New Study Shows Cos. Not Meeting Savings Potential

Most corporations are "ignoring" potentially significant savings they could realize in their meetings and events programs by failing to implement end-to-end meetings expense management strategies, according to a new study sponsored by American Express and conducted by A.T. Kearney. Only 20 percent of survey respondents said their companies have a dedicated meetings policy and 15 percent of respondents said their companies have no rules at all around meeting expenditures.

Though many companies have yet to implement a comprehensive meetings management strategy, 82 percent of respondents said that the area would be an "important" to "extremely important" issue over the next two years.

"We're going to see a convergence toward mandating, because there is a big opportunity that organizations are leaving on the table. There are significant dollars that they're leaving on the table if they don't optimize and organize meetings spend," said Mark Webb, vice president of the global client group of American Express Global Corporate Services.

The increased corporate focus on meetings is a result of a convergence of several trends, Webb said. Companies are spending more today on meetings than they were five to 10 years ago, he said, and companies are becoming more sophisticated in managing their transient travel and developing policies that can apply to meetings. Corporations also are under more pressure to increase efficiency, he said.

Tracey Wilt, manager of global travel operations for Xerox Corp. and board member of the National Business Travel Association, said a growing number of corporations are starting to implement a more comprehensive approach to meetings management.

"The learning curve will be quicker ever for business travel management to apply those same principles," said Wilt, who formerly served as co-chair of the NBTA groups and meetings committee. "There are a lot of differences, but the concepts can be applied to meetings."

Webb said many companies miss opportunities in contract negotiations. Only 39 percent of companies polled said they leverage a combined meetings and transient spend for vendor contracts and 61 percent said they use preferred meetings suppliers. However, leveraging a combined spend is relatively easy, he said, and can be one of the first steps a company takes in developing a strategic meetings management program.

The study also showed many companies have fragmented or decentralized methods of compiling data. Accounts payable reports were used by 50 percent of respondents, expense reports by 42 percent, 36 percent used corporate meeting card data and 36 percent used manual processes. Respondents were allowed to choose multiple answers.

"The value and the urgency associated with using highly sophisticated data doesn't end at transient. It's equally applicable across the entire spectrum," Webb said.

A.T. Kearney conducted the survey of 105 companies based in the United States and Europe from October 2004 to February 2005.

European companies may have affected the results, Webb said, as North American companies are slightly more advanced in their approaches to meetings management.