<B>Growing A Mtgs. Module</B>
By Chris Davis
Cargill Inc., the largest privately held company in the country, hopes to slash 30 percent to 40 percent of meetings expenditures from its $100 million-plus total T&E spend through consolidation initiatives, increased use of Webconferencing and maximum use of its internal conference space.
Lisa Trenda, the Minneapolis-based company's director of worldwide travel services and a veteran of meetings consolidation from her previous post at United Health Care of Chicago, said the company's meetings management department will offer more destination options to internal meeting sponsors, who will be required to obtain management approval to select less cost-efficient locales.
Eventually, Trenda hopes to expand this three-month-old meetings management module globally, as about 30 percent of the company's meetings spending is attributed to international events.
"We want to change the dynamics of the whole process," she said. We try to make the true objectives of the meeting happen, while reducing cost and making everyone happy. These are controllable pieces that we can influence."
Meeting expenditures at Cargill are contained in individual business units' budgets, so there currently is no way to know either how much the company spends on meetings or the exact number of meetings held, although the latter is likely more than 500 annually, based on the rate of meetings booked so far this year, Trenda said. But, based on her past experience, she believes that the initiatives the agricultural conglomerate is implementing should reap the 30 percent to 40 percent level.
Internal meeting sponsors now are encouraged strongly--via a letter to each employee from Cargill president and COO Gregory Page--to contact Trenda's department before the proposed meeting of at least 10 attendees is sourced. Sponsors are asked to include a list of proposed destinations and dates, as well as the projected number of attendees. The department bids the meeting according to the sponsor's requests, and reports back to the sponsor with a detailed analysis of the estimated budget for the proposed event--including air, hotel, ground and food and beverage--and a list of alternatives, including off-season destinations and preferred hotels. Included in the alternatives can be the possibility of using conference space at Cargill's headquarters, Trenda said.
"We have fantastic internal meeting space, and want to ensure that it's being considered before external space," Trenda said. "There's a perception attendees won't go to those meetings, but we can save on air and hotel and don't want to let attendee behavior dictate where the meeting is held. We want the leadership to require it." In-house meeting agendas now include more time for attendees to access e-mail and voicemail messages, offering a greater possibility of attendance. The company ensures that once internal space is booked, it is guaranteed.
Webconferencing and videoconferencing initiatives also may be proposed, less to move the entire meeting online than to allow remote attendees to participate. "It can reduce the number of bodies in a room," Trenda said.
Once presented with more cost-efficient options, the sponsor is required to attain the consent of the business unit supervisor to choose a significantly more expensive destination or property, as the business unit's budget would be most directly impacted by that decision. This has been extremely rare, said Trenda.
Either way, the meetings department negotiates and signs the contract. "This is key," Trenda said. "The employees often have no idea about attrition and cancellation clauses or indemnification clauses that can put Cargill at risk."
Trenda received Page's backing before the program's February launch, based on the potential cost savings that consolidation would bring, particularly in the longer term when she has better consolidated data with which to negotiate. However, the strategy was met with some concern by Cargill's employees.
"We had to sell it to them," Trenda said. "We had group training sessions and one-on-one discussions with those who hold more frequent meetings. They worried that they would be left out of the loop, but that was not our intent. For example, they can still pick the menus and other food and beverage service. But we can add value in negotiating and contracts and leveraging spending with preferred suppliers with our experience and expertise. There was some resistance because they were not yet comfortable with the idea, but there was a time when people weren't comfortable with automatic teller machines, either."
The program already has yielded some immediate savings: Trenda's department of five meeting planners has recognized properties at which multiple meetings were separately negotiated and adjusted new contracts accordingly.
Eventually, Trenda will roll out the consolidation concept internationally, as Cargill has extensive operations in South America. "We'll take the model international in some form or another, be it a similar program or a self-help module, depending on the country," she said. "At the bare minimum, we will provide a consulting tool.