Managing Meetings at Alliance Data: Meeting Guidelines Garner Major Savings

Dallas-based marketing services provider Alliance Data six months ago implemented meeting program guidelines that already have saved the company more than $100,000 and has collected more information about where meetings are being held.

Kim Reynolds, the company's conference and events manager, said during the six months since the program was started, Alliance Data has saved $104,000. The company's executive team had said if the program saved $60,000 in the first year they would consider it a success, "and obviously we did that," she said.

The six-figure savings were realized though Reynolds' immediate efforts, as the program only recently was rolled out to other company planners.

The new process, which Reynolds said is more of a guideline than a policy, directs planners throughout the company, mainly administrative assistants, to the company's online meetings portal, which is powererd by meetings technology firm StarCite and for which each planner has a unique logon and password.

There, planners can access a companywide meetings calendar to "look where we might have cancelled space" and see if they can piggyback on another meeting scheduled for the same time or destination, Reynolds said.

Planners can also use the home page to fill out a meetings request for proposals, which is sent through the tool to Experient, Alliance Data's outsourced event services provider.

Previously, planners would pass meeting requests to Reynolds, and she would enter their information into the StarCite page.

Reynolds said the program would require a few years to be able to demonstrate a full spectrum actual savings and spending. Last year, Reynolds rolled out a meetings-only purchasing card, which is the only card on which meeting expenditures can be charged, and only can be accessed through her. The card, she said, has been valuable as much for the meetings spending data it garners as for the savings generated.

"It has been hugely helpful in terms of the hotels we are booking with," Reynolds said. The data gathered with the card revealed many cities where a lot of the company's meetings were being held that "we didn't know existed," she said.

Her department partnered with Alliance Data's travel department to examine meetings spending, and found that all off-site meeting attendees booked their travel independently. Gathering that data has allowed the company to better leverage that volume. So far, Alliance Data has been able to save 5 percent from the rates the hotels first offered to the rates eventually contracted, and audiovisual expenses also have gone down by 20 percent, due to negotiating.

"We are working very hard with A/V vendors and hotels. Most planners were never negotiating any A/V discounts," she said. Reynolds said the company also is working to standardize hotel contracts.

With the planners in the company now poised to handle the program themselves, Reynolds said her department is "here as a resource as they need it," and has contracted with Experient to provide hourly support.

Reynolds had been working toward implementing a strategic meetings management program since early 2006, but it was during her participation in Meeting Professionals International's Certification in Meeting Management program in October of last year that she put together a business plan for an SMMP.

"I saw an opportunity to combine what I was working on," she said, adding that she used what she learned during the program to strengthen her proposal.

Looking into the company's spending, she saw that $7 million was spent on meetings each year, with no tracking. She asked for executive approval for the new process at the end of last year, just as she was contracting Experient, which in turn contracted with StarCite on Alliance Data's behalf, allowing the company to avoid a separate contract for the company's meeting technology.

Reynolds has embarked upon the program's next step: rolling it out to the meeting planners throughout the company.

She has started marketing the program companywide, and for the last eight weeks, has been traveling to company offices throughout the United States and Canada and hosting "lunch and learns" with any employee who has planned Alliance Data meetings. During these sessions, Reynolds explains the details of the program is and its benefits for meeting planners.

"The biggest thing has been the reception by the associates. We explained that there would be time savings and cost savings," Reynolds said.

So far, she has trained more than 40 people and has asked them for feedback to make the process more user-friendly.

Reynolds said she also is forming a meeting planning committee with users throughout the company who have a high level of meeting responsibilities, and plans to have the committee meet in the fall and develop best meeting practices.