New McGettigan CEO Eyes Europe
<B>New McGettigan CEO Eyes Europe</B>
By Chris Davis
Mimi McGettigan Kehan, after 25 years with the company, has become chairman and CEO of McGettigan Partners, the meeting management firm her grandfather founded 70 years ago. Kehan replaces longtime CEO John Pino, who left to focus his energies on meeting portal StarCite, an 18-month-old McGettigan spinoff. Replacing Kehan as president and COO is Christine Duffy, promoted from executive vice president of McGettigan.
Kehan, whose promotion comes during an active period of growth for the company, vowed to continue the aggressive trend of acquisitions and alliances that began with the acquisition of a California meeting management firm and the StarCite spinoff last year. The plan includes the eventual global expansion of McGettigan, Kehan said, with alliances with European entities forthcoming.
"I want to continue to increase our size and establish ourselves as the worldwide leader in meetings consolidation," Kehan said. "Since we spun off StarCite last year, while John was CEO of both companies, a group in our organization got to work on determining what space we would continue to define, and keeping and gaining market share first on a national level, then global. We've had the largest success on the national front and probably more case studies than anyone, so our next phase is global. Pretty soon, we will launch many key initiatives that include strategic alliances in Europe, continued acquisitions and exploring alternative distribution channels."
There are several methods the company is exploring to increase its European presence, including the acquisition of companies to provide either new geographic areas of service, new products and services or new customers. The eventual goal of the expansion is to provide an easier path to global meetings consolidation, which poses more challenges than domestic consolidation, due to language barriers, different accounting systems and the lack of dominant European hotel chains.
While global meetings consolidation is an extremely complex step that only the most sophisticated buyers have taken, more corporations are realizing the value of domestic consolidation, said Kehan. "American corporations going through the various phases of globalizing transient travel are noticing the huge untapped savings in their meeting departments," she said. "They know meetings consolidation is not easy, but the cost savings is there. Some are now looking to tackle a global view, but there are still many who haven't looked at opportunities nationally."
As economists broach the topic of an economic slowdown, Kehan said, many will look to cut costs wherever they can. That, in turn, bodes well for McGettigan. "We are the pioneers and evangelists, and have had more request for proposals in the past 24 months than ever," she said. "It is really a coming of age for us, but it's a long strategic process."
McGettigan has targeted three particular markets as primed for meetings consolidation initiatives: the pharmaceutical industry, which has seen several major companies consolidate but has experienced a wave of major mergers that could produce new opportunities; the technological industry, whose old-guard companies have seen their travel programs mature and are in a position to cut costs; and the financial services industry, which Kehan said may need more time to embrace the concept.
Greasing McGettigan's entrée into the technological sector was the 1999 acquisition of Meetings Plus, a San Francisco-based meetings management firm that boasted a who's-who of major technological clients.
While some of McGettigan's competitors, including Maritz and WorldTravel Meetings & Incentives, also have expressed a desire for more consolidation business, one sector of the meetings industry Kehan doesn't see as a threat are the online meeting portals.
"The dot-com initiatives, including our own, are tools we can use to further the consolidation effort," Kehan said. "They do not bring the intellectual capital or knowledge of consolidation that we have to approach a major corporation and consolidate their data globally, not only through technology but with program implementation, preferred vendor program implementation and actually getting the savings--all the things we offer from a consultative view. We will partner with StarCite for technology tools, but they frankly can't do what we do in taking the corporation through the consolidation process. None of their competitors can either."
StarCite will continue to be headed by Pino, who served as McGettigan's CEO since 1988. Because StarCite has grown to become a major player in the online meetings industry, Pino said, it was simply time to devote all his energies to one company. He will, however, remain on the McGettigan board of directors.