Managing Meetings At: Chubb Group Of Insurance Cos.--Firm Fully Automates Mtg. Process

Warren, N.J.-based Chubb Group of Insurance Companies during the past six months implemented an online, end-to-end registration, booking and fulfillment tool for corporate meetings, said the company's head of corporate travel. More than 95 percent of bookings made through the tool successfully pass through untouched, she said, without a company mandate to drive compliance.

Chubb partnered with meetings technology company StarCite Inc. of Philadelphia in December 2004 to implement an online registration tool, added a group air booking function with Outtask's Cliqbook and partnered with American Express for electronic fulfillment, said Sheri Bonsall, vice president of corporate travel, meetings and fleet services for the company.

"There were some definite bumps and snags there, but I can decipher from this year that we've already decreased our transactional spend in meetings just in six months," Bonsall said, "but that comes at the risk of adopting new things and new technologies. We know we're going to have some challenges. We're cost-management-minded and we know this is the direction we want to go."

Chubb spent about $4 million on group air in 2004, Bonsall said. She said Chubb paid 160 percent more in six months' worth of year-over-year group transaction fees before implementing the online tool.

Although other companies have used similar end-to-end online tools for specific meetings, Chubb is StarCite's first customer to apply the process on a companywide scale, according to StarCite representatives. Bonsall said the process was new to some suppliers as well.

"It was the first implementation of the kind for at least a couple of the suppliers, so it was a learning curve and defining and developing a process," she said.

Bonsall said the high rate of first-pass yield shows that not only are Chubb employees using the online air booking tools, they also are using them correctly. Before the company implemented the group air booking tool, meeting planners would submit a list of attendees to the company's onsite travel department, which included a groups and meetings team. Chubb's travel department currently includes two meeting planners.

"It was not a strategic area at all. People would call up and say, 'I've got this meeting, here's a list of the attendees and get them all air tickets.' We've now tried to leverage the strength of the transient spend along with the groups," Bonsall said.

Pairing the program with the transient online booking tool has helped compliance and first-pass yield with the online group booking tool, she said. Bonsall said she holds regular informational meetings at Chubb divisions to teach employees about the tools. Most meeting and conference attendees come from within the corporation, she said.

"Probably 80 percent of them are Chubb employees. When they travel they use the online tool, so there's a very small learning curve," she said.

The decision to implement StarCite's online registration tool was made at the same time the group air booking function was adopted, Bonsall said.

"We thought that would be a good segue rather then saying, 'Here's an online booking tool for groups,' " she said. Online registration funnels attendees through the correct booking process.

Chubb has already had significant savings through leveraging its group and transient programs, Bonsall said, and in 2004 achieved $600,000 in group hotel savings through the use of preferred suppliers and further transient leveraging.

"A lot of hotels are beginning to view this as a single entity and not as two pieces of business. We've been effective in strengthening those relationships by bringing in both transient and groups," Bonsall said. "That's been very helpful and certainly has given us some excellent pricing. Our suppliers are very loyal and always want to do whatever they can to help us make meetings successful."

The company in January expanded its preferred hotel policies overseas, and Bonsall hopes to use the new online meeting registration tools on a worldwide basis.

"We've looked at doing several meetings using the technology for some conferences outside the U.S. that are being planned. We're going to utilize at least the registration tool to organize and give them better reporting and information. We aren't there with the online booking piece, but we will be able to use the tool to help manage meetings," she said.

She said Chubb's senior management has been strong supporters of the travel and meetings programs and the efforts to move the processes online.

Bonsall said mandates may be implemented at some point, but her department currently drives compliance by making online tools easy to use and educating Chubb employees that there still is a drive to centralize meeting and travel sourcing.

"I've been out to many branches of Chubb and given presentations of who we are and what we do, because when you go on an online booking tool, a lot of people in your corporation don't think that there's a corporate travel department anymore, and obviously that couldn't be further from the truth," she said.

Bonsall said Chubb continually looks for new technology and tools that can help streamline travel and meetings management. "We were one of the early adopters of online tools. We had a tool that was doing the job and most people would have been happy with those results. After doing more research and trying to really maximize the usage of the tool and the ability of the type of transactions that it can handle, we ended up adopting a tool that was able to move many types of transactions."