Managing Meetings At UniGroup Inc.:

<B>Managing Meetings At UniGroup Inc.:</B>
<I>Corp. Training Mtgs. E-volve</I>

By Chris Davis

UniGroup Inc., the Fenton, Mo.-based parent company of United Van Lines and Mayflower Transit, has taken the bold step of cutting meeting and travel expenses by staging training meetings on the Internet. But the company still needs to decide whether the cost savings is worth the loss of face-to-face interaction.

While many companies have used the Web in one form or another to cut meetings costs, usually to help capture spending data or mandate meetings registration, few have ventured to replicate the content of its meetings online while cutting the commensurate travel expenses.

But UniGroup may be a natural for such a move. The bulk of its approximately 160 meetings per year are staged with the purpose of training its agents. The company also has a nationwide presence, with more than 700 agencies across the United States. If online training reasonably could replicate the content UniGroup presents in its meetings, the savings in meetings expense--which the company charges back to its agencies--would be considerable.

The actual dollar amounts potentially saved aren't strictly defined, as privately held UniGroup, though it has a centralized meetings and travel program, spreads the costs through many different agencies and departments, said Euclid Strayhorn, the company's supervisor of conference services.

"We don't have the centralization of cost figures for all of the individual training meetings, since some of those account figures are kept in departments like organizational training and organizational development, and they maintain their own budgets in terms of expense versus cost versus revenue," Strayhorn said. "We'll work with the agents to make sure they're all set up, book their meeting and negotiate the contract. They'll provide onsite training coordinators to interface with the different agents throughout the United States."

<B>Keep Agencies Happy</B>

The idea for online training came out of UniGroup's organizational development department about two years ago specifically as a way to reduce those costs for both the company as a whole and its member agencies. "We don't generate income with travel, so if we can save our agents money, it makes our relationship better," he said.

But while obvious benefits and cost savings exist--no air or hotel expenses--the same concerns persist for UniGroup that remain with corporations that consider videoconferencing as a cost cutter: Can the same educational goals achieved in person be satisfied at a computer terminal? "We're trying to streamline that approach and put those training sessions in an online learning environment," Strayhorn said. "But one of the hardest things to do for any business is to establish a consistency and quality of service throughout the United States, and the training meetings we've had across the country help to do that in different locations on an ongoing basis."

At this point, meetings to be conducted online are chosen depending on how closely the goals of an in-person meeting can be transferred to the Web. Strayhorn said UniGroup has conducted less than 50 such meetings online, and they are chosen on a case-by-case basis. There are elements of live interaction, as opposed to information simply posted on a site for attendees to access at their leisure.

"We'll have meetings online, but it depends on how much the end product meets our needs in terms of how the physical interaction translates to online interaction," said Strayhorn. "There are different online environments that are suitable for different things and for different companies. We're trying to match one that meets our needs and gives us the same results as our physical environment."

But while UniGroup has used more than one type of online meeting software, Strayhorn isn't entirely satisfied with what he's seen.

"There have been problems with software code and proprietary rights, and who owns code that's been changed," Strayhorn said. "But once we're satisfied we can get the interaction we're looking for, we'll be ready."

UniGroup agents, who are most affected by the move to online training, are waiting for the program to be fully developed before issuing a verdict on the changes. "Ultimately, their purpose is always to meet face to face," said Strayhorn. "But since you have agency owners who are looking to save money, they'll take a wait-and-see approach."

Because of the nature of its business, established and consistent quality of service is a running theme with UniGroup and Strayhorn, to the point where agents will travel and meet almost exclusively in large, national hotel chains like Marriott or Hyatt. "You have to know the product is a sure thing," he said. "When you deal with an unknown or a nonstandardized hotel chain, you run the risk of different standards of performance. There's a risk of things going wrong that you don't have the ability to make right."

To that end, the company's experiments with online meetings are not part of an irrevocable decision, but UniGroup will continue to try to duplicate its in-person meetings at a computer terminal. While no final decision has been reached yet, and Strayhorn is optimistic about the online meeting arena, the company won't compromise its training standards.

"We're still exploring it and we don't have a solid answer," Strayhorn said. "The virtual learning environment is a good tool, but there is something to be said for loss of interaction. The hands-on learning environment is something that will be very difficult to replace.