Managing Meetings At Deloitte & Touche:

<B> Managing Meetings At Deloitte & Touche:</B>
<I>Planners Get Final Word On Site Selection</I>

By Chris Davis

Big Five accounting and consulting firm Deloitte & Touche has seen significant savings from its nearly year-old policy that gives its corporate planners final say over the destination and site of its meetings.

The policy, in effect at the Wilton, Conn., company since Jan. 1, enables planners to analyze airfares and hotel contracts to find the most cost-efficient location and property, said David Kassel, senior manager of D&T's global conference group.

The conference group does not charge D&T's business units for the service. Compliance--monitored by corporate card usage and through the national sales offices of six hotel chains--is high.

Privately held D&T does not release travel and meeting expenditure data, though Business Travel News estimated its 1998 total domestic air volume at $180 million, making it the 12th-largest buyer of corporate travel in the United States. Kassel said the conference group is not tracking the exact total of dollars saved under the new program, though that may change at some point in the future.

Still, there's no question there's savings to be had under the new policy. "This started as a general observation by (director of global conferences and travel groups) Margaret Moynihan and myself about hotel cancellation credits," Kassel said. "After meetings were cancelled or had a shortfall of attendance, we would negotiate with properties to receive credit to use for future meetings. But we would have credits in Atlanta, for example, and internal clients in Chicago."

A change in senior management last year offered Kassel and Moynihan, to whom Kassel reports, the opportunity to implement their plan. While previous management held a rather laissez-faire position on travel mandates, the new regime accepted the idea of planner-selected meeting locations enthusiastically, Kassel said. He and Moynihan did not even have to present savings projections.

"They have 100 percent faith in the department, and Margaret is a 20-year veteran of the industry," Kassel said. "We basically told them that we weren't in control and that we need to be. They've seen enough people, even themselves at times, question why a meeting was held at a given location. They listened to the experts."

After sealing the sign-off from senior management, Kassel and Moynihan turned to the employees themselves. The two circulated an extensive memo, including details of the policy change and a long list of preferred properties nationwide, to 200 of the company's managers and key travel players to disseminate to their staffs.

The company stressed in the communications to employees that individual departments would not be charged for the service, which helped generate good response from the ranks. "They considered that we were taking a lot of headaches off their hands," Kassel said. "It wasn't hard to get the buyoff. People didn't want to do it."

The few who don't toe the policy line, though, easily can be identified. The conference group is notified by the national sales offices of six large, preferred hotel chains if a meeting is booked by a non-planner.

Many of the meetings the conference group plans are held annually and accounted for in the individual department's budget. These meetings are given a code at the beginning of the fiscal year for the employee hosting the meeting to cite to the conference group when its time arrives. The conference group has details on each of these meetings, including attendance figures, and the internal client may not account for an increase in attendance of any more than 15 percent when requesting space.

"Unless they can show us facts and figures indicating attendance will be very strong, we'll restrict the space," Kassel said. "We bank on their experience in the past as the starting point for our future."

Kassel assigns a planner to book the meeting, who then examines a database of airfares from many city pairs and rates at several hotels to determine the most cost-effective city and property to host the meeting.

This is still primarily a manual procedure, Kassel said, though D&T is considering a meetings management software package to automate the process.

The conference group does not mandate a particular airline for a given meeting, but does suggest the best option. D&T has agreements with all major airlines for a general meetings discount, based on the substantial overall amount of air volume booked. However, there are no meetings volume guarantees with any airline, nor are there guarantees that any airline will get the first crack at any meeting, Kassel said.

The process is more complicated for an unbudgeted meeting. The interested internal client still must make first contact with the conference group to detail the desired terms of the meeting. The meeting, however, must be approved by D&T's national director of operations, a process that Kassel said usually takes seven to 10 days.

"They are made keenly aware of the financial ramifications," Kassel said.

During that time, the conference group will research sites and properties and prepare a request for proposal to be used if the meeting is approved.

Exceptions to the new policy are few. "The client has to have a very, very good reason," Kassel said. "It's good. It lets us reinforce why we're here."

The policy changes are part of an evolving centralization of the travel department under global travel manager Anne Kelly, who has been in place for one year and also reports to Moynihan. The focus of the program will center on negotiating with domestic airlines and, eventually, consolidating its 75-plus agencies. That process is ongoing and likely will not be completed until next spring, at the earliest.