Buyers Converge On Consolidation, Tech

By Chris Davis / February 25, 2001

Buyers Converge On Consolidation, Tech

By Chris Davis

Meeting buyers Craig Ardis, director of special events for Amway Corp., Barbara Cummins, assistant director of meeting management services for PricewaterhouseCoopers, Jan Hennessey, director of meetings and travel management for Fireman's Fund, and Leslie Veenhuis, meetings and events manager for Kinko's Inc., talked with Meetings Today editor Chris Davis at Meeting Professionals International's Professional Education Conference last month in New Orleans to discuss merging meetings and transient travel and the role of technology in meeting purchasing.

Meetings Today: Given the trepidation over the economy and cutbacks in travel considered by some companies, have you changed your strategy regarding meeting purchasing?

Barbara Cummins: I don't anticipate a cutback in our department at this time, because we're still restructuring and reorganizing the firm as a whole. PwC is in the middle of a consolidation process that continues to have, not more meetings, but more meetings under a purchasing umbrella to leverage business and track spend. There's no cutback in staff, but a change in strategy in how we do business with our vendors.

Jan Hennessey: I don't know that it's a recent turn in the economy--the insurance industry has been down for several years. In fact, there are predictions of a turnaround next year. There's caution now; there's cutting back and we're not going offshore as much. I've had to cut my two major programs in half, not by cost per person but by the number of people. I think it's temporary, but it's not a recent trend for us.

Leslie Veenhuis: We haven't noticed the fear of an economic downturn per se, but our sales group hasn't been as phenomenally effective, and we have combined some meetings to take advantage of economies of scale. We haven't canceled anything significant yet, but we've combined our two major events, which also allows us to send the same message at the same time.

Craig Ardis: Our business has been going down a bit for the past couple years, so attendees have fallen off, but this is the first year we're really feeling it. We're not consolidating meetings, but planning meetings to capture economies of scale. We're in the initial stages of consolidating meetings and business travel, because our business is taking a downturn.

MT: Has this affected site selection?

Cummins: We work harder with our global partners to help fill their needs. They're much more open about asking us to look at a venue to fill a hole in short-term business, which we always have. Out of 1,300 meetings, approximately 400 to 450 were within less than six weeks time, from phone call to implementation onsite.

MT: Have you been able to merge or find synergies with the transient side of travel purchasing?

Cummins: We just merged with the travel department and are working to simplify the process and install an online booking system to empower staff to make their own reservations. There are global vendors and preferred partnerships, but the system will be programmed to drive business there. We also are looking to change travel policy, cut back what class of travel is permitted. Also, we're asking, "Do we really need to have the meeting; is there another way?" We definitely drive meeting locations to where masses of people are. Their time out of the office, especially for us, a service-oriented business, is really a lost opportunity.

Ardis: We have international affiliates going to the same places, but doing so individually, so we're planning events far enough out that we can get three or four events at different times and negotiate that way. We just want to be smarter about how we do it. Actually, our company does well when the economy slows because people look for other business opportunities. When the economy does well, we tend to struggle more.

Hennessey: We're trying to do the same thing, but we don't have an agency that combines both group and transient and we haven't figured out how to get everything in one place. But we're capturing the data in a couple of ways: We have a new online T&E system that will capture where they're staying. We're in pilot right now and it's totally paperless with electronic approvals. We're also going to mandate the corporate card. Between those two reporting tools, maybe we'll be able to get data to make more strategic meetings decisions. Everyone is struggling with this. Nobody's got it figured out.

Ardis: It is a struggle, but mandating card and with a good solid travel policy, you can move from there. The key is knowing travel patterns to move market share.

Cummins: The synergies are great, and that's why we merged. Our transient hotel program is now in constant contact with groups and meetings. If we contract for a specific hotel, and we're not meeting minimum commitments, we'll drive meeting business to the hotel in order to meet their transient goals. In the meetings we have, a lot of rooms booked can be considered transient rooms because they're physically meeting in our offices. It really has helped. We just did this in September, and we're looking for new ways synergy can help and find solutions the other side has already worked out.

MT: Have you enacted any other new meeting policies?

Hennessey: All our travelers are supposed to use the meetings department and preferred hotels, but the Internet is getting in the way. People want to go outside corporate policy and book air on the Internet. It's very hard to stand by your policy, and we've had to back down sometimes.

Veenhuis: We've been fortunate that we have the corporate card and preferred agency that they have to use, and their expenses are not reimbursable if they go to another agency. That solved the problem. If it's not reimbursable, they'll go through our agency. Even if they can save $1,000, which can be very hard to explain away.

Ardis: But in the bigger picture, the company will save money because you've got that data and it speaks volumes. It's all about communication in the company and the mandates that have to come down from the top.

Hennessey: We don't feel confident that we can prove and show, right now, that they're always getting the lowest rate because they're faced with these constant alternatives. We hear about it from the top, that we're trying to save money and it's right here and we should make exceptions to policy. We do put out communications and write about this, but each department is focused on its own budget. We're trying, but it's hard.

Ardis: With online booking, we can control it. They're still booking online but over our own site, so it feels to them like they're doing it but we control it.

Cummins: The booking system will be programmed so they can book online with our system. It will drive the business to zone fares or whatever happens to be the best option. We have a hotel database our customers are supposed to use in conjunction with our travel company, American Express, so they just take out the other hotels and drive the business to the property that needs the transient rooms.

MT: How can you separate transient fares from meeting fares?

Ardis: We haven't gotten to the meeting fares yet, but groups of 10 or more come through us, and then we get group fares. But we run it all through the same agency, and if our group or zone fares are not better than our negotiated travel fares, we go directly to transient. We have deals on both sides, and the agency, which we own, has a system that weighs the fares for us.

Veenhuis: We don't have a mature program in place for transient travel yet; it's something the company is working on right now. Most of our meeting travel is done through an intranet system that downloads directly to our agent. We have some discount systems with United, and we'll use United whenever possible, which is 99 percent of the time. That's our only contract.

MT: Are there meeting pages on your intranets?

Hennessey: We have pages for travel and meetings. The meeting site has budget guidelines, policy, links to book the conference center in our building. Eventually, it will link to an online registration system so people can go to a meetings calendar and register their events. We measure hits and we solicit feedback. People are starting to use the request form but it is a new concept. We refer them to it when they call. I'll love when they can click in and register and be hooked into online booking.

Veenhuis: We are just looking at developing the intranet page and putting more resources into it. Our co-workers are very used to going there for information and news, so it's just another stop for them. Policy is on ours. Also, if your meeting is too small for the department, there are suggestions for handling it.

Ardis: We're behind you. We do have a useful calendar.

Hennessey: We have online registration and we're taking baby steps into using StarCite. I don't know how well that will work. Everyone's looking for a travel solution, and there's no cost to us and no real liability. We have committed to the registration system. Online booking, we're just not there yet.

Ardis: We designed our online registration form ourselves, and it's working pretty well. We don't have the links all into it yet. We've looked at a number of software packages to help manage meeting spend, but haven't been very successful. We bought one, trained everybody, and ended up returning the whole thing. We are in the process of designing our own to fit our special needs. Nothing includes the whole planning process, with the reconciliation package on the back end--being able to pay bills, understand your spend and manage your budget and contracts.

Veenhuis: There's not one thing out there that's a full-service package. We haven't had a lot of success with online site selection, either.

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