Lockheed Martin Corp. in January introduced a formal policy that covers its first comprehensive, companywide meetings program, which directs all of the company's professional and non-professional meeting planners to use a technological tool to stage all events and pay all meeting invoices with a corporate meetings card.
The Bethesda, Md.-based defense and aerospace contractor is one of the largest corporations in the world in terms of travel volume—its 2002 U.S. booked air volume of $202 million placed it fifth on BTN's most recent Corporate Travel 100 list
(BTN, July 21, 2003). Lockheed Martin also has one of the world's largest meeting volumes. Though one of the goals of the new meetings program is the data consolidation necessary to determine the corporation's true volume, director of corporate travel services Richard Wooten estimated that annual meetings spend is around $100 million.
The new policy is the culmination of an 18-month process conceived to develop a meetings program that would complement its highly managed transient travel program but not centralize all meeting planning functions
(Meetings Today, Sept. 23, 2002).The policy applies to all meetings of at least 10 traveling attendees. Planners of those meetings must use GetThere DirectMeetings technology for site sourcing and event planning and must pay all meeting expenses with a U.S. Bank Visa meeting card
(see story). The policy technically is mandated, but Wooten said that, because of its recent introduction, the goal is to educate users, not yet to punish noncompliance. That, however, will not last forever.
"We call it relaxed persistence," said Frank Melesky, Lockheed Martin travel commodity manager for global hotels and groups and meetings programs. "We are not taking 'no' for an answer, and we're working on those who have skepticism, but we've been quite surprised with the embrace of the new plan." That embrace, Melesky said, was aided by what he called strong support of the new policy and its development from Lockheed Martin senior management. "The foundation was set by very strong buy-in from top management, including our controller and CFO, to include in the corporate travel policy requirements for meeting planners and other individuals who support meeting functions," he said.
Coincidentally, Lockheed Martin's travel policy also was in the process of renovation, Wooten said, leading to an opportunity to incorporate language governing meeting operations. "Management felt it was appropriate to incorporate meetings into our revised policy as a springboard to get everyone onboard," he said.
Management support also extended to the decision to integrate meetings technology into the new meetings program. "Lockheed Martin is all about technology, not just developing it but using it," Melesky said. "Our management recognized the fact that adapting meeting planning tech to the corporate travel program, where available, would demonstrate savings and benefits."
After a technology search, Lockheed Martin selected DirectMeetings, with "the utility of the tool" as the deciding factor, Melesky said. Much of that utility was defined by the company's previously chosen online self-booking tool, GetThere DirectCorporate, a sister product to DirectMeetings. The two link to provide online travel booking at the point of meeting registration.
"We made the decision that the DirectMeetings product was ideal for our situation because we did not have a centralized meeting planning function," Melesky said. "Some are highly professional, enormous meetings, others are just operated at the local level, but they are numerous at every location. We want to make sure the product supports both. We looked around, but we thought this had the best overall capability for us, given most of our meetings are small, midsize and ad hoc."
About 75 percent of U.S.-originating bookings, and between 25 percent and 30 percent of international bookings, are conducted through DirectCorporate, Melesky said, making a link between travel and meeting technologies vital.
The other major introduction to Lockheed Martin travel policy is the mandate of the U.S. Bank meetings card. Essentially a corporate card configured to capture meetings data, the meetings card replaced a standard accounts payable process in which individual checks were cut for individual meeting invoices. Under that system, though, Lockheed Martin had little chance of capturing meetings data, which the meetings card is expected to provide.
"Capturing data is a challenge here because of our decentralized process," Melesky said. "Our individual business units operate as standalone operations. U.S. Bank has made available an online site to collect the data from our various meetings, so we can study spending patterns and event locations and leverage that data." Lockheed does not have a single accounting and reimbursement system, although U.S. Bank Visa is the company's preferred corporate card. "Some business units use independent accounting systems, but the meetings card couples well regardless. There is good reporting and record keeping available."
Alerting employees with at least some meeting planning responsibility across every corporate business unit has been a significant undertaking, with direct e-mails to those employees and the establishment of a meeting page on the company's intranet travel portal all part of the process. The meetings page includes a DirectMeetings user manual, meeting card usage guidelines and points of contact for the corporate travel team. The company has offered DirectMeetings training via Webconferencing to any employee that plans any meeting, and about 180 employees have received it, Melesky said. "We want to make employees aware that this is not just part of policy, but that it meets our planning needs," he said. "On balance, they've been impressed and enthusiastic."
Lockheed's next step will be to approach vendors with the consolidated meetings expenditure data gathered by the implementation of the meeting card and DirectMeetings, Melesky said. "We want to get into the position of capturing the data in a central repository to understand the size and nature of the spend, then use that data to leverage that spend," he said. "We can realize spending patterns. Already we've seen two instances where there are popular venues that work with Lockheed Martin in negotiations."