Managing Meetings At CUNA Mutual:

<B> Managing Meetings At CUNA Mutual:</B>
<I>Web Registration Made A Must</I>

By Chris Davis

While the concept of mandated online meetings registration has appealed primarily to those companies looking to further consolidate their meetings program, one fully centralized corporation--CUNA Mutual of Madison, Wis.--has saved $16,000 on one meeting by moving the registration process to the Web.

Steve Clark, CUNA's assistant vice president of conference and travel services, whose responsibilities include the handling of all negotiations and the right to refuse any meeting site selected, might not seem the perfect candidate to use the Web to bleed any savings out of his streamlined meetings program. But the simple process of forcing the 1,500 annual meeting attendees to register either over CUNA Mutual's Web site or through its Lotus Notes-based e-mail system has saved the company $16,000 in overtime costs and other ancillary expenditures.

"It was my call," Clark said. "We've been struggling with overtime and we looked at this as a way to alleviate the situation. We saved at least $6,000 in overtime on that meeting, and avoiding printing collateral registration pieces saved us another $10,000."

While many companies without consolidated meetings programs--most notably Hewlett-Packard, which has saved millions--have mandated online registration as a means to better capture data concerning meeting expenditures to better their hand in negotiating with airlines and hotels, Clark doesn't need to. CUNA Mutual added the requirement that all meetings must be registered through Clark's department to its corporate policy when he arrived 14 years ago. Clark estimated compliance at 98.5 percent.

"We keep a pretty tight handle on our numbers and my pickups are fairly accurate," Clark said. "We master bill almost all of our hotel rooms and taxes, and everything is handled by rooming list, so we have accurate numbers. What will help us is that we'll have more reports we can share, but it won't create a big advantage for negotiating."

Clark achieved the approval of senior management simply by citing the overtime savings mandated online registration would bring. Convincing the meeting attendees was somewhat more difficult, but Clark was able to achieve compliance with minimal hassle.

"There was a little grumbling, but out of 1,500 people, about 100 called in either because they needed to be walked through it or they didn't have access to a computer," Clark said. "We really pushed the envelope on them. For the first time out, 100 out of 1,500 isn't bad, and better than 50 of them don't have computers and weren't on our system. If they got caught in a snag, we had someone to walk them through it and register them."

Clark now is prepared to expand the mandate further, to six divisional meetings that involve the same attendees that registered online for the previous annual meeting. Now that those employees have a feel for the system, its ease has made further online mandates a very easy sell.

"They elected to go online now," Clark said. "There are other conferences where they will have the option of online or standard registration, since those meetings involve credit union personnel who are not company employees. We can't mandate online registration in that case."

Expanding the online registration mandate isn't without costs, though. Not only are there start-up costs in purchasing and implementing registration software, but there are front-end demands on Clark's department's time to prepare the registration modules.

"Each meeting requires about five to six hours of staff time to build the page," Clark said. "One problem in doing the six meetings online is that it will transfer some staff time into my office that would have been in the division offices. Division office personnel previously would have done some of the backup preparation with rooming lists."

Nevertheless, Clark will press on with the program, since savings in overtime and ancillary expenditures justify any additional front-end time consumption.

"Next year, I'd like to build our board meetings on the site," Clark said. "The huge labor savings technology is supposed to represent isn't necessarily the case. It's a more efficient system but it doesn't necessarily take less time. We have a very small department, with only one person really versed in this. Next year I'd like to get two more people trained who will understand the system. Ideally, by 2001, I'd like to do all our meetings on the Internet."

Past that, Clark is exploring ways to further streamline the meetings program with technology, including the possibility of purchasing meetings software that will communicate meetings specifications directly to hotels.

However, he said, there's no rush."My goals are to streamline the process to make this department run smoother and make our jobs easier to do," Clark said. "But you only want to throw so much at them at one time.