BTI Americas Targets Clients For Meetings Consolidation

BTI Americas has rehired a key corporate account executive instrumental in running Du Pont de Nemours & Co.'s meetings program and assigned her to assess the potential for other consolidations among the agency's key clients.

Employing a soft sell and hard promises for savings, Christine Hunnes, manager of consulting services, has been back on board with the agency since April, after a year of doing travel consulting for Ernst & Young. In her new role, she has given presentations about the benefits of consolidation to seven clients, including Banc One and Diebold and is close to signing each of them for the consulting services that may lead to a unified purchasing strategy.

Over the next year, she will pitch her services to each of the agency's top 50 clients, among them Kelloggs, Kemper National Insurance, H.J. Heinz, Dow Chemical, 3Com, U.S. Robotics, Com Disco, Cummins Engine Company and Ericsson.

In prior positions with BTI--first as a meeting planner, then as a manager of the Dupont group program, Hunnes worked with all facets of the planning process, handling logistics, negotiations and the fine-tuning of a program that Dupont's travel management team helped develop.

Now, coming full circle, she is the person making the assessments and developing the strategy for other clients.

"The goal isn't necessarily to drum up new revenue streams for BTI. Of course, we'd like the business, but the point of the assessment is to add value to the services we already provide for clients," Hunnes said.

In her 15 years in the travel industry, Hunnes has learned to spot red flags--or predictive traits--in a company. An organization that is trade show intensive, for example, requires a more complex management strategy than one that simply hosts multiple offsite sales or training meetings.

In many ways, Dupont's approach represents a benchmark for one sort of a consolidation--a single, and sizable, program that concentrates on all the meetings-related purchasing.

"What I learned there was invaluable. The company was really one of the first comprehensive consolidations in the country," Hunnes said.

Susann Bell, manager of travel contract administration, said Hunnes came to Dupont at a time when hundreds of people scattered throughout the company were making meetings-related purchases without any big picture objectives in mind. (Bell said 500 were identified in Wilmington alone.)

"Around 1987 we started to look at the meetings area, hoping to consolidate. We opted at the time to go with IVI for consolidated business, and let Rosenbluth handle certain individual meetings," Bell said. "Chris had to maneuver in an environment that could be absolutely dreadful. I say this because this was a time when nobody wanted to let go of any planning responsibility for fear that they would lose their job."

That first year, Bell recalled, Hunnes and her group managed about 1,500 meetings despite the political landscape; everything from the 10-person sales gathering to the 1,000 attendee product launch. Millions of dollars were saved.

"Throughout the entire time, she was a consummate professional. She set a lot of wheels in motion that have led to our most recent successes. Last year, BTI saved us half-a-million dollars in cancellation penalties." Bell said that what made Hunnes invaluable--and why she is glad for her return to BTI--was her understanding of corporate culture coupled with an ability to pay only necessary rates, fees and expenses to make sure objectives for a meeting are met.

"When she was with us in the late 1980s, one of her most valuable contributions were deep air discounts; in the current environment, those aren't available, but what the organized program is good for is access to great hotels at affordable prices."

One significant lesson Hunnes learned at Dupont was the value of identifying "the stake" (otherwise known as "what's in it for me?") to all department managers and employees.

"Sure, you present the case to travel management, but you also have to tell each employee in the organization how they can benefit from a new approach to meetings purchasing. A lot of them don't see how what their secretary does a few times a year can possibly make a difference to their bottom line, or the organization's general fiscal health."

Hunnes recalled an informal study she did at Dupont that illustrated that point when case-building. First, she and others in the meeting department called local hotels and identified themselves as administrative personnel and asked for room rates, meeting room rentals, food and beverage and audio visual fees.

Later in the study, they called back, this time identifying themselves as Dupont meeting planners. "The difference in the rates was significant. Because the hotel sales staff knew that we knew what we were doing, and could bring them a steady stream of future business, they gave us better prices--and this was at a time when occupancies weren't as good."

The first lesson that Hunnes typically conveys to travel management staffs is that consolidation is not inevitable.

While companies of all different sizes can benefit from identifying their spend and organizing a purchasing strategy that maximizes their bargaining position, not all corporate cultures can support an open-door, open-book policy required for success.

Buy-in from the top down, Hunnes relayed, is critical and not every company wants a centralized approach. "Of course, most in the industry profess to know this--it's common sense, and yet there are many misconceptions about how the process needs to be implemented," Hunnes said.

While she favors the single department for a large company, many organizations will achieve many of the same benefits by enabling BTI to track expenditures on MeetingsMax software, a registration and budget tool BTI developed and uses internally for its clients, and by implementing a policy that guides planners in decentralized environments.

An evaluation that considers meetings in the context of overall business activity, Hunnes said, makes the difference between developing a meetings management program that "fits" vs. one that intrudes with the day-to-day activities of a company--and, as a result, fails.

Along with making the usual financial analysis at the start of the consultation, Hunnes includes common sense tactics such as conversing with the "big spenders" in a company--perhaps a sales department that does the lion's share of the meetings--to determine what their concerns and expectations are for the program.

It is also critical, she said, to identify key vendor contacts that the organization may have and get a sense of their current approach--for good or for ill--so that a smooth transition to the new program occurs and everyone has a sense of involvement.

She also finds out who is doing the planning on whatever basis and allies with those employees. "We really try to build partnerships--we want to convey the message that we're here to make the employees look good--not usurp their responsibilities."

The goal is also to help the company in question have more profitable meetings. Despite the exorbitant sum that many large companies spend on their sales, training and strategic gatherings, most of them do not engage in a systematic return-on-investment analysis, Hunnes related.

"I still have clients who tell me that they are meeting because they 'always meet once a month.' We're trying to better educate them about the ROI process in those instances." Still, she is hopeful that the concept--in addition to that of consolidation itself--will catch on.

"We've seen clients that do a lot of trade show work tell us that they measure the effectiveness of the trade show by looking at the level of sales activity. Because they are measuring something concrete, it is easier to comply with the process." That bodes well for the future of ROI--and in general, the pursuit of smarter meetings.