The number of companies implementing new meeting policies or revising and strengthening bare-bones language appears to be on the upswing as corporate meeting and travel managers buttress verbiage to corral contract-signing authority and establish a central point for meetings management.
The scope and strength of such policies vary, ranging from simply defining a meeting and recommending actions to mandating specific processes and directing all related behavior. Yet, there is increasing evidence that such polices, historically neglected when compared with the traditional detail and emphasis on transient travel policies, have the attention of corporate executives.
"We are absolutely seeing that," said Jay Roseman, vice president of American Express Meetings & Incentives. "There's a focus on procurement, on tracking the meeting and on tracking cost savings, which is a good thing."
According to a recent Meetings Monitor survey of 101 corporate travel buyers, half indicated that their companies have established formal policies that cover meeting operations. Those polices have not remained static either, as 34 percent of respondents said their companies within the past 12 months either have created new or revised existing travel policies.
There are some common features to the policies themselves. Most—69 percent, according to the survey—remove contract-signing authority from an internal meeting sponsor and give it to senior management, procurement or the travel or meetings department. Almost 60 percent of respondents said their corporate policies require the approval of an executive for a meeting to be held.
Other policy aspects were noted by less than half of Monitor respondents. About 35 percent of them said their policies establish a central point, be it the travel department, meeting department or somewhere else, for all meetings management operations. One-third indicated that their policies place restrictions on the destinations or properties that may be used for meeting sites, and about 29 percent restrict the types and methods of travel that can be used for meeting attendance.
"We are revising our policy to have all agreements come through my department or the conference planning department," said Ralph Davis, manager of travel for North America at Pittsburgh-based H.J. Heinz Co. "Before that, they were scattered throughout the company."
Davis said the impetus for the corporate decision to alter the travel policy to better specify the handling of meetings and their contracts was the specific consequences of meetings negotiated outside of the travel department, "two in particular," Davis said. The policy revision should be complete by August, he added.
Davis does not anticipate any resistance from meeting planning employees, noting that it is difficult to argue when the consequences are documented. The Heinz policy also will specify the definition of a meeting, in this case, 10 or more people.
Davis' experience illustrates the policy-making process at many companies. Particularly in a weaker economic climate that has spurred more attention to all travel expenditures, including those on meetings, many senior managers and travel buyers have realized that the benefit of extensive meeting contract review outweighs the occasional turf-related difficulties inherent in shifting responsibility from one employee to another or one department to another. Often, this can be a result of paying cancellation or attrition damages.
"We are in the process of making sure that any meeting of 10 or more has to contact the travel department to ensure we'll get the best airfares and negotiate the hotels contract," said Susan Dupart, director of corporate services for San Jose, Calif.-based Aspect Communications Corp. "We will not use the word 'mandate,' but there tends to be high policy compliance anyway, so that won't be a problem."
Another important factor often cited in discussions of meeting policy is the role of procurement and purchasing departments. In some corporations, these departments are playing larger roles in sourcing and purchasing meeting and transient travel
(BTN, May 12), and the tenets of procurement-based meeting sourcing often stress the importance of a central point of purchase.
Some rationales are far less complex. Many companies simply have chosen to exercise more executive review over a process that often is more costly than they realize.
"We mention meetings in our travel policy, but we need something with a little more meat," said one corporate buyer who requested anonymity. "We touch on it now—that all meetings should go through a central point and should use preferred transient suppliers—but we need to make a more concerted effort. We're doing some benchmarking to find out what the policy should include. People need to know what they have to do, when they have to do it and whether there are any exceptions to that."
In other cases, the meeting policy actually understates the corporations' meeting operations. Several companies have established a central point of meeting contact, which is respected without the imprimatur of policy language requiring it.
"There is a meeting section in our policy, but it's nothing long," said Rick Wakida, global travel manager at Redwood City, Calif.-based Openwave Systems Inc. "We talk about what constitutes a group, and we encourage the use of the travel office, but we're trying to get more involved as a resource."
That desire, Wakida said, soon will be reflected in policy revisions. "Our intent is to expand it," he said. "I want it to say that sponsors should contact my department, and we will coordinate with suppliers and provide the resources for site selection and contract review."
Actually, Wakida said, that statement better represents Openwave's current structure than the policy statements. "We're doing that now, but our policy has not caught up to that," he said. "Soon we will coordinate that effort."