It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.” | |
- Seneca
Today I had the great pleasure of speaking at the PCMA Education Conference on the topic of Strategic Meetings Management with Kevin Iwamoto, VP of Enterprise Strategy for Active Networks. Kevin is a person I would call "the father of strategic meetings management," and it was an honor to share the stage with him.
Myself? Well I have about a solid month of strategic meetings management experience (plus 5 years of on-again, off-again research on the subject!)
My company began exploring an SMMP about 5 years ago, in partnership with our Travel Procurement team. That first attempt at an RFP resulted in so many requirements and wishlist items that the final printed file comparing responses was a 6 foot by 7 foot Excel spreadsheet! Completely incomprehensible, overwhelming, and was actually laughed at and put in the storage closet.
So I made a friend in the procurement department and we began to exchange war stories. Together, we had informational sessions with a number of SMMP providers, and we explored from more of an RFI point of view, rather than an RFP. We even lightly and non-contractually partnered with a company that could act as an SMMP resource for teams to leverage if they needed event venue sourcing support.
A few procurement directors and event marketing directors later, we tried it again, but couldn't get any traction with leadership at all.
Finally, last year our company launched a savings initiative, seeking ideas from leaders within the company on how we can save money by doing simple things. My procurement team and I submitted the idea that we can save over $2M annually by implementing an SMMP (knowing full well that other companies our size have saved upwards of $10M by implementing programs like this!).
We dusted off our RFI and RFP responses and began to evaluate what we really wanted out of this program. By bringing us
back to the objectives for the program (tracking meetings spend, mitigating contract risk, etc.), we were able to identify the true
benefits of the program and what was really important to the company. While the
first 4 RFPs were led and directed by procurement, this last one was supported
by procurement with the event team writing the RFP document and evaluating the
responses. Procurement managed the RFP process, scheduling, and support of the
respondents.
We determined
that we did not have the funding to implement a fully-scoped SMMP at first, but
allowed competitors with technology solutions to bid anyway to get a full
understanding of the possibilities and what a full program could look like for
us in the future. We knew that we needed to land on a solution that would be
covered with commission-able rates.
As we rolled out the program, we got three consistent
responses from team members:
1) They were concerned that we were forcing them to
select the cheapest property – which is by no means the case. This process is
simply to get competitive bids. Full control lies with the event
manager to determine which property they wish to use.
2) Event managers
claimed that it’s faster to just call their national rep or local hotel
contact, rather than fill out a form and wait on our SMMP to get back to them.
As they’ve starting using the SMMP, though, they find that a 5-minute form and
10 minute conversation with their SMMP rep is much better than leaving 3
voicemails with their hotel contact and negotiating concessions on their own!
3) Our APJ team
has some team members who firmly believe they will get better pricing going
direct. We have not fully rolled this out yet in the region, so we will
continue to operate in pilot mode this year as we determine what the realities
are in the region.
The event team had
concerns about moving to an SMMP for fear that they could no longer use some of
the event management agencies they are comfortable with on large-scale
programs. We agreed that any large program where the event management agency
would use commission-able rates to lower their fees could continue to be used.
If, however, the team was going to hire an agency specifically for a venue
search, they should use the SMMP.
Knowing that
this would be a giant change for our teams, we agreed with our SMMP provider
that we would take year one and operate as a pilot program. We have monthly
check-ins with team members to discuss bumps and bruises and get our program
working smoothly. Once the 1-year pilot ends, we will evaluate together the
results of the program and determine if it is beneficial to continue with an
official 2-year agreement.
We agreed to
roll out the program in the US and EMEA, and roll out to APJ and LatAm later in the year. However, the APJ
and LatAm teams were excited to try out the
program and have begun leveraging the SMMP already as well.
We have worked hand-in-hand with procurement to draft
policies, review addendums, write blog
posts, send corporate-wide emails, and craft a newsletter to keep everyone
informed of the program, the available venues where cancellations have
happened, and hot dates and rates from our SMMP. The Event marketing team has
taken the lead on rolling out training to the corporate admins, and the procurement team continues
to be involved as the program involves.
We’ve had the program rolled out for
about a month now (48 programs are in process with a handful having
been contracted)
and are already seeing an average 10% savings off of the catering-only events, and 20% off the events with room blocks that have been
contracted through the program.
With the savings, event owners
are able to show higher ROI from revenue generated from their customer-facing
events, or are able to use the money saved for more strategic investments like
speaker fees or marcom collateral.
Event managers
are thrilled to not have to worry about contract clauses and concession
negotiations. And even more thrilled to
not have to wait on legal and procurement to review contracts!
From a procurement standpoint, by tracking our meeting
and event venue usage, we are able to drive more business to our preferred
hotel brands and thus negotiate even better corporate rates for the future
based on volume. We are also able to have great conversations with A/V
companies in these properties to drive those costs lower on volume, as well.
By reducing
the logistical costs of the events for customer-facing activities, we will increase
the total income earned from the converted revenue, while not reducing the
attendee experience in any way.
If your company is exploring a strategic meetings management program, I highly recommend picking up Kevin's book from Amazon as step number 1!
Step number 2 is to develop perseverance. You will try to launch a program. It will fail. You may try again unsuccessfully. You might even give up for a while. But keep at it! Eventually, the stars will align and you will have the right leadership in place to support your goals. Step 3 is to develop the right partnerships between marketing and procurement. Get the right people on board to help each other, develop relationships that are open enough to allow honest conversations about problems and outcomes. Step 4: go forth and conquer. It won't be easy. But it will be worth it. |
Monday, June 11, 2012
Strategic Meetings Management Programs: Our Journey
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3 comments:
Corporate event managers know how to transmute any ordinary space to spectacular so it is wise move to take the advantage of them.
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Excellent post. We want to thank you for your healthy post. your writing style is fabulous so keep doing this job regularly.
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