Moving Up: Planner Adds Transient Job

Certified meeting planner Kimberly Meck, who has focused on managing the preferred hotel program for groups at 3M, is now also taking up the reigns of its transient travel management.

Meck, who learned the fine art of negotiating with a variety of vendors on the strength of a well-heeled meetings program now more than a decade old, also learned the value of keeping the $14.2 billion manufacturing company's 20,000 traveling employees in 34 states pleased with accommodations, meeting facilities and other group arrangements.

"It's not enough to save money. Although getting a good price is important, you've also got to keep the objectives of the meeting in mind and get value for the money you do spend."

As second in command to Arlene Englart, manager of employee transportation, Meck--who's official title is supervisor for travel management services--will oversee a 3M employee who liaisons with SatoTravel, the company's transient agency, and an administrator who works with hotel and rental car programs for individual business travelers.

Meck's department, which includes overseeing the activities of 75 SatoTravel agents dedicated to booking air, also builds the company's preferred vendor directory, and handles international documentation. It's a new responsibility that Meck relishes and one that, in a sense, she has been preparing for throughout her career at the Minnesota-based manufacuturer of such products as tapes, adhesives and fluorochemicals.

"My career at 3M started in the corporate travel department, but as our activity increased and we got more involved with organizing the meetings purchases, I migrated to the group side," Meck recalled. She worked as a meeting planner in a growing department (now with 15 full-time planners) and helped to build a group program with preferred hotel vendors Radisson and Hilton.

In a new hybrid role, she will retain her responsibilities as a negotiator for the group hotel program while shifting most of her attention to the transient activity.

Under her steerage the company will finish implementing a travel section on the company's corporate intranet site and a Lotus notes package to automate the tracking of meetings expenses.

"We will have our newsletter, policy, and other useful tips included on the intranet site, which should be available in the next three months, or so. This information already is available to our travelers, but the technology will make it more accessible, so we're pretty excited."

Meck estimates that the company has an air volume of $85 million--$5 million of which results from meetings--and a hotel volume of $30 million. Meetings expenses for the 400 programs the department was responsible for last year topped $9 million.

The internal restructuring comes at a time when 3M has settled into its relationship--begun in 1995--with SatoTravel.

"Arlene Englart had a very hands-on role to manage the transition from multiple agencies to a single provider.' Meck pointed out. "Now, she believes that I can step in and really partner with SatoTravel."

The agency, Meck explained, uses a proprietary scripting system called Ego in conjunction with Worldspan to track traveler preferences and make sure policy is maintained.

It has taken more than a year to get the agency servicing the account optimally, but 3M is satisfied with the relationship. "With all the changes in commission fee structures we needed an agency to handle air booking, but otherwise we're pretty self-sufficient in other areas of travel management," Meck explained. "We required an agency that understood our hands on approach."

Meck is looking for ways to improve the travel program, making sure--as she did as a meeting planner--that travelers have trouble-free arrangements.

"I want my travelers focused on the objectives of the business trip, not distracted by their air, hotel or car reservations," Meck said.

"If they have absolutely no difficulty in making those plans or conducting business on the road then they will do a better job for the company. It's that simple."

As a meeting planner, Meck helped to build up a hotel program that everyone felt comfortable using. In that role, she incorporated seven years of experience as a hotel sales person for a number of properties, including a stint at Hilton. This, she said, gave her insight on how to construct a successful program. To this day, she negotiates as well as she does because she knows what is feasible to ask for and when a hotel salesperson is truly being unreasonable. Because she can also adopt the traveler's perspective, Meck also knows how to make reasonable demands of them.

"We have very good compliance in the company because these are properties that everyone likes anyway." She said that the company's volume has kept 3M "reasonably immune" from the hazards of the market."

For the most part, we've been able to get comfortable rates and decent availability because of our relationships with Radisson and Hilton," Meck said. While short-term booking for a meeting still can present some difficulty, Meck believes that despite the demand cycle, an organized company with the scope of 3M can do well, even on limited notice.