The Association of Insurance and Financial Services Conference Planners is considering an initiative to quantify the amount of money its corporate buyer members spend on meetings and conferences, with the goal of verifying to suppliers the financial power the group can wield, according to the incoming president of the association's board of directors.
Debbie Boschee, Minneapolis-based director of conference and meeting services for Prudential Financial, will begin her one-year term as president of the board that determines the course of ICPA—which changed its name from the Insurance Conference Planners Association but still refers to itself by its old acronym—during the association's annual meeting Nov. 2-6 in Kissimmee, Fla.
One topic expected to be discussed at that meeting would be an effort to survey its planner membership as to meeting expenditures, Boschee said. It has yet to be decided precisely how detailed any such initiative would be, and therefore how valuable such a database could be as a benchmarking tool. At a minimum, any data gathered should be an effective means to convince industry suppliers that the association is worthy of financial support, she said.
"Determining the value of member spending in the marketplace would offer tremendous value to show to our hospitality partners," Boschee said. "Once it's quantified, our supplier partners could go back to their higher-ups and let them know that this is why they should support this specific industry. We want to seek sponsorships and build relationships."
Yet, Boschee noted, the initiative could prove valuable as more than a method of seeking support from suppliers, depending on the direction the board chooses to take. A more extensive survey even could result in the first comprehensive database of insurance and financial industry-specific spending data, which could be used to benchmark individual programs.
"We've just started talking about this, and we're not in the nitty-gritty of it," Boschee said. "We'll explore it as a board and reach out to our members."
Still, ICPA is in the process of developing a research library of case studies and some statistical information to help planner members justify the value of their positions, Boschee said. Ken Juel, the outgoing board president
(Meetings Today, Oct. 14, 2002), spearheaded the initiative, she said.
"We want to build upon meeting professionals' ability to invest in themselves, in a time of consolidation, job loss and downsizing," Boschee said. "We want to help them build on their skill level. We want to pull together information that they can use to justify an internal meeting department. We have a committee pulling together case studies of internal departments versus outsourcing for a library on our Web site. We want to share information, not just to justify their positions, but other studies and surveys as well."
The annual meeting itself also will serve to give planner members information to deepen their industry knowledge and business skills, Boschee said, with sessions on performance, creativity and ethics, as well as a workshop comparing various productivity-improving online meetings management tools.
ICPA is now three years past its watershed and controversial decision to permit meeting professionals from financial companies to join the association, as industry consolidation had blurred the lines of whether companies could be classified as belonging to the insurance or financial services industry. As major a decision as that was at the time, the quantifiable impact has not been great.
"We're going to continue to try and penetrate the financial services market and try to tap into some well-known insurance companies," Boschee said. "We're going to strategize ways to do that and to identify the values of membership. The more varied the association is, the greater value it has for everybody. But our membership is as strong as it's been, and the numbers are pretty consistent."
ICPA officials declined to offer a specific breakdown of the affiliations of their planner members.
Boschee noted the challenges faced by ICPA's membership are not necessarily strictly germane to the industries the association represents. "I don't know the ins and outs of every industry, but I don't think there are many differences," she said. "Though the perspectives may be different than in any other corporate planner's industry, the challenges are not."