Meeting Cards

Tim Bone -- Master of Small Meetings Management

Friday, September 3, 2010 by Kevin Iwamoto

From time to time, I like to highlight industry leaders who raise the bar and achieve success in their meetings programs. Having said that, this blog post recognizes Tim Bone, director of union conventions, events, meetings and travel for Service Employees International Union. Tim was quoted recently in a BTN piece and, with stats that he provided, dramatized how important it is to harness small meetings volume and apply centralized planning, sourcing and other key meetings management strategies to those events. BTN was reporting on a panel discussion at NBTA, led by StarCite's own Linda McNairy, VP of Business Development and also Vice Chair of NBTA's Groups & Meetings Committee.

Tim recently began focusing on bringing order to the management of small meetings, but prior to that, SEIU dealt with them in a very typical way (I say, "typical," because I hear it all the time from meetings managers): administrative assistants would plan meetings on an ad-hoc basis. One of the major downsides to this is that assistants, while they're experts in their core competencies, are not meeting planning specialists, and are often unfamiliar with SMM issues -- from risk mitigation, to using preferred suppliers in order to maximize buying power, to standardizing contracts and addendums.

But Tim turned things around, first by collecting data on small meetings expenses from the company's purchasing cards, invoices and expense reporting tool. He then took that information to senior executives to show them the huge impact of small meetings. Impression made, Tim rewrote the company's meetings policy to mandate that all planning for those events flow through the meetings department. Tim was recently on a webinar we sponsored where he speaks openly about his outsourced program model, here’s a link for you to hear a playback. Currently, between his own internal management process improvements and help from dedicated planners, Tim is now saving SEIU an average 20-30% on meetings -- and that's just in the first year!

It's way too easy to ignore small meetings. But statistics show that meetings and events with fewer than 100 attendees represent nearly 90% of many companies' meetings and events mix. So, it's unwise to ignore the potential added purchasing power and control that a small meetings management strategy and process can give your company. Tim's work, however, demonstrates the value of capturing data even from small events and putting that information to good use for achieving real savings!

New CWT-StarCite Survey Spotlights Meetings Management Opportunities

Monday, August 2, 2010 by Kevin Iwamoto

I've been meaning to congratulate CWT Travel Management Institute, the research arm of Carlson Wagonlit Travel, for its study on the state of meetings management -- Meetings and Events: Where Savings Meet Success. StarCite collaborated extensively with CWT on the research, which substantiated what we already know, that companies can save an average 10% to 25% of their Meetings and Events (M&E) spend when they apply best practices to such areas as policy and compliance, sourcing, and processes.

The report's top savings mark is in line with benchmarking statistics that StarCite has been finding among our customer base, that is, using meetings management automation to make budgeting, planning, sourcing, attendee management and other key meetings tasks more efficient can save you up to 25% of meetings spend.

The new study says that savings and ROI from meetings come from three key areas:

- Creating or fine-tuning an organization-wide meetings policy and enforcing compliance,
- Sourcing best practices, for example, selecting a limited number of preferred suppliers for accommodations and venues, enforcing usage of preferred suppliers and defining standard contract terms and conditions to help maximize purchasing power and protect an organization from onerous cancellation and attrition fees.
- Technology that optimizes processes such as online registration and aids in strategic meetings management.

I have spent a lot of my time evangelizing around the world via industry panels, conferences and with customer round tables highlighting these very same recommendations. On the issue of policy alone, I've repeatedly offered advice about the importance of at least establishing or updating and mandating policy since this blog started. Remember, you can’t expect people to do what’s right for your company in absence of a policy; so take the guesswork out and give employees M&E policies and/or guidelines or they'll make decisions based on their interpretation of “doing the right thing,” and that may not be what’s good for your company.

What I really like about the new CWT-StarCite survey are the practical steps it offers for maximizing meetings management, including:

- Analyzing spend company-wide to allow firms to estimate total spend and begin taking the reins to set up a centralized meeting management organization,
- Designing a well-defined policy that spells out precise rules, standard contract terms and specific processes,
- Selecting and negotiating with preferred suppliers and meetings services and technology partners -- allowing companies to save and benefit from outside expertise,
- Establishing a formal planning process that defines business objectives and sets a formal approval process -- for consistency and compliance and getting the ultimate ROI,
- Replacing manual processes with automated meetings management tools to perform tasks such as attendee registration and sourcing -- which saves time and labor, improves data quality and spend management overall,
- Consolidating to a single payment solution, such as a meetings charge card, enabling companies to better analyze data, improve compliance and boost leverage with meetings vendors
- Evaluating the ROI of meetings, including attendee satisfaction, savings, compliance and other metrics.

Oh, one other thing. I must say that I'm a bit discouraged by another finding of the study -- that two-thirds of the more than 200 meeting planners surveyed manage their events in a decentralized way. I say that I'm discouraged, but I still have faith that more and more firms are seeing the need to centralize management of their meetings, especially in today's economic climate -- where every expense is being scrutinized. The real winner in this common decentralized environment is one company, Microsoft, because that means there’s a ton of Excel spreadsheets that are being manually maintained and utilized often times simultaneously with little to no time to verify accuracy. Sound frightening and inefficient? I assure you this is what’s happening globally every day in decentralized programs at companies who conduct meetings and events as part of their business.

AirPlus: Social Media for Travel, SMMP on Rise

Monday, July 12, 2010 by Kevin Iwamoto

I've been meaning to write about AirPlus International's new survey about use of social media by corporate executives. Recently, the business travel card company came out with "Social Media Making Inroads for Managing Travel," a new study that is part of the company's monthly "The Wire...from AirPlus" series of monitors on business travel trends.

AirPlus's new survey gives us the latest snapshot of the growing power of social media tools in managing travel and meetings -- something that I, too, have been writing about and keeping track of myself in this blog. Last year, AirPlus also did a survey on the same topic, allowing it to compare responses to determine changes in the social media scene. AirPlus, which polled 67 travel professionals in Europe and the U.S., l found this year that a higher percentage of corporate travel professionals used social media, specifically:

- LinkedIn users held steady at about 58% annually;
- Facebook participants increased by almost 25% by a year ago;
- Twitter fans doubled year-over-year in this month’s survey.

What's powerful about social media is that the tools aren't just for meetings managers to promote communication between attendees and to make it easier for planners to distribute course content, updates and other information about events, but it's also a great way for suppliers to expand and increase communications with customers.

I think we, in ever greater numbers on all sides of the industry, are continuing to explore valuable social media experiments. And whether it's attendees posting their impressions of meetings on Facebook, planners taking virtual tours of hotels located on the other side of the world, meeting managers and suppliers forming professional online communities or hotels sending companies tweets about updates and special offers, we're only beginning to see the many benefits of employing social media to strategically manage meetings.

Get Strategic About Onerous Hotel Fees

Monday, March 22, 2010 by Kevin Iwamoto

I saw Bjorn Hanson speak at the Business Travel News/National Business Travel Association Strategic Travel Symposium in New York last week. The noted travel industry researcher and educator from New York University presented a revealing look at the state of our industry.

It was no surprise to me that 2009 was a bad year for hotels, but Bjorn brought some perspective to just how terrible a year it was. First of all, he kept using the term "precipitous," which really brought home how dramatically ugly things got -- and fast -- last year.

For instance, he said that the average U.S. occupancy rate last year was 55%. That made it one of only four years since 1980 that the rate fell in the 50% range. Last year was even worse than what happened after 9/11 -- when occupancies dropped to about 60%. Average daily rates (ADRs) took a dive, too. In 2008, ADR grew 2.7%, but last year the metric dropped a stunning 8.8%.

So, up against this background, it's understandable that hotels would search for ways to increase their revenue. Hanson recounted a list of growing fees or surcharges from hotels that are affecting both transient and meetings travelers. (If you travel a lot for business
and meetings, you can't have helped but notice these lately). And he sometimes put it in a way that shocked the buyers in the audience. For example, read what he said about the mini-bar restocking fee: "The can of soda that is $3.50 if it's the first item taken out of the
mini-bar that day incurs somewhere between a $2.50 and $5.95 restocking charge." That's a "really expensive soda," he said.

Among other fees that hotels are increasingly levying is a charge for master folio billing to offset that fees hotels pay to credit card companies. But some hotels are even levying this new fee if no card is used by a company, and, rather, a paper bill is presented. The fee in this case would be to cover accounting" expenses. Other fees on the rise: meeting room set-up and breakdown charges (especially if F&B is involved) and baggage holding fees (which, like airplane blankets, used to be free).

How important are such fees to hotels? Hanson predicted that revenues from fees and surcharges at U.S. hotels will increase in 2010 for the first time since 2007, when the industry took in $1.75 billion.

Whether you think these charges are outrageous or not, it's urgent that meetings managers start building or updating existing strategies to deal with the growing list of new or higher fees. It's difficult, though, to budget and anticipate the different kinds of hotel fees because they're not uniformly collected across properties and chains. For example, you could be charged one level of fees for holding bags or checking out early at one hotel. But you could be presented with different fees at another property in that same brand. It’s every bit as onerous as those bundled “resort” fees. Or, remember the creative “energy surcharge” fees during the gas crisis?

Hotel accounting systems also don't do a very good job of bundling these charges into rates or figuring out which companies got charged and which didn't. Even if they did, each hotel and chain would have a different system in place, so to get uniformity from that industry is like winning the lotto, your odds are that poor.

It may be difficult to negotiate away or moderate these charges, but it's not impossible. A robust e-sourcing solution offers managers a way to query suppliers on the types and amount of fees they charge. And once you have that information, you'll be better equipped to talk turkey and negotiate with your favorite hotels.

Look out for more posts from me later this week on my take-aways from the Strategic Travel Symposium. There was a ton of great information shared, and I’m glad I was there to soak it in!

Meeting Cards in the Age of Moderation

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 by Kevin Iwamoto

A new report out on commercial card spending notes that 2009 is the first year since purchasing cards were introduced to see a drop in overall spending. In fact, it was a year of decline for the commercial card industry on the whole, which, for more than a decade has posted double-digit spending growth figures.

According to the report, "this explosive growth was driven mainly by the administrative cost savings that card programs were able to deliver. Throughout the decade, as complementary technologies such as program management systems improved, card programs delivered still greater costs savings by improving transparency of spend, particularly in the area of MRO and T&E related purchasing. Taken together, these benefits sparked a secular movement away from costlier paper-based purchasing to more efficient electronic purchasing."

After reading this, I can't help but think how meeting cards -- as part of a comprehensive strategic meetings management program (SMMP) -- have helped countless numbers of companies:

a) discover the scope of their meetings spend separate from T&E,
b) use the data to create policies and rules around purchasing to implement more control,
c) apply what they've learned to increase bargaining power with their meetings suppliers.

Further, meeting cards linked to SMMP technology are powerful tools to help reduce administrative processes, such as budgeting and reconciliation of supplier bills. Card data is pretty solid in the eyes of the CFO, too, and auditors also like the ability to track spend that is documented.

I'm afraid the report, published in the online publication Commercial Payments International doesn't offer too rosy a picture of recovery for spending. It says spend won't keep pace with GDP growth. Not great news for card companies.

But T&E restrictions and purchasing policies that companies have implemented and strengthened won't be abandoned, either. And as I've said many times before, that's good news. The focus -- even when good times return -- will remain on strategic management of spend, whether it's on T&E, meetings or widgets.

Ultimately, I think the power of cards as spend management tools will once again drive up spending levels. Yet, it's surprising that, even today, many companies ignore the benefits of using a meeting card. A new Aberdeen benchmark study due out soon says that over 60% of enterprises have integrated a corporate card into their expense management programs. Yet only 14% are using a meeting card in conjunction with strategic management of their meetings, events and conferences. For more details on that study, click here.

Commercial cards are the instruments of purchasing power that employees hold in their hands -- the first line of defense in spend control. And, when the transaction is complete, cards are the great provider of data that companies need to manage costs. And, in the case of meeting cards, companies can add extra power to the cards by integrating them into their overall SMMP.

The best news about all of this is that if you are in danger of paying a claw back to your credit card provider, due to travel freezes negatively impacting your card spend thresholds for an annual incentive pay out, then issuing meeting cards and funneling their spend volume through your card program may actually help you to meet your basis point hurdles and earn an annual incentive, or at minimum, pay less of a claw back to your card provider. Having managed a very large multinational card program prior to my new life at StarCite, this is an area that you can definitely leverage to your company’s advantage.

Making Procurement Initiatives Work

Friday, March 5, 2010 by Kevin Iwamoto

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.

Good Luck! Debi Scholar

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Kevin Iwamoto

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 se

nt 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!).

A Tribute to 2009's Strategic Meetings Management Leaders

Monday, January 4, 2010 by Kevin Iwamoto

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!'

Estee Lauder Creates Winning SMMP

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 by Kevin Iwamoto

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!

Are Your Suppliers Ready for Your SMMP?

Monday, November 16, 2009 by Kevin Iwamoto

In my blog, I spend a lot of space writing about what companies are doing to create and improve strategic meetings management programs (SMMPs) and how their efforts are rewarded by tighter control over costs and greater bargaining power with hotels and other suppliers.

There's a great deal of work, planning and collaboration that meeting, travel and procurement managers must do to make an SMMP a reality -- especially on a global scale.
But let's look at things from outside the box for a minute. Sometimes meeting managers are so busy running around building their programs to run like clockwork and produce results on the corporate side -- for example, getting buy-in from senior executives, working with procurement and legal departments on setting up standard contract addendum, creating policy on using appropriate vendors and setting spending guidelines for event planners -- that they neglect to make sure their preferred suppliers can fully support their program strategies.

For example, if you want to deploy a global meeting card program, can your vendor provide the kind of aggregated global data you need in an easily accessible format that will help you analyze expenditures by spend type, vendor, and other categories -- information you can use to tighten control and boost purchasing leverage? Can they deliver the data in a timely pre-agreed-upon delivery date? Will you own your own data, or will your supplier need to carve out the data from their total client database?

Because so many companies are waking up to the promise of SMMPs, their vendors, too, are enthusiastic to do their part. But, how can you tell if your suppliers are ready to support your program strategies? If it isn’t already, your due diligence should include pointedly asking them to demonstrate their readiness. For example, consider:

- Asking hotel partners what their average response time is for e-RFPs, (and can all properties even answer electronically?)
- Requesting testimonials from current (and former) customers (You could get some revealing information and opinions from old clients!),
- Analyzing suppliers based not just on low price quotes, but also whether their business and service goals match your SMMP mission, objectives and strategies.

It's a beautiful thing to develop a well-built SMMP, including executive sponsorship, enterprise-wide support and controls, and solid strategies in place to save your company money and mitigate risk. But partnering with suppliers who aren't equipped or ready to support your program fully -- perhaps through lack of consistent service & functionalities or technologies that haven’t been tried and tested in a global environment -- will turn your SMMP dream into a living nightmare. Today the cost for choosing the wrong supplier is more costly than any cost savings you thought you'd be achieving. The loss of credibility and program implementation momentum you will experience will be detrimental, not just to your programs and company but possibly your career.

The decision to select suppliers who can best align with your strategies and those of your company are more important than ever; make your choices wisely.

Trapping Meetings Data -- Advice from Prague Trio

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 by Kevin Iwamoto

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.

More from StarCite's Leadership Forum

Thursday, June 11, 2009 by Kevin Iwamoto

It was an exciting day yesterday at our leadership forum. Our morning general session included a panel of industry experts. We heard from Maritz CEO Christine Duffy, who should be commended for her lobbying efforts on behalf of the meetings industry on Capitol Hill. We heard from Gunther Bright, of American Express who had insightful perspectives on meetings card data and our integrated meetings360 solution. We also heard from Herve Sedkey, from American Express Business Travel who talked about their new SMMP partnership. Larry Luteran of Hilton also had some positive and optimist views of the groups and meetings business and hotel industry.

Many customers remarked to me how impressed they were with Greg Dukat our CEO. Greg has a year under his belt here at StarCite and his background leading technology firms has really brought a new vision to StarCite. Eric Herr, Chairman of the Board of StarCite, and former President and COO of Autodesk was a big hit with his presentation and insights about how and what a C Level executive looks for in dashboard reporting and executive briefings. A key takeaway from his presentation was, don’t report Cost Avoidance as a CFO can’t use that information in public reporting, they report on cost savings and focus on those metrics. What a great level set. Sometimes we can be too stuck in our own worlds. I always learn something new at an event like this.

How to Track Down Hidden Meeting Spend

Thursday, May 7, 2009 by Kevin Iwamoto

For those who have asked for StarCite's just-published whitepaper, "Where There's Mystery There's Margin -- Uncovering Your Hidden Meetings Spend," it’s finally available for download.

It's a great primer on tracking down under the radar meeting spend in order to build a strategic meetings management program (SMMP), cut expenditures and harness that power of spend data with your company executives, hotels and other suppliers.

Here's a gem on where and what to look for: "Tell-tale signs" of meetings expenses can be found in purchase orders, expense reports and corporate credit card statements. And if you're not sure just what a meeting expense might be masquerading as, the research provides examples: bills from conference center suppliers, banquet charges at hotels or restaurants, meals for 10 people or more, extensive airport transfer activities, group tickets for entertainment, expenses for support staff in offsite locations, etc.

Whether you're just beginning to think about identifying and reining in meetings expenditures or you're looking to add teeth to your existing SMMP and/or Meetings Policy, the new whitepaper offers valuable information. Share your impressions with me here, and feel free to ask about any other meetings management issues on your mind.

More Follow-up From StarCite’s Webinar on Finding and Controlling Hidden Meeting Spend

Thursday, May 7, 2009 by Kevin Iwamoto

During my recent webinar on uncovering hidden meetings spend "Where's There's Mystery There's Margin: Uncovering Your Organization's Hidden Meetings Spend", some of the more than 200 attendees contributed great questions to me and my co-host Louann Cashill of Toyota Motor Sales USA. Unfortunately, time does what it does – it runs out. And we couldn't answer all your questions during the webcast. With a lot of travel time recently, I have managed to get to a few more of them:

Collaborating with Other Departments to Effectively Manage Meetings Should meeting planners align with purchasing and or travel managers?

A: It depends where the meeting planner sits within the organization and reporting hierarchy. Ideally if the travel manager reports into finance or procurement, it's best to align with the travel manager who has more knowledge of the travel industry and possibly the meetings industry -- versus a purchasing manager, who often does not. What are some strategies you propose for getting buy-in from marketing?A: Emphasize the meeting card option available only through your meetings program; it's proven to be a huge attraction. Also emphasize the automated processes that technology can provide which is a huge timesaver. It also keeps them abiding by internal policies (e.g. signature authorization, standards of business conduct, protection through the standardized hotel addendum, etc.).

Who funds the SMMP technology? Is this spread across all of the functional areas of the business or only to those who use the tools?

A: You could do either. Or you could pay according to how your company prefers to handle payment for all its services. You could also apply a transaction fee per usage that would then apply only to actual users.

Stay tuned for my next webinar follow-up post. I'll talk about small meetings and offer a couple of creative ways you can increase control of those expenditures and save. If you think small meetings are small potatoes, I'll leave you with this thought: 70+% of companies' meetings are considered small, that is, under 50 attendees. That adds up, and it’s worth looking into and applying controls! By the way, you can still check out the entire webinar. Click here!

The Convergence of Meetings & Business Travel = Enterprise Mobility

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 by Kevin Iwamoto

One of the most interesting conversations I had recently was with a travel manager of a large corporation who analyzed all of the spend categories in their portfolio and is in the process of re-branding their jobs. To be specific, managing air, car, hotel, travel management services, self booking technology, meetings, card, expense management, corporate aviation, and virtual meetings technology are now lumped together and referred to as "Enterprise Mobility." Brilliant! What a perfect way to describe what valuable functions and services this group provides to their company.

I am also impressed by the travel team at another firm, a large, multinational home furnishings retailer. After some internal analysis, they determined that the majority of their business travel is actually meetings related. So they are re-branding their team to more accurately reflect what their job functions really represent.

Now, more than ever, this may be the time to re-think what we do and re-brand to accurately reflect the actuality of today’s’ travel dynamics. It’s all about moving employees in different ways to facilitate business in a safe and compliant manner.

What about Virtual Meetings Technology? A lot of companies simply do not know where to assign oversight of this emerging technology. The current trend which makes perfect sense, is to assign the oversight, policy creation and tracking to the Corporate Travel and Meetings Team. This kind of brings the concept of Enterprise Mobility full circle.

If this concept and branding takes off, remember, you read it here first!

Victim of Industry Transition? Set New Career Goals

Saturday, March 21, 2009 by Kevin Iwamoto

It seems that every week I get a note or call from an industry friend or colleague about losing their jobs or corporate downsizing. Some of them have used this as an opportunity to pursue what they have wanted to do, while others have allowed depression and self-doubt to creep in. My words of advice are this: downsizing and job loss due to mergers and acquisitions should never be taken personally, it’s just an action that corporations take to get short-term financial results.

I really believe that everything happens for a reason and consequently we have to deal with the cards we’ve been given. One such positive example of this is my dear friend Kathy Rust, formerly VP of Meetings for Washington Mutual. We all know what happened due to the bank failures in the U.S., and Kathy took the opportunity to start her own company, Rust & Associates, LLC, a consulting firm that will work with organizations who wish to build or enhance their corporate travel or strategic meetings management programs. Kathy says, “With so many organizations cutting back it seems like the perfect time to offer outside resources to assist with projects and initiatives.” If you need help with your SMMP, check out Kathy’s website, and congratulations, Kathy, on your new career chapter. I know you will do very well.

If you've been downsized or feeling vulnerable due to the current economy, take this time to do some career house-cleaning and decide what you want to do work-wise. What have you longed to do, but never found the time or opportunity to pursue? What are you passionate about? Can you look for a job that supports your passion?

Bottom line is this, we are all responsible for what we do with our lives. If you get dealt a bad or unfair hand, it’s your choice to throw down the cards, get new ones or play it as it comes. Never miss an opportunity to go “All in!”

Auditing Meeting Expenses

Thursday, February 26, 2009 by Kevin Iwamoto

Someone asked me how an auditor could complete an audit on a specific meeting and/or event and unfortunately my response was, “they will have a difficult if not impossible task to accomplish that.” Meeting and event spend is buried all over a corporation's General Ledger and payment for meeting/event spend is also fragmented causing further complications in completing an audit.

The best practices that many corporations have established to date simply points to having a centralized payment vehicle and process for expenses in order to provide the maximum transparency of spend. By mandating usage of a meeting card and process, greater efficiencies and cost-control will follow, for example:

Instead of hunting meeting spend data from multiple sources (e.g. planners’ expense vouchers, T&E card reports and A/P data), managers will view all meeting expenditures in a single, centralized place: web-based meeting card reports. It’s the purest picture of spend.
The data will help you clamp down on unauthorized spend and negotiate better supplier deals.
You’ll reduce the costs of paying multiple suppliers by just issuing one check to your card firm.
You’ll save time and boost power over spending by comparing meeting budget line items with actual meeting card expenditures – via online meeting planning tools. Mutual customers of American Express and StarCite can actually do this now!

Meeting cards are becoming more mainstream, but I think they’ll become an even more efficient solution in today’s challenging economic environment. Do you use a dedicated meeting card? If so, please share in the comment section how it’s benefitted your strategic meetings management program.

Building the Business Case for SMMP

Friday, February 13, 2009 by Kevin Iwamoto

It’s not an easy job proving to C-level executives that you need a strategic meetings management program (SMMP). In a recent webinar that I hosted, the largest percentage of attendees, 31%, said “meetings are too decentralized to measure and manage.” About another quarter added that “executive support for substantial change is lacking.”
Yet a journey of one thousand miles begins with the first step. Here are some tips to create and implement a business plan for a SMMP:

Do some investigating. Find out who’s planning meetings across your organization; uncover spending from varied sources (planners’ personal cards, company checks, and corporate cards); outline sourcing, contracting and other planning practices; and note redundancies and inefficiencies that you can eliminate with a SMMP.
Create a cross-functional support team of meetings management stakeholders, including your corporate travel manager, procurement director, legal , IT and HR managers,
Seek the support of a C-level champion to push approval and mandate your SMMP.
Include conservative estimates of cost savings and SMMP ROI (StarCite estimates savings of up to 25% across all meetings management processes),
Include cost estimates and a timeline for implementation.
To find more tips and advice, review the full Webinar Garnering Executive Support: Building Your Business Case for Strategic Meetings Management.

With the right technology, it’s easier than ever to create a SMMP.