Globalizing a mature U.S. strategic meetings management
program is one of the most complex meetings-related maneuvers a company can
attempt. Organizational structures, approval processes, site-selection
practices and the use of technology are among the many aspects of meetings
management that vary by region or even country. But the potential benefits for
meetings procurement, including global supplier negotiations and reduced risk
through globally aligned policy, have enticed several large companies to
globalize their meetings programs.
The challenge, though, becomes still more complex when the
company itself globalizes rapidly. Such is the case at New York-based insurance
company MetLife, which in 2010 purchased the American Life Insurance Co., or
Alico, from American International Group for $15.5 billion. That deal, called "transformational"
for MetLife by analysts cited in the Wall Street Journal, changed the company
from a largely U.S. firm into one with significant operations around the world,
notably in Japan and Eastern Europe.
Such an immense deal had a major effect on all of MetLife's
internal organizations and processes, and the U.S. SMM program was no
exception. Launched about five years ago, that program featured a centralized
conference and event management organization, mandatory executive approval for
and registration of all meetings, standard hotel contract addenda and a
technology platform. It had demonstrated success in holding the line on costs
while increasing the visibility of meetings spending. As such, MetLife's
management in 2012 looked to see if some of the successful practices could be
exported to its newly acquired business.
"With that global expansion came the question of what
was going on in meetings activity in these other countries," said Amy
Somer, global strategic event specialist and senior conference and event
planner for MetLife's Conference & Event Management department, a 25-person
organization operating in New York and Boston. "We were tasked with
becoming a central resource for meeting activity globally. Certainly we can't
operate every single function around the globe, but we've been asked to at
least touch it in some way, shape or form. It's a big undertaking."
It's also an undertaking that will require a substantial
amount of time to implement. MetLife is in the first few stages of the
initiative, which center on identifying the countries that spend the most on
meetings and determining how much actually is spent and who is spending it,
Somer said.
"We worked with key contacts in those areas to obtain
current meeting spend data and hopefully implement a mandated meeting
registration," she said. "Japan, for example, has the largest
[meetings] presence outside of the U.S., and they have at least three planners
who plan full-time. In other countries, we find people who have a meeting
planning role but who also have a marketing role and a branding role and a
communications role. Planning is just one thing they do."
An early step in MetLife's initiative was to create a
website solely to collect meetings data overseas. The internally developed site
is designed to allow users to enter meetings spending information, and for
Somer's department to extract it. "It doesn't necessarily help us impact
any decision or drive any business to any particular place," she said, "but
it's enough to meet the immediate need of getting a snapshot of what they do."
MetLife uses Cvent's meetings technology in the United
States but in other countries uses the "simple" website in multiple
languages to register meetings, Somer said. "We want to take that
information ultimately to drive consistency and remain flexible, knowing it's
not one-size-fits-all."
Eventually, MetLife intends to implement a mandated meeting
registration process outside the United States much like the one that exists
domestically. In that process, stakeholders are required to contact Somer's
department after securing senior vice president-level approval for their
meetings budgets. Somer's department then may or may not plan the event but
either way contracts are reviewed and key information entered into the Cvent
system.
For now, though, MetLife remains in the
information-gathering phase for meetings management outside the United States. "We
haven't gotten involved in their approval process," Somer said. "We're
just now getting involved in what happens [after approval]: how they determine
where their meetings are going, how they work with hotels and what happens when
you have the meeting request."
Key to the process thus far has been the backing by MetLife's
senior management, which has helped to head off any potential turf battles. "We
had the leadership say that it's very important to the company that we
centralize this and get our arms around this meetings activity," Somer
said. "If they were not on board with that, and we did it anyway, I think
we would have kept running into road blocks."
[PROFILE_1]U.S. Success
Management's support likely was triggered by the
effectiveness of MetLife's domestic program and its conference and event
management department.
The backbone of that program is the registration mandate:
any meeting to be held outside MetLife facilities and any that require a
contract must be registered with Somer's department. The required executive
approval for such meetings is obtained through MetLife's internal
purchase-order technology, and the conference department is notified by that
system when meeting approval is granted.
Somer's department decides whether the logistics of the
requested meeting will be managed by one of the department's 11 full-time
planners or by the requesting manager's department. She said several criteria
affect that decision, including whether any MetLife senior executives will be
among the meeting attendees.
For cases when the conference department does not plan the
meeting—typically when those events are small and uncomplicated—the department
has made available to nonprofessional planners materials and other tips that
help them manage the meeting process. However, when a meeting is turned back to
the internal client's department, its contract is not. Somer's department will
at least review all meetings contracts.
"The contracting piece we do no matter what," she
said. "We at least ask to see a copy of it and whether its being
contracted with any of the global hotel brands that use the standard contracts
we've already negotiated, reducing risk and exposure."
Those prenegotiated contracts eliminate both the need for
legal review of individual meeting contracts and the possibility that MetLife
would be on the hook for damages based on a contract signed by a
nonprofessional planner. The contracts "have already been vetted by legal
and they have addenda clauses," Somer said. "It's tied into our
accounts on a global basis with major hotel companies."
MetLife also developed guidelines that govern acceptable
hotel tiers for specific types of meetings and incentive travel events.
For its general ledger, the company created an overall
meeting account number as well as numbers for specific events so that spending
data correctly can be attributed to the proper cost bucket when expenses are
submitted for payment. If a payment request "hits the general ledger
without a conference code, then we know there's a discrepancy, and vice versa,"
Somer said. "Those are the two indicators of whether there is meeting
spend out there that we don't know about."
Somer's department tracks several metrics to assess
performance, spend, savings, volume of events it registers and manages, surveys
of meeting attendees and negotiated savings levels. However, she added that
actual negotiated savings often are reinvested into MetLife's meetings and
incentive travel programs, enabling the company to offer a more robust event
experience for the same level of spending instead of simply reducing the
meeting's overall cost.
For the overseas initiative, Somer cited global alignment of
MetLife's operating model and adoption of shared best practices as goals and
measures of success, including consistency of policies regarding approval
levels and acceptable hotel tiers. Based on her experience so far, she is
optimistic that the company will get there.
"One thing we're finding, which has been wonderful, is
that when we reached out to [overseas colleagues] and said, 'This is what we do
all day, every day. We have a lot of expertise that can help you,' they for the
most part said, 'We could really use your help. In fact we have this meeting
coming up; can you help us?' " Somer said. "It's been really great.
It's not 100 percent of the time, but there have been key achievements."
This report
originally appeared in the August 2013 edition of Travel Procurement.