Many companies look to meetings cards to begin their journey
to strategic meetings management. It’s a good way to start gathering spend into
one place, and it can provide other benefits. As corporate travel managers get
more involved in meetings management, they may have to temper their
expectations. As Illumina’s senior regional marketing manager Kim Scott,
McDonald’s project manager Erin Stahowiak and Meetings Analytics founder
Kimberly Meyer talked with BTN editor-in-chief Elizabeth West about
meetings payment, the conversation quickly turned to cards, both their
limitations and their potential.
BTN: Why is meetings payment so fragmented?
Erin Stahowiak: For McDonald’s, and for many
companies, it’s because meetings have been fragmented. Our cost centers are
currently totally decentralized so each department conducting meetings owns
that budget and processes that. Starting SMM about three years ago, we wanted
to be able to understand meetings spend by vendor. Right now, we know there is
still some spend on a T&E card, but for the most part it’s invoice … [that
we reconcile] manually.
Kimberly Meyer: Also, when you look at large
companies that have grown by acquisition, you’ve got disparate systems and
processes that come with that. Meetings have not been managed like other areas
of spend; people have been doing their own thing. The change-management piece
is hard, so there needs to be a good value proposition to jusitfy it.
BTN: Illumina has made a big push for
meetings cards. Why?
Kim Scott: There’s not a drive from Illumina
corporate right now to move to full SMM. The important thing now is that
charges hit the right budgets and we can manage a very high volume of programs
and events. We aren’t doing a unique card per event now; instead, I have a meeting
card assigned to the different cost centers and departments we support. All the
sales events go on one card; regional marketing events on another card;
internal events on another card and so on. That’s a big change from using
purchasing cards, when everyone on my team would use my P-Card or a second
P-Card in the department. People were using my card and I didn’t know what they
were using it for, and I had to allocate all that. The meetings cards come
straight from our corporate travel department and finance. They put a budget on
the card, they scan the statement, they send to me to review and if the charges
are accurate, we’re done.
BTN: So are you allocating anything by
category? You’re approving $40,000 to hotel ABC, but are you figuring out how
much was accommodations versus food-and-beverage, etc.?
Scott: We absolutely do that within [our meetings
management tool] budget module. We have to abide by the Sunshine Act, so that’s
where our real reconciliation issues are. Those hotel charges, F&B, ground
transportation—that all gets separated and goes into our tool. That’s the hard
part for us, manually entering all those charges back in and making sure we are
correctly accounting for our [transfers of value to healthcare professionals].
BTN: That sounds very similar to invoices.
Is this why McDonald’s has not moved to card?
Stahowiak: It’s a lack of automation and the lack of
integration, yes. At McDonald’s, we’re getting what we need through our manual
processes, and we don’t see enough compelling value from moving to a card.
There may be some efficiency from a payment standpoint … [but] it all still has
to be recoded and reconciled; there is still such a significant volume of
rework that we haven’t seen the value.
BTN: What about integrating card with meetings
management technology?
Meyer: Just because a vendor is integrated at a high
level, the work to get an individual corporation’s accounts working with that
integration is usually some tech and development work and mapping to cost
centers, etc. If 30 percent or 40 percent of the time you have to go back and
do the manual work anyway, then the integration gets you part way there, but
maybe in some ways you have problems that you didn’t anticipate. Also, meeting
card data isn’t as detailed as some other card data that offers Level 3 or
Level 4 data. Because of that, you’ve got to reconcile manually. I do want to
go on record as saying that meetings cards can be very helpful in getting
transparency into spend. If you already have a good grasp of data, like
McDonald’s, then it might be a “nice to have” rather than a pivotal point.
BTN: Illumina is getting additional benefits
from consolidating on card. Tell us about that.
Scott: Having meetings cards adds a significant level
of efficiency just to be able to have multiple people be able to work on a
program and have them all be able to pay and capture with the same payment
form. Worst-case scenario, you’re reconciling one card to one program. Beyond
that, we get a rebate from our consolidated spend. Our corporate travel group
is trying to use that rebate money to fund head count to build a centralized
meetings program.
BTN: Would rebate influence McDonald’s
decision-making around working toward a card solution?
Stahowiak: A
rebate probably always influences your decision, and I would think that’s
something we’ll be looking at. We very much would like the whole thing to
happen and see ourselves heading in that direction. We just want it to be
stronger when we get there.