More than half of corporate meeting buyers said their company's procurement department has not recently increased its involvement in meetings management over the past two years, according to an exclusive Meetings Today survey, although several third-party management companies and consultants said that number is increasing.
Of the 137 corporate meeting buyer surveyed, 58 percent said their company's procurement and finance department had not become more involved in meetings management over the past two years. More than 75 percent said that those departments' influences had neither increased nor decreased the costs of meetings.
However, meeting management companies and consultancies are seeing the number of procurement-influenced meetings programs on the rise.
"Every industry is at the point where the free-spending days are no longer here," said George Odom, senior director of business development for Advito, BCD Travel's consulting arm. "The procurement mentality is getting into meetings more and more, like travel was years ago. Embrace it, because it's coming."
Third-party meetings management company Maritz also has seen an increase in procurement's involvement with its customers' meetings."When we look at strategic meetings management and even traditional preferred supplier relationships and large one-off meeting arrangements, it's almost an exception to the rule not to have procurement involved in some piece of the process," said Cindy D'Aoust, senior vice president of strategic meetings management for Maritz Travel.
However, the role of procurement has evolved from its initial perception as strictly a cost-cutting endeavor.
"In a lot of cases, that's the perception of procurement: 'I'm just worried about cost,' " Advito's Odom said. "You have to remember that your focus is not to buy the cheapest that you can buy. You're trying to buy the appropriate thing for you at the lowest cost that you can get that service. There's got to be a balance, and I think the industry has become good at weighing those balances because they know what the cost is for the service," he said, adding that the emphasis should still be on accomplishing the goals of the meeting rather than solely focusing on budgets.
"The strategies are valid—I think all procurement strategies are—but they have to be adjusted to the market. A meeting is not a commodity. You're getting people together for a certain purpose and if you don't meet that purpose, it doesn't matter what you paid," Odom said.
Procurement has evolved into a supportive role to meeting buyers, said Maritz's D'Aoust. "Previously, there was confusion over who took the lead," she said, adding that procurement used to be "much more focused on driving down costs exclusively" but that the two departments have now taken a "true team approach" to meetings.
While some companies, such as Honeywell and Deloitte
(BTN, May 21), use procurement practices for meetings, others do not. Austin, Texas-based Sematech's meetings department does not work with procurement, mainly because the program is centralized and only certain individuals are authorized to sign contracts.
"Our meeting planners are authorized buyers for the corporation. There's only a handful of people that can go out and commit contractually and financially on behalf of Sematech," said manager of corporate travel and meeting services Bill Davidson.
Cheryl Hoffard, manager of meetings and events for Schwan Food Co., said she has spoken with the procurement department about what they are doing with contracts, but the department does not have any direct interaction with meetings.
"If you're not managing it centrally, it's spread among so many places that's it's hard to get a handle on what your spend is," Odom said. "If I can bring more in, I can manage it better."