The National Business Travel Association's groups and meetings committee this week is expected to release its first product, a white paper describing guidelines and best practices for developing a comprehensive corporate meetings program. Though the paper specifically eschews the phrase "meetings consolidation," it recommends methods of researching and assessing internal meetings management practices and, consequently, implementing specific measures allowing corporations to exercise more control over meeting budgets, site selection and payment.
The white paper stresses that no "strategic meetings management" practice—the committee's preferred terminology—is a magic bullet that will solve all meetings-related problems and cautions that the positive effect of specific meetings management practices may vary from company to company. However, the committee emphasizes that there are conceptual best practices that, when translated and adapted to a particular company's situation and culture, should yield financial benefits, including:
•Requiring the approval of an executive on a level higher than both the meeting sponsor and planner for the meeting to go forward
•Registering whatever the company defines as a meeting at some area within the company to allow for data gathering and possibly assistance with logistical management
•Some type of sourcing procedure, be it outsourced or handled internally, that encompasses supplier identification and selection, negotiations, contracting and risk management
•Limiting the methods of payment acceptable for meeting purchasing
•The reconciliation of each meeting and evaluation of company-defined return on investment
The white paper distinguishes between these concepts and best practices therein, citing a variety of possibilities to better the chances of program success, including securing the signature of a senior executive prior to the beginning of the sourcing and planning process, providing management with frequent reports detailing where and when meeting activity takes place, the implementation of a clear system detailing to all stakeholders the status of a given event, the establishment of a central group to source all suppliers and leverage meeting spend for all meetings and redesigning corporate budget codes to ensure a single form of meeting payment. All of the above concepts and best practices can—arguably must—be augmented with technology and a clear method of reporting data, the white paper asserts.
The white paper, the first product of the groups and meetings committee since NBTA established it in 2003
(Meetings Today, April 28, 2003), was designed as a lynchpin of all the committee's future endeavors, said committee co-chair Tracey Wilt, who also is Xerox Corp. purchasing consultant for travel and meeting services. "For all of our other products, we needed this to be launched first," Wilt said. "The committee we had in place interviewed companies, investigated and pulled out data. It's truly a foundation, and we needed a baseline of best practices. Anything else we do will support this paper."
The committee was formed to address what NBTA called the growing number of travel managers charged with gaining some control over meetings management practices and expenditures, and the white paper was developed with this particular audience in the committee's collective mind, said co-chair Madlyn Caliri, who also is global hotel and meetings program manager at AT&T Corp. "If you don't have any exposure to meetings, this is a great jumping-off point," Caliri said. "The key to this paper is that it's not recommending a one-size-fits-all solution, but it's recognizing that everything is going to be based on individual circumstance. We have a lot of members and they have many different solutions to this, but we feel these are the core questions that you need to ask."
The white paper avoids the use of "meetings consolidation" because the committee felt the industry's definition of the phrase varies and the sense that consolidation inherently leads to fewer meetings and choices could alienate internal meeting stakeholders, Wilt said. "Consolidation is just one element of strategic meetings management," she said. "It's not clear what the definitions of consolidation and centralization are. It can be an element, and a best practice too, but it's one element."
The committee is comprised of 16 members, including corporate meetings and travel buyers and representatives from airlines, hotels, third-party meetings management firms and technology companies.
Caliri and Wilt, at the beginning of the process used to develop the white paper, formed two sub-teams headed by ING Americas travel, meetings and promotions sourcing specialist Kari Knoll Kesler and GetThere DirectMeetings general manager Mike Malinchok to work on the foundations of meetings management and the components therein. "When we got together, we realized this topic encompassed so very much that we formed the sub-teams," Caliri said. "The team leaders took charge and worked for several months before the whole committee brainstormed and streamlined the information."
The committee has several more projects in the works, some of which could be delivered by year-end. Wilt said the committee soon will study the effect of outsourcing on strategic meetings management—the new white paper makes no judgments as to the wisdom of outsourcing—and the benefits and drawbacks of centralizing the meeting planning process or simply centralizing data management.
Other products the committee intends to address include hotel and airline group and meetings management—the committee expects to issue answers to frequently asked questions on both topics—meeting resource guides and studies of the impacts of government legislation, including the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act that specifies corporate financial reporting procedures
(BTN, Jan. 19).