Cargill Consolidates Meetings

<B> Cargill Consolidates Meetings</B>

By Cheryl Rosen

Getting a handle on the meetings spend of a large global corporation is not an easy task, but it's one Cargill Inc. is determined to tackle.

Under the direction of worldwide travel services manager Nancy Bruner, the Minneapolis-based Cargill has been consolidating its meetings through its corporate travel department, and is slowly building a track record--and a client base--among meeting sponsors company-wide.

It was Bruner herself who suggested to senior management that Cargill bring in-house some of the growing meeting spend it was outsourcing. "I took the idea to management--I did a cost analysis of what the payback would be and presented it in that fashion," she said. "It's very important to do the estimates, and then follow through and show management what you have achieved."

What the travel department achieved was a total savings "well over $1 million"--largely thanks to consolidation of the air travel portion of its meeting spend, the value of which Bruner believes was often overlooked by untrained meeting sponsors.

With an annual U.S.-based travel and entertainment spend of about $96 million and a global T&E tab of $166 million, Cargill has reaped its biggest rewards because the meeting planning area turns all air bookings over to its transient agency, American Express."The use of the agency to do that air was pretty spotty before," Bruner acknowledged.

Altogether, she said, the meetings group books about $3 million in air--an amount, and a negotiating tool, that "might well have been lost to incentive houses and other outside meeting planners" were it not for Bruner's focus.

In the past, when secretaries or administrative assistants were asked to book meetings, "they often outsourced the whole thing, including the air, simply because they didn't know how to do it themselves," Bruner noted.

The combination of transient and group business surely has proven to be an extra ace in the hole when negotiating hotel contracts, she believes--especially with two global hotel companies where Cargill has a single sales contact who negotiates both pieces of business.

"It just seemed to make sense to put meetings under travel, because there's so much negotiating involved," she said. "When we are working with hotels on a worldwide basis for transient travel, the meeting planning complements that. Obviously we have bigger numbers. Do we get better deals? We obviously hope so."

Indeed, Bruner said that "in some cases" the transient discounts Cargill has negotiated are bigger than they were before meetings were brought into her purview--and she believes the additional leverage comes from the promise of Cargill meeting business.

To do the actual work, meanwhile, Bruner has added one full-time staff person who reports directly to Bruner. For the position, she considered only in-house planners. "I wanted to get a corporate meeting planner with experience and know-how, and I also wanted someone who knew Cargill--knew our culture and knew our players," she said.

The new planner joins three others on the Cargill meetings team: one part-time planner and "two people doing the administrative part."

The largest meeting hosted by the travel department so far was a global corporate quality meeting, with 1000 attendees; also on the rolls have been many small, top-level management meetings.

Even without a mandate, the support of senior management surely has helped the fledgling unit. "We've had many successes, and people are using the group," Bruner said.

Cargill does not yet have an exact figure for its annual meeting spend, though Bruner obviously is "trying to get a handle on volume." As in many large companies, though, that's no easy task. Much of the spending is buried in individual budget lines at individual divisions or businesses. Pressed, Bruner estimated that spending "would have to be at least a couple of million dollars beyond the air. We have literally thousands of room nights a year--we are talking big numbers."

To encourage use of the program, Bruner now is off on a communications mission. "I just finished doing a video for new employees that shows what worldwide travel services is about, and that includes meeting services," she said.

In addition, the Cargill Website includes details and phone numbers of travel department meeting services, including Bruner's name and telephone number, a breakdown of the services offered and a form meeting sponsors can fill out to request assistance with their own meetings.

Applications are accepted electronically, through e-mail, or can be "printed out if they are more comfortable with a hard copy," Bruner said.

To date, Bruner said, the majority of requests actually were printed and faxed, rather than e-mailed--"indicative that planners are taking it to their boss or committee before sending it in."

This month, Cargill's travel department is putting together its first list of preferred meeting properties, just as it has a list of preferred transient ones. The goal is to choose "a small number to whom we can really channel our business," though Bruner acknowledged she "doesn't have a magic number in mind." As on the transient side, she will start with the geographical areas already being used most frequently, which her user surveys show are topped by Florida and Arizona.

Bruner is confident that as the program gets to be better known by senior management, more and more meetings will come her way.

"No matter what business you're in, total procurement is happening--and this can be viewed as part of that," she said. "People realize meeting planning, if done correctly, takes a long time. It's painful and it's detailed. As corporations downsize, people don't have the time to spend on all those details. It's easier to hand it off."

Also helpful in building business will be the fact that the Cargill travel department does not bill back any of its costs to individual business units--and Bruner sees meetings as part of that free service.

Cargill is America's largest privately held company. It has 73,000 employees and 40 agricultural, industrial, financial, merchandising and transportation businesses in more than 850 locations in 66 countries on six continents. Its annual U.S.-based air volume is $34 million, and its global air spend is $51 million.