Managing Meetings At Harley-Davidson

<B> Managing Meetings At Harley-Davidson</B>
<I>In-House Center Drives Savings</I>

By Chris Davis

A meetings consolidation program has led Harley-Davidson Inc. to convert empty office space at its Milwaukee headquarters into a corporate conference center--and mandating its use has moved 90 percent of Harley meetings there, saving the company $500,000 a year.

"The conversion cost about $2 million and took six months to complete, but we realized that we could get a return on our investment in four years," said manager of meeting travel services Trish Haudricourt.

The company opted to turn the upper floors of a vacant warehouse into a conference center after it consolidated its meeting expenditure data in late 1997 and found it was spending more than $500,000 a year on meeting room rentals and food and beverage in Milwaukee hotels. The final decision was made by Harley-Davidson's controller, who mandated that all local meetings that are small enough to fit in the center--about 90 percent of the total--must be held there.

Employees planning to use the center must make their meeting arrangements with Haudricourt's centralized travel department. "When employees dial the central phone number for meeting and travel services, they have three options: travel reservations, group travel reservations or meeting planning. Selecting the meeting-planning option transfers you to our planners," she said. "We still qualify the meeting. We ask what the objectives are, what they are trying to accomplish and if they have a budget, even though it's on property."

Employees aren't charged for use of the center except for food and beverage costs, on which Haudricourt tries to keep a tight lid. Groups can charge deli buffets only for one- or two-day meetings, or hot meals after three days.

Despite the rules, though, compliance has not been an issue. "We're a very compliant group, and things like this usually go over well," Haudricourt said. To boost enthusiasm, she conducted some internal marketing, sending out a communication to employees "telling them of this great new space we had built, and our meeting planners conducted tours of the center with all administrative assistants. There was an open house with catered lunch, plus a brochure that showed how the meeting space would be laid out."

The 18,000-sq.-ft. center, which opened in September 1998, seats 300 theater-style and has several breakout rooms that can accommodate about 100. It offers a computer in every room, whiteboards, VCRs, LCD panels and videoconferencing capabilities.

The center hosted 204 meetings in 1998 and 704 so far this year. To move offsite, groups need approval from the controller. Said Haudricourt, "Even our board of directors meets here now."

About half of the remainder of Harley-Davidson meetings are trade shows, new product introductions or large dealer groups. The rest are incentive meetings for dealers and salespeople, corporate retreats and strategic planning and team-building events.

The $500,000 a year savings is particularly substantial in relation to the corporation's total travel spend, which in 1998 was $16 million, with group airfares totalling $1.2 million. The company is saving even more by not outsourcing the center's management to a third party, and by expanding its existing food services contract to provide food and beverage for the facility. "It's been a grass-roots effort," Haudricourt said. "We have a strong union here, so if there are people here who can do that work, we don't want to bring in other people to do it. Our maintenance team was able to run the center and set up the rooms, our meeting planners take the reservations and e-mail the F&B requests to our food services vendor."

Harley-Davidson employees use the center's videoconferencing capabilities primarily to consult with co-workers at the plant in York, Pa., but the system has not eliminated all travel between the two. "It works best when we have strategic meetings with purchasing agents in York. But our travel dollars are still high. Everyone seems to think that videoconferencing is an alternative to travel, but I haven't seen it do a thing to reduce travel expenses," Haudricourt said.

The company does permit non-profit groups affiliated with Harley-Davidson's charitable foundation to use the center at no charge after business hours, but the company has decided against renting out center space to other groups.