Managing Meetings At: Venator Group

<B> Managing Meetings At: Venator Group</B>
<I>Venator Tackles Consolidation</I>

By Chris Davis

As one of the minority of travel managers to first consolidate her company's meetings and then do the same for transient travel, The Venator Group's Eileen Leddy grants that she isn't an example for everyone. Nevertheless, the centralization of the two functions has saved Venator, formerly known as Woolworth Corp., an estimated 15 to 20 percent on its $3 million annual meetings spend, and 10 to 15 percent on its $15 million annual travel and entertainment tab.

Leddy's experiences illuminate both the benefits of consolidation and the reasons that many large corporations don't undertake the same centralization of their meetings programs that they do with individual travel.

"Meetings and individual travel are similar, but they're really two different animals," Leddy said. "They are similar departments, but travel is more something that you can consolidate and run with, while meetings entail so much detail for each individual event. It would have been easier to consolidate travel before meetings. But after having centralized meetings, where you have more personalities and more politics to deal with because there are so many more players, I was more primed when the time came to consolidate travel."

New York City-based Venator operates thousands of athletic apparel retail outlets, including the Foot Locker and Champs Sports brands. In the 1980s, when Leddy undertook the several-year process of centralizing meetings, each division of Venator, including the now-defunct Woolworth's store division, handled its own meetings.

Leddy reviewed each meeting, picking up speed as her department gradually added a secretary and two meeting planners, and showed the internal event sponsor the money she could save through a centralized program.

The meetings centralization was given a soft touch by Leddy. "We took it at our own pace," she said. The only mandate is that Leddy's staff handles all contract negotiations.

Employees know their options, though. "We give them choices, so we'll go out and get at least three hotel bids--the hotel that they requested and other hotels that we may have a consolidated preferred rate with--so we can compare everything apples to apples. They do not have to go with what we recommend, but they know what we could have saved."

That approach has proved effective in terms of compliance. Since Venator allows meeting sponsors to handle as much of the logistical planning as they wish, they are less likely to feel disenfranchised and more likely to comply. "Our planners will gear employees towards preferred suppliers, but the planners get as involved as the division holding the event would like," Leddy said. "If the planner's going to just negotiate the room rate and arrange the menus, for example, and put the rest back on the secretary for the rooming lists and whatever else the division needs, that's fine."

By operating in this fashion, Leddy was able to determine the savings incurred for specific large meetings, which she presented to her senior management as an argument for centralizing companywide. The situation was reversed five years ago, when Leddy's management approached her with a request to centralize Venator's transient travel as well.

That project was less complex, Leddy said, because the two primary divisions of the company--the Woolworth's division and the athleticapparel division--already were consolidated, though with different suppliers. Leddy bid the combined volumes of both divisions with the incumbent suppliers, and developed a new companywide travel policy mandating the use of the new preferred suppliers.

"Like with any new department, there were growing pains," Leddy said. "Some employees liked the old agency and didn't want to change, but they weren't given any kind of choice. Our travelers complied for the most part and didn't step outside policy."

It took about six months for the centralized travel department to work the bugs out of the system, due to common glitches like telephone problems and implementing new profiles for traveling employees. Today, Venator is fully centralized throughout all divisions, and Leddy is thinking that her next step will be adding technology to the mix, both for individual travel and for the 125 to 150 meetings the department plans annually.

"We just recently gained access to the Internet," she said. "We're looking at online booking and expense reporting and all those beautiful things out there."

<B><CENTER>Take On Transient First</CENTER></B>

Looking back, Leddy said, the complexities of meetings centralization, while teeming with potential benefits, is a complex and work-intensive process. It's probably best to tackle transient travel first, she acknowledged.

"With individual travel, you'll have $1 million in air volume to a specific destination, for example, and you go out and bid, and that's it," she said. "With meetings you have to be much more service-oriented and receive much more input of the employee for whom you're planning the meeting."

And the turf issues that complicate meetings consolidations aren't as prevalent on the individual travel side. "It amazed me how many major corporations didn't have one department consolidating meetings, because there's real money to be saved," she said. "Yes, it's hard, but the benefits to the company far outweigh the politics."

The key is to gain the trust of both upper management and employees, and to show meeting sponsors that centralization leads to better and less expensive events without removing the whole operation, and credit, from their hands.

"It's very easy to have upper management tell employees that they will do their meetings through this new department, but try to do that when the person you're setting it up for isn't cooperating with you," Leddy said. "Some people love the little mechanics of a meeting: They like to see their name in print on the program. If you take that away from them, they feel the meetings department is getting all the glory. Make them the important piece of the meeting and you share that glory."

Finding out what the planners who worked on past meetings liked best about managing the process, and letting them continue to do that part is a better recipe for success than a corporate mandate, she said.

And the most effective way to sell meetings centralization to upper management is slowly, working on the largest meetings first and then expanding one meeting at a time.

"Organize it correctly and you can really make it run smoother," Leddy said. "But tread lightly.