Buyer Instills Policy, Brings Order To Ops.

<B>Buyer Instills Policy, Brings Order To Ops.</B>

By Chris Davis

Akamai Technologies Inc. is the most recent technology company to realize spending reductions through stricter meetings policies and the merger of meetings and travel operations, after the addition of a veteran travel and meeting manager to oversee the new program.

Terry Sullo, who implemented the changes at the Cambridge, Mass.-based Internet content provider and facilitator in her five months of employment and five previous months as a consultant to the company, did so not only to reduce the fledgling two-year-old company's expenditures, but to establish a level of organization and order to its meetings and travel operations.

"This company went from 400 employees in January 2000 to about 1,400 one year later, which is an immense addition through acquisition and natural growth," said Sullo, who serves as Akamai's manager of travel and meeting services. "But there was no real infrastructure for meetings, they just happened when they were needed. We've been able to bring a lot of order to that."

In certain large meetings, Sullo was able to reduce airfares by 60 percent off published restricted fares through a combination of leveraging Akamai's air spending and driving air policy compliance, and said she can demonstrate cost reductions of 10 percent to 20 percent on food and beverage cost per attendee by negotiating better contract terms.

Sullo was hired by senior management from her position as a consultant to establish a travel and meetings program for Akamai, so she had senior buy-in from the start.

One of the first changes she made was a result of a top-down mandate that all meetings be registered through her office, so she could negotiate and sign off on all contracts. Sullo contacted several local properties where Akamai events were held to ensure only her name would appear on meeting billing. "This has to be managed one-on-one with the property to ensure proper bill reconciliation," and to capture all meetings data, she said.

Before Sullo's arrival, the typical Akamai meeting entailed little contract negotiation or analysis and little documentation of no-shows, leading to incomplete room-block management data for future events. As such, Sullo and Akamai's agency, American Express One, used Akamai's historical data and past benchmarks from Sullo's prior experience to develop concise tables of the expected cost of a given meeting based on number of attendees, type and location of property and date.

When Akamai internal sponsors contact Sullo to begin the process of contracting and booking a meeting, she sends them the estimated cost, and alternatives, based on the tables to receive approval from management. "They'll get approval and we'll handle the air and hotel contracts," Sullo said. "We'll then give them a negotiated package based on their terms and information about registration."

Amex One client services manager Kathleen Parker said Akamai has used the agency primarily for benchmarking data for Sullo's internal database. "We've played more of a supporting role," Parker said. "Even though Terry hasn't been with Akamai very long, she has a better handle on what it takes to run an efficient meetings program than many other corporations."

Sullo moved quickly on transient travel as well, posting policies on the corporate intranet and obtaining mandates that all travel go through Amex One. She is working to combine all transient and meetings data and to use both volumes to negotiate better deals with airlines and hotels.

The intranet looms large in Sullo's planned initiatives, including building an in-house meetings registration module that would reside on the intranet and an internal database to aid in room-block management. Sullo also is seeking solutions to create comprehensive managed travel profiles.

It's all part of demonstrating the gains from effective travel and meeting management processes to a company that hadn't seen them in the past. "Once you demonstrate that," Sullo said, "people are very reasonable.