Globalizing its strategic meetings management program has delivered a high return on investment to Hewlett-Packard Co., but the initiative has taken more than five years and "we're not done yet," HP meetings global category manager Shirley Kuhloie said here last week at the National Business Travel Association convention.
Expanding and adapting a strategic meetings management program that started in the United States and Canada, HP's global travel and meeting services team has deployed the centralized service model to 18 countries in Europe, Middle East and Africa and four countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The program offers a meeting card in 10 countries and meeting service bureaus in Barcelona, Spain, China, Sydney, Australia, and the United States. Operated by an outsourced provider, the bureaus engage in hotel sourcing, attendee registration and air reservations, and other fulfillment needs of stakeholders.
HP meeting planners, administrative assistants or other stakeholders are directed to register their meetings and request services through the StarCite technology that the company has selected. Meeting service bureau employees then contact the planners to fulfill the services needed.
"Part of the reason we decided to go with a centralized team was to have a core group of individuals managing contracts, ensuring that they are HP legal-compliant and negotiating all the terms and conditions," Kuhloie said.
"We think there's a great deal of risk in contracting and in letting individuals who don't have a background in planning meetings" do so, she added. "We look at the local team in the region as being critically important because they understand the cultural differences in contracting, understand the market and know what to ask for in terms of rates and concessions. It's very difficult for us to believe that we in the United States know what to ask for overseas."
HP has a published global meetings policy, but employees are not mandated to use the program.
Speaking to peers, Kuhloie said, she often has found that "there's a continued desire to have your program published and followed, but not often does leadership within an organization mandate that it be followed."
Instead, Kuhloie markets the program benefits and services, all of which are funded at the corporate level. "The business units are more readily in tune with the benefits of using the program when they understand that it is centrally funded," Kuhloie said. "If they're able to obtain the assistance, knowledge and experience of a team of people to help with contracting, group air and setting up attendee registration Web sites, it's welcome."
But Kuhloie has found it critical to communicate such benefits, as well as the overall benefits to the corporation, to the business unit leaders and stakeholders from the start. "Get them engaged from the onset so when you have your team in place and are ready to start helping them with their meetings, they understand why it makes sense."
To communicate those benefits, Kuhloie said, her team recently began inviting business leaders to participate in a series of webinars and to ask questions. "As much as you hope that if you build it they will come, it doesn't happen that way. It involves a lot of one-on-one conversations," she said.
To build just the right service components and delivery models in each region, Kuhloie also recommended that others consider holding focus groups with key stakeholders.
"Be patient, understand that it takes a lot of time," said Kuhloie.
Using data from its corporate card program and purchase orders, HP's global travel and meeting services team "assessed the volume of meetings per country" to identify where first to expand the meetings program. The company estimates meeting spend at about $250 million a year. The "varied ways of tracking meeting and event spending" from marketing, training, sales and other departments makes it difficult to pinpoint spending beyond the estimate, she said.
Beyond country spending data, the rollout plan for the strategic meetings program was designed based on "where we thought we had good adoption and could identify stakeholders who were looking for assistance planning meetings and events," Kuhloie said.
"Cultural issues need to be addressed," she added. That's one of the reasons why HP has opted to establish meeting service bureaus in various countries. "Services we're providing in the U.S. are different from what we're providing in China," where HP just opened a bureau in May.
HP has found that the meetings program delivers savings of 25 percent to 30 percent in the United States and slightly less, at 18 percent to 22 percent, in EMEA. Savings come from hotel venue selection and contracting, internal workflow efficiencies from standardizing meeting registration Web sites and from air booking decisions. Officials consider whether transient negotiated rates or group rates offer the best pricing. Use of the American Express meeting card also provides a "cleaner process that saves HP a lot of time, energy and effort," Kuhloie said.