Co. Tries On Online Meeting Buying Tools

<B>Co. Tries On Online Meeting Buying Tools</B>

By Chris Davis

In a quest to streamline its meeting planning process and save money through cost avoidance, Steelcase Inc. has become one of the first corporations to sign an agreement with GetThere Inc. that incorporates online tools for group and meeting travel, as well as transient.

The Grand Rapids, Mich.-based office furniture manufacturer and distributor, which spends about $13 million annually on group and transient air, will use the site selection and RFP-transmission functionalities of GetThere DirectMeetings, which GetThere created after it bought the AllMeetings portal in July (BTN, July 31, 2000).

Under Steelcase's centralized meetings operation, internal meeting sponsors are encouraged to call a dedicated American Express group travel specialist to source, plan, book and contract events, said manager of travel services Tom Walker. But with Steelcase's meetings volume increasing to between 150 and 200 events annually, Walker decided that the scope of the operation would need to be expanded, either through the addition of more staffers or a higher level of outsourcing.

"We can have 20 to 40 events on our calendar simultaneously, from small meetings of six at the airport to national dealer meetings of over 1,000," Walker said. "The group travel specialist was loaded up with small meetings."

Since Steelcase charges back meeting expenses to individual departments, increases in outsourcing, particularly independent planners, tend not to be embraced by internal sponsors, Walker said. "The last thing they want to hear is that there's a $2,000 outsourcing fee for a meeting of 12 attendees," he said.

Steelcase's Walker signed a deal with GetThere last fall to provide the company with online booking services, and attended a GetThere users' meeting in November, where he was introduced to the capabilities of DirectMeetings. In its AllMeetings incarnation, the site was renowned for its capability to select properties based on total travel cost rather than location.

"They came in at the right time," Walker said. "We conducted a demonstration and determined that if we signed, it would eliminate the need for additional support for our group travel specialist. Otherwise, we would have had to either hire another person or divert an existing travel employee to group services. It's a classic example of the benefits of automation."

While the need to cut costs is not the prime driver behind Walker's decision--centralization has helped Steelcase already develop a fairly strong sense of what it spends and saves on meetings--he will keep close tabulations on DirectMeetings' effect on the bottomline.

"Ultimately, we want to cut costs no matter what we're doing, so we will look to see where DirectMeetings is saving money down the line," Walker said. "It will certainly save us money behind the scenes, in avoiding billable hours for the help we would have given our group travel specialist." Walker hopes other savings will follow through better rates from properties generated by DirectMeetings' search capabilities, he said.

While the portals have, at times, spoken of the need to introduce their tools to corporate employees who plan meetings but aren't professional meeting planners, it seems Steelcase's centralized setup allows the portal to be involved in more meetings than in a decentralized corporate environment.

Steelcase does not mandate that its internal meeting sponsors use the group travel desk to source, book and contract events, and does not penalize those who don't. But since the company charges back meeting costs, it behooves sponsors to find the most cost-efficient options possible, and Walker stressed to employees that his department can plan meetings for less money.

"I tell them without knowing anything about their departments that we can do better. Compliance is very high," Walker said. "We don't use the word 'require,' in terms of group travel, but we stop just short. We let them know we have this resource they can use, and the more they use us, the more we get control of our numbers and help our negotiating power."

DirectMeetings' capability, in fact, will not be introduced to internal Steelcase meeting sponsors; only the group travel specialist will be able to access it for now.

"We need to go through several projects and meetings first, but eventually we plan to expose the functionality to clients we trust and hold frequent meetings," Walker said.

DirectMeetings, in a departure from the previous commission-based AllMeetings model and alone among portals, charges a fee for the entire event, around $100, regardless of the service level of the host property. Steelcase, along with Dunn & Bradstreet, Kimberly Clark Corp., Nabisco, SBC Communications and Scient Corp., is part of the first wave of corporate signings DirectMeetings has seen under GetThere's banner.

Steelcase's rollout of online transient booking through GetThere is in its early stages as well.