Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis this year merged two meeting departments into one, while refining its meetings management structure to streamline internal customer service. Additionally, the firm last year for the first time negotiated preferred meeting hotel contracts and sourced more than 90 percent of company meetings in a nonmandated environment.
Continuing its drive toward meetings consolidation and centralization
(Meetings Today, July 19, 2004), Novartis this year integrated its sourcing organization and central planning organization into one group, called Meeting Solutions.
"Originally, there were two separate groups prior to my arrival," said Alice Woychik, director of Meeting Solutions. "We're now one big organization and fully integrated at this point. We source, plan and execute something like 250 meetings on an annual basis, and then we additionally source about 700 that we don't necessarily plan."
Woychik joined Novartis in March to lead the department's integration efforts. The restructuring was needed to streamline customer service and minimize confusion about the meeting planning process, she said.
"Customers previously had been confused about when to go to sourcing and when to go to planning," Woychik said.
Under Meeting Solutions' new internal structure, staffers work as one point of contact for internal business clients. The account management contacts help to determine each client's meeting goals, including budget and objectives, and oversee the planning and sourcing.
"We've adopted a new account management structure, where we've aligned people with certain pieces of the business so that they have a more strategic relationship and forward plans for the year," Woychik said. The department implemented the structural changes in July.
"We really wanted to add value to our clients, and the way to do that was to have strategic relationships that would allow us to understand their business and business objectives," Woychik said. "They will be well-attuned to that part of the business and be able to provide solutions and ultimately execute and deliver them more successfully."
Another major move this year was the development of a preferred meeting hotel program, said Paul Tomaszeski, executive director of business support services.
"Last year, we felt like we had enough ownership of that meeting volume that we could go out to the chains and that we had enough control over the business to steer it and get additional discounts," he said. "We went out to bid in May 2006 with all the major chain hotels and meeting conference centers and spent the summer bidding and the fall working through that."
Determining preferred vendors was based on several factors, including attrition clauses, additional savings offers and the willingness to reserve inventory. "A couple of chains offered free Internet access in the rooms and our senior management saw a lot of value in that," said Tomaszeski, noting that daily Internet charges are a visible part of a hotel bill.
Novartis eventually selected one primary and three secondary preferred meeting chains. While the contracts were signed and executed in July 2007, the selected preferred chains began giving discounts in April as a show of good faith, Woychik said. In return, Novartis promised the chains a percentage of its total meetings held, retroactive to April. Woychik said they are on target to meet their goal.
"We looked at the meeting volume that we had previously with each of the chains and as a result, in our negotiation with them on certain rates, we made a commitment to marketshare. We believe it's completely achievable because of the historical data we pointed to," Woychik said.
The use of the preferred vendors is not a mandate but is strongly encouraged.
"If you don't choose one of the preferreds presented to you, you have to request approval and Paul or I will sign off on it," Woychik said. Neither has had to do so since the process started.
"We're handling the sourcing, so quite often the meeting sponsor might not even see a nonpreferred chain," Tomaszeski said.
Data collection also is a big push for the company in order to leverage more spending. Meetings are registered in the company's technology tool at the beginning of the process and are updated in the database as the meeting develops.
"Throughout the process, the database is continually updated as more information comes forward," Woychik said. The data include meeting type, budget, the planner and "every single detail you could want to know about a meeting. We can even see cyclical flows of meetings, the number of meetings assigned to a planner, all of the spend data," she said.
While Novartis has a nonmandated environment, Meeting Solutions still manages to source more than 90 percent of company meetings. Meeting Solutions has produced an internal brochure and "we tell them what we're doing and sell them," Woychik said. "Not that you have to do it, but here's the reasons why you want to."