect the city's need for meetings. In the story, Randi Levin, Chief Technology Officer for the city, said that, by going with Google's suite, she "expects L.A. employees to benefit from instant messaging, video conferencing, and simultaneous review and editing of documents by multiple people."  

Let's face it; the money tap is still twisted tight in this recession, and companies are looking every which way to avoid expenditures on "unnecessary" meetings, while still spending for critical face-to-face time with potential and current customers. So, now, in addition to virtual technology such as video conferencing, teleconferencing and TelePresence, organizations are turning to cloud-based apps, such as Google's, to help cut down on the need to travel for meetings.

OK, so now you can meet on the cloud, but regardless of the technology you use, meetings managers need to make sure they're incorporating these types of events into policy, for instance, addressing the circumstances for which they're appropriate. And, as I've said before here, like all events, it would be wise to have the strategy in place to measure a cloud conference's ROI.

As part of its new 2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report, Business Travel News has also written about the advance of strategic meetings management at large companies. The magazine included a great profile on Estee Lauder's new SMMP and the woman behind it all.

 
Estee Lauder is channelling all its meetings bookings through a new SMMP -- the result of two years of work led by Cynthia Shumate, the company's Executive Director of Global Travel and Meeting Services and supported by Meetings Manager Jami Stapelmann. Estee
Lauder’s program is an excellent example of how to gain new insight into meetings spend (broken out from transient travel), establish firm control over events and leverage new buying power with suppliers.  It also is a shining example of taking your existing program and continuously improving it for optimum efficiencies and adding company value.

To name just a few 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. She also manages a group of part-time meeting planners throughout the company -- "power users" of the meetings technology.

As part of the program, Cynthia also spearheaded creation of standard contracts. Before that, hundreds of employees planned meetings and signed contracts with little formal training in how to properly record meetings expenditures. According to BTN, Shumate said that "for years our T&E has been overstated and meetings have been understated because
people have been covering these budgets out of T&E, not realizing that some of it is attached to the meetings budget."

Right now, Estee Lauder's SMMP applies to U.S. meetings, about 12 large, annual gatherings of up to 350 attendees, plus thousands of smaller meetings for employee training and product launches. But Shumate plans to expand the program internationally, and is working to get a clearer picture of overseas meetings spend.

Cynthia, who has been a close friend of mine for many years, has always been open to new ideas and improvements, and her latest accomplishments are a testament to her dedication to program excellence.  I vividly remember several productive meetings with Cynthia and Jami, discussing their current program and how they could tweak it to align more closely with the SMMP model.  Of course any visit with Cynthia doesn’t go without ancillary benefits (a trip to their company store, one of the best places to visit!)

Congratulations to Estee Lauder on creating this excellent SMMP model. Cynthia, you continue to be an inspiration to the industry!

Just back from Prague -- a charming old-world city where I attended ACTE's Global Education Conference, as well as StarCite's own 2009 EMEA Leadership Symposium for Excellence in Strategic Meetings Management.

While at ACTE, I talked to many travel and procurement folks from companies who want to extend savings and control that they've got in place for transient travel to their meetings spend. The initial problem with most, however, is finding out how much they spend on group events.

This is one of the very reasons why I thought it was so valuable to join Ian Flint, Managing Director of Inform Logistics Limited and Carolyn Pund, Senior Global Meetings & Events Manager at Cisco Systems, in a panel discussion on "Trapping MICE (meetings, incentive, conference and events) Data." (Kate Harris, Director of Strategic Meetings Management, EMEA, at American Express, did a wonderful job moderating.

If you're just getting started gathering meetings spend data in order to better manage it, here's a few points from our panel that'll prove very helpful:

- (From my presentation): forge relationships with people around the company who'll help you gather the information (for example, folks in sales and marketing or HR), and check data from meeting histories and financial records, such as expense reports and corporate card records. Some tell-tale signs: dinner tabs for groups of 10 or more, payment for large hotel room blocks, checks to conference centers;

- (from Ian Flint): adopt meetings management tech that will enable you to automate meeting registration, set up approvals, enforce policy and best practices, centralize procurement and produce management reporting on spend);

- (From Carolyn Pund at Cisco, who has put together a company-wide network at Cisco to manage global meetings and events): collaboration with different audiences is key to strategically managing meetings, for instance, external partners such as hotels, meetings tech vendors and meetings management companies, as well as internal partners from travel, finance, procurement and other departments. Don't forget, too, to seek assistance from senior executives for help in communicating policy and process changes, as well as for support. 

It was a great panel with a lot of input and questions from the audience -- which did not surprise me, given the level of interest in SMMPs that I encountered from ACTE attendees. Check out our entire presentation on gathering MICE data from ACTE's archives.

Getting a bit confused by mixed signals on the seriousness of the H1N1 flu virus (aka swine flu)? On the one hand, President Obama has declared a national emergency over the current rate of outbreaks, and more than 1,000 people in the U.S. have died from the virus.

Yet, so far, it doesn't seem like businesses are letting the threat affect travel.

From Prague, where I'm attending ACTE's Global Education Conference, the organization has released findings of a survey of 109 international companies. It found that 91% were not delaying planning meetings or conferences. Further, 96% said business travelers had not asked to put off trips during the flu season.

But this isn't to say that companies, meeting managers and event attendees, themselves, aren't concerned about the spread of the virus.

One way to address those concerns would be to create or update your company policy addressing how to handle issues like H1N1 and other potential emergency situations and to communicate those policies effectively to your employees and meeting attendees. For example, at our company, our head of HR e-mailed all employees and advised that if they did have flu symptoms, but felt they had to work, to carry on from home in order to prevent infecting fellow employees. 

Key to making decisions about events and communicating with meeting attendees is having one meetings registration system that gives you visibility into all companywide events.  That way, you can quickly assess potential situations and make decisions.  Similarly, using one enterprise-wide online attendee management tool can give you the comprehensive data you need to locate people and make quick decisions.  

For prevention tips, you can visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This week at StarCite we announced two new agreements with some important meetings industry players that I'm sure will significantly benefit meetings managers and their strategic meetings manangement programs.

First, StarCite's partnership with the Valorem Group, which provides sales and marketing services to hotels, resorts and destination management companies globally, enables us to offer personalized service to StarCite's Destination Solutions customers. That's the service where we offer corporate and incentive meeting planners guidance through personal introductions to our Global Supplier Network -- including hotels, airlines, destination management companies and convention and visitor bureaus. Putting our RFP technology to work together with Valorem's services and companies will enable users to more comprehensively match meetings services to need, and, in the end, that means less waste, more savings and greater overall meetings management.

Our other new partnership is with Acclaim Meetings, a dynamic business community for independent meeting planners and travel agents. In this arrangement, Acclaim's meeting planners will get access to StarCite's technology to fully automate their meetings planning and procurement process, including planning, venue sourcing, audience acquisition, and attendee management. That means more efficiency: for example, the ability to automatically create and brand unique meeting registration websites. On top of that, Acclaim agents and planners can access our global online marketplace, expanding their choices for clients and in the process helping them to save money, too.

These partnerships seem to bode well for the meetings industry, especially in these challenging economic times, seeing as how we can seek out each other's strengths and form alliances to strengthen companies' ability to strategically manage their meetings.

Death and taxes. Ben Franklin was right-on the money when he said that these were the only certainties in life.

But while we may not have a say in how the former plays out, we can certainly exercise some control over the latter--especially the ubiquitous and seemingly ever-increasing taxes we pay for traveling on business or meetings. You may not be able to actually escape paying municipal taxes on hotel rooms, car rentals and meals, but as a meetings or purchasing manager, you can certainly limit tax spending by carefully choosing where that money is spent.

I propose this because of a recently released study by the National Business Travel Association (NBTA) Foundation and Concur that revealed both the highest and lowest travel taxes in top U.S. cities. This is the kind of information that you can easily refer to when making decisions about where to hold your next event. The study looked at total daily tax rates -- which include general sales taxes plus "discriminatory" travel levies, such as those imposed on services like hotel rooms and rental cars and paid by end-users.

Among the highest taxes in the nation:

-Chicago ($40.99)
-Seattle ($37.95)
-Dallas ($37.26)
-San Antonio ($37.20)

Among the lowest:

-Portland, OR ($21.49)
-Detroit ($22.37)
-Honolulu ($22.55)
-Ft. Meyers, FL ($22.91)             

Ironically, while cities this year have been hiking travel taxes to make up for revenue shortfalls, a story in USA Today about the report says travelers this year paid slightly less travel taxes from 2008, as the cost of travel overall has fallen.  But as recovery sprouts, and taxes continue to rise, how long do you think this little respite will last? 

What to do with this information? Rates on sleeping and meeting rooms, F&B, ground transportation and other meeting elements figure heavily into the mix of decisions you and your planners make on where to hold events. If you've got some sway with suppliers, you can use that leverage to reduce your costs. But you also have options when it comes to travel taxes. When considering locations for events, why not also look at cities where tax rates are relatively low to determine where the best bargains are? In other words, make travel taxes a bigger part of your decision-making process. Meeting planning software can help, too, with comparison reports used for sourcing hotel companies. 

Who knows, perhaps if enough companies and organizations switch their events to lower-taxed cities, municipalities with high rates will take notice of the shift and cut discriminatory taxes to attract meetings attendees back? Remember when New York City's hotel room taxes were so onerous that it caused a backlash from travel professionals? When business was diverted from the Big Apple, the city reduced taxes. In our world of supply and demand, this strategy has worked before – as I’ve always said, nothing gets more attention from a supplier than a negative change in corporate market share or revenues. 

Picking up subtle nuances in communication. Building lasting bonds. Enjoying another person's company.

If you've ever had a successful face-to-face meeting, these are just some of the benefits you've probably come away with. But in these budget-crunching times, when virtual meetings are growing more popular, for example, web conferencing, there's a new study out that confirms what a lot of people already know: face-to-face meetings are most rewarding. According to a Forbes Insights study of 760 business executives, "Business Meetings: The Case for Face-to-Face," more than 84% polled said that they still preferred in-person contact to virtual meetings. Of those, 85% said in-person meetings helped them build stronger, more meaningful relationships, while about three-quarters polled relished both the "ability to read another person" and the superior social interaction.

Also, at least 80% of executives liked face-to-face events because they felt interaction with co-workers is essential for effective teamwork, and downtime at in-person conferences built stronger client bonds.

I can personally attest to all of the above benefits. I've experienced them at my most rewarding in-person meetings -- whether they were gatherings with current or potential customers, meeting industry colleagues (such as at conferences and conventions) or sit-downs with my boss or fellow employees. Now, if you're a meetings manager that oversees hundreds of events every year, imagine the satisfaction--and the resulting productivity--you're creating for your attendees and your company.

But this survey by no means discounts the value of web-, tele- or video-conferencing. For certain types of events, these technologies are growing in usage, and I think it's very important that meetings managers should incorporate them into their overall strategic meetings management program, in order to competitively source for services and control costs, among other benefits. (Read more about this strategy here. In fact, in the Forbes survey, 59% of executives interviewed said that their use of "technology-driven meetings" increased during the recession -- in part due to lower costs and greater reliability of the technology.  Savings were important to those who like virtual meetings, as 92% cited paring event times and 88% valued trimming budgets.

The most advanced virtual technologies like Cisco’s Telepresence and HP’s Halo Room have been the only industries to grow about 30% year over year during this recession, according to media reports. That's a clear indication that companies have elected to invest in this technology to perpetuate their costs savings, and that they plan on continuing to remain fiscally responsible even after this recession is over.
 
On the downside, there are attentiveness issues to less sophisticated virtual meetings, mostly teleconferencing, for example, the insane amount of multi-tasking that goes on preventing full focus on the meeting. The Forbes survey confirms: 58% frequently surf the web, check their email, read unrelated materials and handle other ancillary work during digital meetings. Let’s be honest, how many of you are guilty of playing Solitaire, Freecell and other games during a teleconference?  I’ve even heard dishes being washed and the occasional toilet flushing for people who forgot to mute their phones, plus a variety of animal noises in the background.  None of the above would be happening in a face-to-face meeting!

But whether your company is having more virtual or face-to-face meetings these days, it's important to note that both types of events -- managed properly via enforcement of spending rules, centralized sourcing, automated attendee registration and other best practices -- can produce savings, great ROI, tighten control over costs and build better leverage with suppliers.  As all of the above are part of “Enterprise Mobility”, a concept of travel and meetings that I’ve been evangelizing around the world during speaking opportunities or customer forums, the management of all virtual technologies belong in the portfolio of company Travel & Meetings departments.    

I recommend reading more details from this survey here. Perhaps this information can help you make decisions about when to go virtual and when in-person events are best. Good reading!

Today, it makes more sense than ever to regularly audit your meetings management processes, policies, vendor contracts, expenses and other areas. After all, you'd want to know if you were paying too much for a service, let's say, a third-party event planner or that your meeting planners aren't using the approved software to centrally source for hotels. Maybe it was true once that what you didn't know didn't hurt you. But not these days; what you don't know might even mean the loss of your job or worse yet, public scrutiny and criticism.

I saw a great list of auditable areas of corporate T&E in a blog written by Debi Scholar, CMM, CMP, CTE, CTT, and Assurance Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, in The Beat.  There were several in there that are absolute essential for auditing meetings programs. They include:

- a financial review to uncover higher prices you may be paying for services -- compared to what other companies are paying,
- a policy review to spot language not clearly defined,
- an operations review to identify who, besides meeting planners, is planning meetings within your company -- including executive assistants, human resource and marketing staff,
- a risk review to determine if meetings are held and contracts are signed without your company's approved terms, as well as without the proper legal review,
- a supplier contracts review to uncover key business terms that might be missing around hotel cancellation and attrition penalties,
- a technology review to find out things like whether your meeting planners are using spreadsheets to track hundreds or thousands of meeting attendees annually
rather than using attendee management software.

Regular auditing is a great way to make sure your SMMP maintains program integrity, mitigates risky areas, helps you to better manage your company meetings expenditures. To read more about how to find spending holes (and protect your job) in your SMMP, click here!

I'm a baseball fan; so remember the movie "Field of Dreams" starring Kevin Costner? Well, building a successful strategic meetings management program (SMMP) and buying technology to deploy it for success is NOT like the "Field of Dreams." OK, there's an analogy here, and as you know I always speak using analogies, so more about that later.

Whenever I get together with meetings managers and procurement folks -- whether it's in Paris or Poughkeepsie -- the #1 subject these days is how to apply strategies that have been successful in controlling travel and entertainment (T&E) costs to meetings and events. For many travel and meeting managers, the impetus is coming from senior executives up the chain of command, all too often in the form of: "Find ways to cut costs and do it now!"; Usually there's almost always a reduction percentage target conveniently provided as well.

But whether these professionals decide to implement a full-scale SMMP that streamlines everything from budgeting and planning to sourcing and measuring ROI, or whether they decide to implement event managment software to improve just a single area, it's essential to effectively communicate what you're doing to all your key audiences.

Whether you're making changes to your meetings management program or especially launching a companywide SMMP, I highly recommend building an on-going communications strategy that addresses what you're doing and why. The communication should contain different messages for different audiences, for example:

- For event planners, include very basic "how to" information on following new policies and procedures for such tasks as centralized sourcing of hotels and new rules around signing contracts with suppliers and using standardized terms and conditions; Also make sure you communicate ramifications for non-compliance.

- For senior management, keep the focus high-level, explaining your new or beefed-up meetings management program and how you expect the company will benefit in terms of savings and control.  These should be sent out with less frequency and cycled around earnings reporting season.

E-mails are a convenient and effective way to communicate new meetings management procedures. But you may also want to consider holding company-wide demos for planners. Also, ask your technology vendor for assistance or resources in promoting usage of your meetings management software. For example, StarCite creates quarterly newsletters to our meetings manager clients with tips and advice on how to increase internal usage.  For some customers, we’ve even created launch videos and online "how-to" videos.

Remember, just because you communicated about your program once, doesn’t mean you’re done!  You must have consistent and strategically timed communications for maximum success.  In addition, all communications should be tailored for each level of internal customer you service.

Spreading the word about changes to meetings management  is equally important as creating a new SMMP because, (Are you ready?  Here comes the analogy that I'm overusing!) unlike in the movie, "Field of Dreams," even if you build it (SMMP technology), I can assure you from my own experience that they (meeting planners) will not come and use it. You will need a communication plan to maximize utilization and gain success!

Could a turnaround in the hotel industry be closer than many think? If that's so, perhaps this is a good time to start sourcing aggressively for meetings and event deals while occupanies, daily rates and other indicators are down at properties. M&C magazine reported recently that, at the 31st Annual New York University International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference, Smith Travel Research optimistically predicted that industry improvement would show by the fourth quarter "or certainly by the first quarter of next year."

Others see longer recovery time. But when it does come, M&C reported some analysts predicted it'll be "rapid and strong," partly due to pent up demand for meetings and business travel.

While a company's procurement buying leverage for events is based on multiple factors, including your budget and ongoing relationships with preferred suppliers, it's no secret that hotels are more willing these days to extend aggressive discounts, flexible cancellation and
attrition fees, as well as add extra value around F&B and A/V to RFP proposals.  So the time to secure these aggressive pricing initiatives is now (A recent report by Smith Travel Research showed year-over-year, double-digit decreases in occupancies and revenue per available room across four major global regions during April.).

If your company is looking ahead at future corporate events and is willing to secure space with advance deposits, it makes sense to lock up the discounts now by sourcing future events and meetings today.  Meeting managers should first search internally among departments for cancelled meeting space that already exists and can be re-used to save
money. Also, to efficiently hunt for the best deals out there, use meeting management software with an automated RFP tool that you can customize for what your firm is seeking.

If you're a meetings manager, are you stepping up buying and sourcing efforts to take advantage of this buyer's market? If so, please share here how that strategy is working for you. And if you're a hotel sales executive, what ways are you working with corporations looking for bargains for their meetings and events? 

Despite restrictions on business travel at many companies, I was pleased to see the news that 1,970 total delegates have so far signed up to attend the National Business Travel Association (NBTA) International Convention & Exposition in San Diego, August 23-26. That's a higher figure than last year at this time. And NBTA is also reporting that 550 travel buyers have registered, on par with 2008 registration statistics.

The numbers make perfect sense to me because I think so many companies understand the ROI of attending. It's precisely at times like this--when we're challenged by restricted travel and meetings budgets and greater scrutiny over spending -- that travel and meetings professionals need to ramp up networking and update our management skills. We need to learn new or improved ways of controlling travel and meeting expenditures and make the most of every dollar spent. Budgets, jobs, business growth is at stake! As NBTA President & CEO Kevin Maguire said: "Now, more than ever, is the time to fine tune corporate travel strategies to successfully navigate a volatile economy and shifting industry.”

I'll be attending NBTA, and, at the trade show, you can look for StarCite's booth -- # 2145. One of the convention highlights I'm looking forward to is the unveiling of NBTA's new strategic meetings management certification (SMMC) program -- designed  by the Groups & Meetings Committee. If you haven't already registered to attend the conference, I urge you to visit NBTA's site to sign up. 

Just over a week ago, I travelled to Paris for the NBTA & Paragon Partners “Crossroads to Paris” conference. It was great to see so much focus on meetings management at this event. You can definitely see that meetings spend management is really starting to catch on across the pond.  Over the past three months, I’ve been doing a series of EMEA customer roundtables and am about to leave for yet another road show in a few weeks, this time to Brussels, Paris, London and Munich.  Honestly speaking, if you are a travel and/or meetings manager and are faced with an increase in 2009 cost savings target goals, despite travel freezes or greatly diminished travel budgets, the only way you would even get close to meeting or exceeding your 2009 savings goals is by consolidating your meetings.
 

Of course whether a company is located here in the U.S., Canada or in Europe, the hottest topic today is building a global meetings program. There are quite a number of travel and meeting managers who are charting new territory and paving the way.  

 
A good example of this was one presentation I attended led by Cécile Drévillon, Director, Meetings & Events EMEA, Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Tracey Wilt, Manager, Global Travel & Meetings Management, Xerox Corporation.


Tracey showed how Xerox has achieved significant savings with its global SMMP.  Xerox began in 2000 by centralizing all of its registration activity and now has a full SMMP that it has deployed across key countries and regions to create a centralized process for all of its global activity. A key enabler is having the centralized online meetings portal where meetings requests can be submitted from anywhere in the world. A centralized process allows for supplier leveraging, policy control, risk management, and ease of traveler tracking. It has also allowed Xerox to focus on its strategy for incorporating virtual meetings.  Tracey and her team are blazing the trail and she’s sharing a lot of their lessons learned through her work with the NBTA, making it easier for the rest of us.

In this blog, I use the term "strategic meetings management” a lot. In fact, I'm also seeing the term used more and more these days, especially as companies increasingly try to take control of spending on events. 

Unfortunately, the term is often mis-used or mis-understood. I sense it’s getting trivialized. Some people seem to think it's all about technology, others about planning meetings better. So, I think it's worth it to define here in black and white what strategic meetings management (SMM) means.  For those of you who may not know, I helped in constructing a global SMMP at Hewlett-Packard and founded the NBTA’s Groups & Meetings Committee, which has now researched, documented and defined Strategic Meetings Management in a series of white papers.

Strategic meetings management is not just about meeting planning and logistics. SMM is the strategic management of enterprise wide meeting related processes, spend, volumes, standards,  and suppliers to achieve quantitative cost-savings, risk mitigation, and superior service. It’s about creating a strategy, policy and using technology to enable your process/program;  specifically in the 6 areas of:

• Registration
• Approval
• Sourcing/Procurement
• Planning/Execution
• Payment/Expense Reconciliation
• Data Analysis/Reporting 

The scope of developing and overseeing strategic meetings management involves lots of thought leadership and hard work – including getting senior executive buy-in.

We live in a time when companies are being criticized for spending money on meetings to take care of essential business. But firms that are meeting want to reap the most ROI possible on every dollar spent. The bottom line: now, more than ever, developing enterprise-wide strategic meetings management is more important than ever.

Thank goodness for organizations like NBTA, whose Groups & Meetings Committee aims to help travel, procurement, and meetings professionals learn skills to develop best-in-class SMMPs. NBTA's committee will unveil its first strategic meetings management certification (SMMC) program at NBTA's annual convention this August in San Diego.

Kari Kesler, current NBTA board member, former co-chair of the Groups & Meetings Committee and lead thought developer of the SMMC said it best in a recent article in Corporate Meetings & Incentives magazine: "Because of the economic state we’re in, it’s the perfect time to have an SMMP in place. All the questions senior execs are now asking about meeting spend and tracking spend cannot be answered without an SMMP,” said Kesler, who now heads up her own consulting firm, KK Strategic Solutions. “It’s very energizing to be at the forefront of this!"

So if you hear or notice anyone referencing SMM, SMMP, SMMC, etc., remind them that there’s a definitive purpose and branding associated with those acronyms, and challenge them to validate their programs accordingly.

For more information about SMMP, SMMC, please check out our Resource Center at www.starcite.com or the NBTA website at www.nbta.org.

The speed with which the swine flu expanded beyond Mexico's borders exemplifies how important it is for corporations to have managed travel and meetings programs in place. These programs must provide managers with the ability to instantly asses corporate impact, make appropriate travel changes and quickly communicate with business travelers.

Just like we saw in the SARS and avian flu epidemics a few years ago, the H1N1 virus is affecting travel. Enterprise-wide meetings management systems play a critical role in helping firms deal with emergencies and manage risk. Most importantly, the systems produce the comprehensive data needed to quickly identify and locate employees and meetings around the world during a crisis. Registration technology offers efficient ways to communicate with travelers and meetings attendees instructions and changes.

Just one more reason why companies can ill afford to have disparate planning, policies and procedures taking place throughout the company. 

If President Obama can launch a stimulus plan to keep businesses running, so can StarCite.

On April 7th, we created the "StarCite Stimulus Plan" -- to help keep companies meeting with customers, prospects, employees and business partners. Our stimulus plan offers free use of StarCite meetings management software for all of 2009 for qualified new customers through June 30th. Behind every stimulus is an impetus.

According to our CEO Greg Dukat: “Our goal is to make it easier for companies to get back to business by delivering savings through StarCite’s meetings management technology."

I heartily agree! Strategic meetings management software automates and supports every key element of the meetings planning and procurement process (planning, budgeting, buying, attendance, payment and results measurement). And studies of companies using our on-demand software has shown that many are saving up to 25% on meeting spend with the tool. But aside from producing savings, meetings management software is increasingly important because it reduces the business risks of failing to properly follow Sarbanes-Oxley, TARP, and pharmaceutical/healthcare regulations.

If you're not already automating and saving on key meeting planning and management processes, check out details of StarCite's new stimulus plan to keep companies meeting.

Twitter and tweets, twitter tags. If you're not familiar with the world of Web social networks, these terms might sound like script notes from a Sylvester and Tweety Bird cartoon. But actually, Twitter, is a free micro-blogging service that lets people keep in touch through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: "What are you doing?"

What does this have to do with strategic meetings management or corporate event planning? At meetings, people are doing some pretty interesting things with social media technology -- and it's having an immediate, dramatic effect on content. For example, planners are not only using Twitter to update attendees on last-minute agenda changes, but some are also encouraging attendees to use the social media tool to interact real-time during sessions and panels. An article I ran across on the Web, "Six Ways to Utilize Twitter at Your Next Conference," discussed how attendees at a high-tech industry conference were given a Twitter tag number to exchange live comments (limited to 140 characters) about the session they were attending. Between themselves, attendees formed the best, most pertinent questions for the panel on stage.

Attendees are also blogging about their experiences--some not all positive--at trade shows and association conferences. And organizers are paying attention in order to fine-tune meetings and keep up with changing tastes. 

Seems to me that the meetings industry is embracing the Web like never before -- from using StarCite tech to create registration sites and post meeting content, to exchanging "tweet" messages about panels in real-time. Have you used any new social media tools to get better feedback from attendees? I’d love to hear about your experiences here!

Non-TARP Companies Cancel Events Over Misperceptions About Meetings

Uncontrolled fear and lack of meeting information makes you do things you regret later -- for example, cancel important meetings because you're worried someone in the government or the public will think they're too lavish. My case in point: a late February poll from Meetings & Conventions magazine says that, while only nine percent of the 135 planners that M&C surveyed work for firms receiving TARP funds, 21% canceled meetings because of the recent rash of negative media attention around meetings at firms receiving government bailout money. More than half the survey’s respondents said the backlash has been "extremely or moderately influential" on their decisions to hold events.

 

While I'm seeing some more positive press about the value of meetings, especially during down business cycles (see March 5th post), this new survey shows that fear about how others view meetings can spread to healthy companies that don’t owe the government a penny in emergency funding.

Yet, the survey had nuggets of positive news! Of all respondents, more companies are adopting strategic meetings management tactics -- the best way to ensure meetings are in line with budgets and produce good ROI. The poll said 39% are adopting new policies around meetings and events either to meet federal requirements, follow industry recommendations or demonstrate good faith and intelligent spending.
 

If you’re afraid of potential bad vibes around your companies’ meetings,
here’s a few best practices to head them off:
 

• Step up communication on the value of events to attendees and senior leaders, for example, in emails, invitations and registration material on your meeting website.
• Collect good ROI measurements, for example, with post-session evaluation materials.

If there was ever a time to demonstrate your value and that of your SMMP, now is the time!  Be vocal and talk about what you’re doing during this economic downturn!