Philips Consolidates Data

Philips Medical Systems is taking steps to consolidate its meetings data throughout the organization.

Travel manager Cindy Scanlon began the year by ushering in a new, full-time employee from Rosenbluth International, the agency of Philips' parent company, Philips Electronics.

Rosenbluth employee Betina Vacarro will handle both group business and transient travel. She will be responsible for marketing the consolidation to the entire organization; the meetings at Philips Medical already are consolidated. Vacarro brings an extensive meeting planning background to the position, including experience in planning Olympics events for Avon.

Philips just adopted Synergis-the software solution jointly created and marketed by Rosenbluth and McGettigan Corporate Travel Services-and plans to have it installed by this summer at the Shelton, Conn., office, where Scanlon oversees medical meetings planning.

With only three of the 30 business divisions having formal planning staffs, the idea is to pull in the reins on a very decentralized organization, Scanlon said.

She intends for a wave of data collection consolidation to begin at both the New York headquarters and a division in Rosemont, Ill., where use of the software to register all meetings is required. The rest of the company will be phased in over the next two years.

Three meeting planners from the two divisions that initially participate will enter all the meetings data and ask critical 'what if' questions, Scanlon said.

"We don't want to take anybody's actual planning responsibility away from them," she said. "We just want the information. Eventually, we'll develop a purchasing strategy that uses that information to the best advantage."

In the first year or so, administrators throughout the organization will phone in their registrations and have activity reports sent to them. Eventually, software will be distributed so that regional offices can collect the information themselves.

Philips wants to get an assessment of what it is spending and how much savings the alternatives can bring. "What if we use limos instead of rental cars? What if we funnel as much business as possible to a preferred vendor versus negotiating on a meeting-by-meeting basis based on the volume of that event? These are the questions we'll be asking," Scanlon said.