Budgetary Flexibility Boosts Size, Frequency Of Meetings

<H1> Budgetary Flexibility Boosts Size, Frequency Of Meetings</H1>By Lauren Bielski

<B>M</B>any planners are handling more meetings this year-and spending more money on them-than they did last year as their organizations attempt to retain market share and grapple with a highly competitive environment.

The reasons for meeting more also reflect a cautiously optimistic assessment of the economy and, in many cases, result from budgetary leeway caused by more effective travel and meeting expenditure controls.

<I>Meetings Today's</I> Meetings Monitor survey found that almost one-third of planners surveyed expect to hold more meetings this year than in 1995 (See chart, Page A1.) This is an increase from 1994, when 22 percent had predicted a rise in meeting activity. An even larger amount, 45 percent, said their budgets would be going up (See chart on this page for breakdown).

Training sessions, named by 34 percent of respondents, were cited as the type of meeting that would increase spending the most this year. Twenty-four percent expected to spend more money on sales meetings, while 22 percent predicted more resources would be devoted to executive board meetings.

In post-survey interviews, planners pointed to technology training in particular as an important line item on their budgets, as everything from intranets to highly customized software will continue to have them back in the classroom.

At Financial Network Investment Corp., an independent brokerage firm with a 21,000-strong sales force that services individuals, small banks and credit unions, a new intranet will serve as a kind of "glue from cyberspace" for an otherwise decentralized organization.

The recent surge in stock market activity has boosted the mutual fund business and generated a real need for technological innovation at the company. The intranet will include a calendar of events, and client and sponsor information, said Jan Gordon, vice president of meetings and special services for the Torrance, Calif.-based firm.

Earlier this month, Gordon planned a training seminar as an adjunct to an already action-packed two-day session. "This is an industry where every hour away from the phone translates into vast opportunity costs," she said. "Despite that, our people are clamoring to get more training."

The company's meetings expenditures are expected to increase by about 25 percent to accommodate the requirements of the bull market, Gordon said.

"Addressing the brokers' demands for meetings requires a constant assessment," she said. "Since they work purely on commission, they want as much formal information about the various funds, SEC and NASDAQ regulations, and selling trends that they can get. Of course, the firm also needs to keep costs in line," she added.

It's a balancing act to which many planners said they could relate. This year's data showed that 34 percent will keep their budgets in line with last year, and 20 percent said they would decrease.

This sort of controlled growth-on the heels of a dramatic increase in 1995-is on the agenda for Jessica McGee, director of corporate events for Kingsport, Tenn.-based Eastman Chemical Co. "Eastman Chemical is using meetings to cement an international client base and achieve favorable stakeholder relationships with shareholders, customers and suppliers," she said. The company recently opened offices in Spain, Mexico and Argentina.

In an era of a well-established global economy, 28.6 percent of planners surveyed indicated that, they too, would increase international business.

Eastman also is using meetings to forge an identity independent from its former parent, Eastman Kodak. Following reorganization in 1994, when McGee took over the meetings position from a retiring employee, the corporate events division handled negotiation, site selection and operations for six events annually; that number climbed to 60 in 1995.

McGee estimates that she will plan about 100 executive-level events this year. The group's estimated operating budget is about a half million dollars, with about $2 million spent annually on executive board meetings. But putting central controls on the planning process will help cost containment, she said.

The company works with BTI Americas for its transient travel and sales meetings for the various operating divisions, handling about 300 such events last year; McGee's in-house group handles the executive events.

A major reorganization to enhance competitiveness also instigated increased meeting activity at Sonoco Products Co., a packaging manufacturer in Hartsville, S.C. Event planner Lisa Cantrell saw her schedule go to 150 meetings yearly to reinforce a major reengineering initiative. Sonoco, she said, is a package manufacturer that truly is trying to think "out of the box" in an effort to reinvent itself and gain back market share. The company started reengineering in the early '90s.

Sonoco has nine divisions, including an industrial products division and paper division, with a total of 250 locations worldwide. "Every process and manufacturing technique was reviewed for quality and cost effectiveness, and then reworked," Cantrell recalled.

The company also tried a dramatically different approach to managing its employees, and began running sessions that would allow middle-level management and sales staffs from different facilities to meet, network and exchange ideas.

<B>Company Gatherings</B>

In a town hall-style session, four or five regional representatives address employees from the factories based in the region. These luncheon gatherings involve limited travel for only the senior-level management and have been a cost-effective way to make a large, disparate company function more cohesively. It's also an effective way for senior management to report on the progress of the reengineering effort and gather feedback.

The town-hall meeting idea came about when an analysis of the selling process revealed that the company needed to coordinate its selling strategies. "We found out that we often had salespeople from different divisions calling on the same clients," Cantrell said.

Town hall-type meetings also was the strategy adopted by General Mills after a new CEO came on board.

The company recently rented out a local convention center, closed down for the day and bused in 2,000 employees for a general "state of the union" address, said Kurt Steensland, manager of the meeting services division. He predicts a greater number of such gatherings as well as an increase in sales and executive-level board meetings, which number about 400 annually.

Of the meeting planners surveyed, 10.6 percent also indicated that videoconferencing would be used to replace traditional meetings, while 24.8 percent said that a lack of improvement in business conditions in their region would result in a decrease of meeting schedules.

More than half of the meeting planners surveyed indicated that for primarily economic reasons they would hold the line on their meeting activity this year. One company, Flightcraft Inc., a corporate jet charter firm in Portland, Ore., is holding its number of meetings level with last year in keeping with a new strategy that circumvents group sessions for one-on-one encounters with sales staff.

Flightcraft, which has 200 employees in four locations, has about six or seven group meetings annually.