Philips TM Tackles Show Housing

<H1> Philips TM Tackles Show Housing</H1>By Lauren Bielski

<B>P</B>hilips Medical travel manager Cindy Scanlon has used her experience in consolidating meetings and travel to secure management of yet another piece of business: housing associated with the trade show and conference program.

In this new role, Scanlon's team is responsible for booking rooms through the housing bureaus of the various conferences in which the company participates, and for managing all of the reconciliations to ensure that deposits are returned in a timely manner. The company attends 30 trade shows and medical conferences annually, sending anywhere from five to 400 people at a time.

"By taking this responsibility from the trade show sales department, we gave them more time to devote to sales and we can improve the efficiency of the entire operation," Scanlon said.

Scanlon had consistently inquired about helping out with conference arrangements ever since August 1994, when she consolidated meetings and travel (Meetings Today, Aug. 29, 1994) and received the green light on a policy that would require the registration of meetings through a single desk. Prior to signing on for housing, her department managed conference-related air bookings-on which Philips spends about $2 million, Scanlon estimates.

The conference housing arrangements were previously arranged by the overextended trade show office. In the fall of 1995, the person who handled housing arrangements for the shows left the company, and Scanlon stepped in to help out with the Radiological Society of North America conference, the largest conference Philips attends all year.

Taking over the housing function was a logical next step for Scanlon's team, which saved the medical division $300,000 last year and $100,000 in 1994. "After an initial period of resistance, we've captured about 99 percent of the meetings," Scanlon said.

Transient and meetings travel volume at Shelton, Conn.-based Philips Medical-which is a division of Philips Electronics -is about $7 million. The division has 2,000 U.S. employees in 14 regional offices and 7,000 abroad.

Use of the travel agency is mandated for meetings to track costs and negotiate effectively. "On a scale of 10, I would say we're a 7 with respect to strictness," Scanlon said. "I monitor activity through travel agency and corporate card reports."

When Scanlon came on board in February 1991, Philips already had started a program with Rosenbluth, "but there was no specific meetings policy," Scanlon recalled.

Although she initially struggled to get department managers to fill out her survey forms about their meetings activities and requirements, Scanlon and her department ultimately received top-down support. "We're definitely on target with our objectives," she said.

Her success in controlling meetings costs for this division will serve as a blueprint as she begins to monitor the activities of the other 24 divisions at Philips Electronics, which currently have the option of using her department. In a travel council meeting she attended in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, Scanlon presented the savings achieved by the medical group. The council will look at ways for other departments to similarly leverage their buying power.