Managing Meetings At: Zeneca
<H1> Managing Meetings At: Zeneca</H1><H3> Consolidates $25M Business</H3>By Lauren Bielski
<B>I</B>nternational biosciences giant Zeneca is consolidating its $25 million meetings and transient travel business as part of its new contract with Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Carlson Marketing Group.
Previously, transient business for Zeneca, the third largest biochemical firm in the world, was serviced by an internal agency and some 150 outside vendors. In the meetings area, too, no single vendor had a lock on Zeneca's purse strings. Although Carlson Marketing had handled meetings business for several agricultural divisions for more than five years, the agricultural, pharmaceutical and specialty chemical products divisions operated independently. Each division had very different corporate cultures, requirements and administrative procedures.
Travel management personnel at Zeneca's Wilmington, Del., headquarters had been quietly and persistently lobbying for a unified travel policy with a simplified vendor system-and clout for stricter enforcement-for at least a decade. Then a more cost-conscious environment prompted the firm to reconsider its buying strategies, said Zeneca's manager of travel and transportation, Clive Armitage.
"We had two basic criteria: improvement in the quality of service and the realization of savings and cost opportunities," Armitage said.
Initially, Zeneca's travel department pinpointed the need for "CRS overlay" infrastructure improvements that would support a reformed reporting methodology. The department also decided that an overhaul of procedural controls would be just as critical for cost containment as leveraging volume.
The company did have preferred vendor arrangements with hotels and airlines prior to the agency bidding process, although Carlson will be reassessing those arrangements in the future.
Once senior management approved the consolidation, it gave the travel department a three-month window to determine its requirements and find an agency. Zeneca formed a travel advisory board, which included 12 senior-level management people for each of the company's operating divisions. Also included was an internal consultant on general reengineering, Linda Hanna. The group got together several times before meeting with agencies, determining criteria for travel agency vendors and writing a draft of a new travel policy.
After the company sent out RFIs to travel management firms, contenders (including American Express, Rosenbluth and BTI Americas in addition to Carlson) had about four months to get figures hammered out and strategies developed for presentations.
It was Carlson's efforts to coordinate its approach-incorporating meetings services with its transient package-that cinched the deal for Zeneca. Carlson's European division has contracts in eight of the 25 countries in which Zeneca operates, including Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
"When I was researching the history of Zeneca's program, I discovered that our sister company, Carlson Marketing, had quite a well-established relationship with some of the operating divisions in the United States," said Sharon Lehr, Carlson Wagonlit's director of strategic sales.
Lehr then called the Carlson Marketing contact, Libby Spencer, who was handling meetings business for the agricultural group, and a partnership was forged to secure the business.
One example of the sort of reporting that ultimately won Carlson the account, she explained, was its SAP reporting method, which uses proprietary technology to allocate the cost of travel to the expected revenue.
Spencer's role will not change significantly as a result of the joint marketing effort between the two Carlson divisions, and Zeneca will continue to spend about $7 million annually on meetings-related costs, she estimates. Meetings won't be mandated throughout the organization in the way the transient travel program is, partly because the pharmaceutical division already is contracted with another meeting management firm through the end of 1996.
However, there will be a more consolidated approach: Spencer has hired a coordinator for small meetings, Cyndie Wright, who will work with administrative personnel in the agricultural and farm products divisions to develop preferred vendor lists.
Although it is too soon for Zeneca to comment on results, Armitage expressed satisfaction with the way Carlson handled the proposal. "Ultimately, they had an approach that was most in line with our corporate culture," he said. "I'm looking forward to working with them as we implement the program."
"Customers like Zeneca are starting to see the real benefits of dealing with one vendor," said Peter Moen, vice president of global account management at Carlson Wagonlit. He explained that in the meetings area, Carlson had changed the pricing structure to make invoicing more consistent-a value-added point for a firm seeking uniformity.