Drug Co. To Document Data

As part of a pilot program that is intended to branch out to eventually capture critical meetings data for its entire U.S. operation, SmithKline Beecham Corp. recently contracted McGettigan Corporate Services to install software in the travel department at corporate headquarters.

With this decision, Philadelphia-based SmithKline becomes the fifth pharmaceutical operation to adopt CORE-Consolidated Operating & Reporting Environment- in the past year. The company has joined Wyeth-Ayerst, Zeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Parke-Davis on McGettigan's client roster.

Although McGettigan didn't target its efforts toward pharmaceutical companies, so far they make up all but one of the agency's accounts. Perhaps that's because pharmaceutical companies tend to be very structured in their operations, and changes in the insurance industry have forced them to rein in expenses, which could account for the interest in bringing meetings budgets in line.

CORE can deliver budget variance reports, daily food and beverage analysis, property usage reports, investment summaries and breakdowns, program agendas, room blocks, registration acknowledgment letters, hotel reports for specific programs and a host of operational management statements and savings summaries. The user also can document actual expenses through the budgeting cycle.

"A key feature is our ability to generate RFPs quickly and capture data on which properties RFPs have been sent over a given year," said Mark Jordan, director of marketing for Synergis, McGettigan's joint venture with Rosenbluth for meetings management, and someone who was involved in the early development of CORE. "If you can document to a hotel that you sent out 1,000 requests for room nights and you've only booked 200 room nights due to lack of availability in that year, you will really be in a position of strength in pointing out that you attempted to fulfill the terms of your volume agreement."

Like its forerunners, the pharmaceutical giant hopes to identify and eventually reduce meetings expenses through the help of the agency's real-time reporting technology. SmithKline estimates that it spends $30 million on its meetings and intends to be aggressive in decreasing those costs, aiming for a 15 percent reduction in each program.

While not interested in mandating the use of the agency to negotiate all of its meetings-related vendor agreements or manage all of its logistics, the company wants to improve its off-site meetings program by identifying the majority of the total dollars spent, said account executive Mike Malinchok. "Like so many companies, SmithKline recognized that their meetings and event spending remained exempt from traditional company cost-saving strategies," he said.

SmithKline has 10 to 15 planners in seven operating divisions, plus administrative assistants who book group events. According to the Corporate Travel 100 survey (<I>BTN</I>, July 15, 1996), it ranked 93 on the list, with an estimated U.S. booked air volume of $28 million.

The firm's preferred vendors for the transient program included American Express, British Airways, Northwest, USAir and United, and its U.K. parent is looking to globalize its air purchases in 1997, the survey found.

SmithKline declined to comment on the details of its pilot program and travel management policy.

The company is likely to place the computer workstations in field offices throughout the country to record data for that office and feed it back to a centralized server. Through this systematic approach to data collection, all meetings expenses are registered whether or not a single planning department actually takes a hands-on approach with the negotiation or logistics.

The software is designed to be installed on any 486 PC and is supported by standard network protocols. Although it requires a separate server that houses data culled from the application, it is meant to be seamlessly integrated with other applications.

CORE, which was developed by in-house programmers, also received input from one of McGettigan's early adopters: Lynne Ridson, director of corporate meeting services for Bristol-Myers Squibb's Princeton, N.J., office.

Two years ago, Ridson, who worked with McGettigan on some special meetings projects, was told about McGettigan's then-pilot project. "Once we decided that we wanted to handle meetings purchasing on a consolidated basis and discovered that CORE was soon to be on deck, we began working with McGettigan on the formats of the reports and in determining what, exactly, needed to be tracked," Ridson said.

All of Bristol-Myers' meetings get registered through one desk, although several CORE stations are located in field offices throughout the United States.

Peggy Notorianni, manager of meetings at Wyeth-Ayerst in Philadelphia, has been getting acclimated with the software's features since its June installation. "I wanted to get up and running with it immediately, but the last few months have been very hectic and we haven't had an opportunity to really get our hands on it," Notorianni explained.

The first hurdle was getting security clearance to allow McGettigan to remotely access the server, which enables the agency to input the data on the meetings that it handles for the firm. Now that the system is fully operational, Notorianni has to impart last-minute instructions to her staff.

"We just had a meeting, and I explained the importance of putting in the actuals after the event concludes," Notorianni said. She expressed confidence that the company would do well with the system. "Each year, the picture gets more clear," she said. "We know so much more about our meetings-related expenses over this time last year. Things can only get better.