NBTA's Groups and Meetings Committee at the National Business Travel Association conference in San Diego Aug. 23-26 will debut its latest white paper, A Strategic Approach to Small Meetings, as well as a revision of a 2005 white paper, renamed Building a Meeting Policy to Support Your Strategic Meetings Management Program.
Though the vast majority of corporate meetings are small meetings, which the NBTA committee has classified as costing between $5,000 and $10,000, few companies have a handle on those events, according to Lee Ann Adams Mikeman, NBTA Groups and Meetings Committee chair. Even firms with an SMMP in place have a size threshold that precludes them from managing the planning, increasing the savings and minimizing the risks of these meetings. To make the situation even more complicated, most of these smaller meetings are managed by administrative assistants or novice planners.
"We looked for ways companies could manage all of these meetings without adding staff," said Mikeman, adviser to the publications subcommittee, which consisted of Chris Hunnes, Accenture Procurement North America category lead-meetings and events; George Odom, Advito senior director;Tamara Gordon, United Health Group global travel and meetings manager; and Marybeth Roberts, Amgen senior manager, operations.
Several approaches are outlined in the new white paper, including:
- A "meeting in a box," where the meetings department pre-negotiates various packages with hotels "so the administrative assistant can call the hotel down the street to get already negotiated room rates, a standard audiovisual package and things like continental breakfasts, lunches and breaks."
- A strategy to prenegotiate, based on volume, a certain discount for all meetings and services booked at that hotel, and let the admins take care of the planning details. Standardized contracts would ensure that risk to the company is minimized.
- A plan to provide a basic "toolkit" for the novice planner, including budget spreadsheets, standard cancellation policies, lists of concessions the planner should ask for and other advice. Companies could require contract reviews to ensure risk mitigation clauses are addressed to protect a company's interests, such as favorable attrition and cancellation terms, noncompete, indemnification and insurance clauses.
Getting Started
A company may begin managing its small meetings by "establishing a definition for a 'small meeting' to drive policies and procedures, considering the scope of meetings that could benefit most from cost savings and risk mitigation improvements." It's also important to understand these activities across the enterprise. The paper's advice: "Consider implementing a meetings registration process to track small meetings before implementing any solutions." Fortunately, there are more tools available than ever before, and the paper explores what to look for when choosing one. The best guideline is what the paper calls "the 80/20 rule: If a system meets 80 percent of established requirements, it may represent the best solution."
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Also, virtual conferencing is particularly pertinent for small meetings. As the paper suggests, "A company may require that any employee planning an internal meeting first make use of headquarters conference facilities ... or that offsite venues may only be used when facilities are not available." Companies also are defining the types of meetings ideally suited for a virtual platform; for example, meetings of fewer than 25 people and entirely comprised of employees.
Improving On Policy
"We began updating our white papers a few years ago to ensure materials were pertinent, timely and accurate. Since policy was the first paper ever published by the committee, it made sense to tackle that one first in terms of a rewrite," Mikeman said.
The goal of rewriting Building a Meeting Policy to Support Your SMMP (originally known as the Framework for Success series) was to take the updated SMMP "wheel" and review each piece in terms of how meeting policy affects it. The components of the wheel driving policy include: risk mitigation, supplier management, savings, spend monitoring, purchasing compliance, demand management and service enhancement.
"The original paper provided sample policy templates from established SMMP companies and encouraged use of these templates to tailor individual policies," said Mikeman. "As we've learned, there is no one-size-fits-all SMMP or meeting policy. So this time, the paper's intent is to provide a more over-arching view of the possibilities from a mature SMMP perspective and offer recommendations that encompass best-in-class SMMP components without providing specific policy templates."
Also included is an in-depth section on compliance. "In order to fully reap the benefits of your SMMP, you have to establish procedures that drive policy adoption and compliance," said Mikeman. "Checks and balances should be implemented to track and address noncompliant behavior so your program can achieve maximum effectiveness with respect to cost savings, mitigated risk and consistent service quality."