Maximizing Your Meetings Spend. Chapter Two

Transcription

1 Maximizing Your Meetings Spend Chapter Two 12

2 by Carol Ann Salcito, President, Management Alternatives, Inc. Power Management: Combining Meetings and Business Travel Management Did you ever have those dreams where you show up at high school, enter into a classroom you ve never been in before and surprise, there s a test! That kind of feeling where you re not as prepared as you should be is how you re likely to feel when you sit down with hotels to negotiate discounts and all you ve got to work with is intelligence on half your company s lodging expenditures. Many companies know how much their organization spends on day-to-day, or transient, business travel but not meetings travel spend. 13

3 Implementing centralized processes for managing both business and meetings travel not only gives you and your organization greater leverage to negotiate with travel suppliers, but also empowers you to make smarter budgeting and forecasting decisions. You get a true picture of total spend so you can tackle areas of costs you haven t yet begun to control. Where to Get the Insight You Need There are such great opportunities available to corporations that want to maximize their business travel and meetings spend for greater savings and control. But where should you start looking for the data you ll need to combine to improve your negotiations and increase your overall savings? Capturing transient business travel information has long been a challenge. Even when travel management companies or online tools are suggested or mandated, people still book outside the system. Corporate cards may be issued, but people use personal cards or cash instead. It is inherently difficult to capture supplier data from expense reports. Still, these reports represent excellent sources of business travel information. Promoting compliance and utilization of the tools you ve deployed improves the quality of the information. However, as most people realize, meetings information goes beyond traditional business travel sources and may be found in purchase orders, check requests, and other sources because services are often purchased via alternate methods. If you have implemented a strategic meetings management program, then you are likely using a system like ACTIVE StarCite to get visibility of the meetings occurring and using the technology to manage budgets and capture meeting expense information for vendors. You can also then leverage corporate charge card and meeting card sources to pull in actual cost information. The reconciliation process made easy with some SMM technology via online reconciliation of budgeted versus actual expenses helps to ensure full accounting. Moreover, using attendee management tools aids in getting compliance for use of your online booking tools. Using electronic tools is vastly superior to using manual systems; electronic tools cut down and eliminate potential data entry errors, making your data even more accurate. It s critical, too, to set up electronic systems to break down expense data into various categories, reflecting spend on such things as room nights, restaurants, meeting space, and audio-visual. Tying it All Together: What to Do With Your New Data Now that you ve collected both meetings and transient business travel data and can see the overall picture of information, the next step is about finding synergies with suppliers you use. Clients should dissect spend information to determine how they re doing business with key suppliers. Then meet with sales reps from airlines, hotels, and other vendors to find ways you can capitalize on your relationships. For example, you could discover that you re only doing one meeting per year with XYZ property, but you re also giving them a thousand room nights in regular business travel spend. That s synergy you can then build upon, and you should be able to leverage some improved buying power. 14

4 Once you can see all your information in one place, you may want to consider going out to bid to find new suppliers. Or, if your data reveals you re using multiple suppliers in one particular location, consider paring that number in order to gain more, concentrated buying leverage. A caveat, though: make sure you re not eliminating vendors that are in any way unique in providing services you require (and at the right price), such as a certain type of audiovisual technology. The Voice of Authority: Senior Management Support Once you ve analyzed your data and created set program goals, the next step involves change management and encouraging employees to utilize the new preferred supplier agreements. Enlist the backing of a senior executive when you re embarking on a new course to consolidate travel and meetings management. It s a wise idea. A signed directive by the senior executive saying that cooperation among all parties is expected especially to adopt and use new meetings management software is an effective way to override fears by travel managers or meeting planners that essential elements of their jobs will disappear. Often, this fear stems from the fact that travel managers and meeting planners don t fully understand the benefits of new technology. If you can get the signature of a CEO, COO, or CFO on something that says Here s why we re doing this and we will do it, then you re convincing people that this is the right thing to do for your company. If it fits your culture, you can even go as far as having senior management pronounce that after three, two, or even one time ignoring new policies or technologies, individual travelers won t be reimbursed or meeting planners will face repercussions. Communicate Well, And Do it Often When it comes to centralizing transient and meetings travel, it s always best to tell your travelers or meeting planners why something is happening as well as the details about what is happening. If the economic climate is challenging, emphasize that it s being done to benefit the company s bottom line. Individuals will understand, too, because they will learn that changes are happening to prevent layoffs. Use every method of communication you would use to announce something, say, as important as a change in your healthcare plan. Blast it in every possible way; for example, through s, promotional messages on corporate social media channels, webinars and messages on travel portals. When centralizing transient and meetings travel, don t forget to enlist the aid of your travel partners; for example, travel management companies, technology partners and your company s preferred hotels. Make sure they understand they re accountable. Say, Here s the objective of our corporation. If someone other than the following individuals contact you to set up a meeting, I need to know about it. If you don t let me know, you run the risk of losing us as a client overall. Show them samples of standard contracts and spell out who can sign. Carol Ann Salcito s Top 3 Best Practices It s a great idea to combine day-to-day business travel spending with meetings spend in order to win better discounts with suppliers. Here are 3 handy best practice tips offered by Management Alternatives Carol Ann Salcito! 1. Consult multiple sources to find combined meetings/travel data. Corporate, personal and dedicated meeting cards are good sources of actual spend information for both transient and meetings travel. Enlist help from purchasing and accounting to check out data from purchase orders and check requests. Also, rely on reporting tools from your travel and meeting management companies, as well as your meetings management technology provider. 2. Leverage some of that new information on combined spend with suppliers. Even if you discover that you re only doing one meeting per year with XYZ property, you can still negotiate if you re also giving them a thousand room nights in regular business travel spend. Consider paring multiple suppliers in order to gain more, concentrated buying leverage. 3. Get backing from your senior management In order to support your new buying power, senior management backing for directives and mandates to use designated suppliers is critical. Spell out repercussions if employees don t follow rules. 15

5 Integration: A Job Never Completed Running a consolidated business travel and meetings operation is quite a challenge since, for many companies, meetings management is still the last frontier of overall travel management. Strategic meetings management rewards are: + Improved savings (SMM best practices can bring 10-25% savings annually on meetings spend 1 ) via process efficiencies (e.g. automation of attendee registration) and greater supplier buying power + New levels of cost control + Deeper engagement with attendees + Bottom line growth in your business But travel, meetings, and procurement managers need to continually communicate program benefits, track their efforts, and share program successes with senior management. Never take it for granted that once you put something into place, it is the end of the project. Meeting spend is often neglected in supplier negotiations even though it is such a huge part of overall business travel. In one study², U.S. businesses spent $225 billion on domestic travel. While the majority of this spending (57%) was for general business travel, 43% was for meetings and conventions. According to a 2012 Business Travel News survey 3, 24 percent of all respondents indicated their companies have centrally consolidated all meetings purchasing functions. Of those, more than 50% said they have gained the benefit of leveraging meetings and business travel volume for negotiation purposes. Fifty-five percent of the travel directors responding to GBTA s 2012 Travel Management Compensation and Benefits Survey said they are responsible for developing strategic meetings management programs in their companies. The study also revealed a significant increase in travel managers charged with SMMP 42 percent of respondents in 2012 versus 33 percent in the 2011 survey. Meeting planning has also been added to the job responsibilities of a larger pool of respondents: 43 percent of overall respondents said they were responsible for meeting planning in 2012 and 2011, up from 39 percent in Carol Ann Salcito President, Management Alternatives, Inc. Carol began her career in travel management with United Technologies Corporation, culminating her 18 years with UTC as Director, Corporate Travel. In this role Carol provided direction and assistance to the subsidiary companies Travel Council. She supervised the consolidation of UTC s worldwide travel budget. Carol joined MAI in 1992 and has served a multitude of clients in her 18 years with MAI. She transformed MAI into a multinational consultancy through a legally registered Trademark and became President and owner of the company in Since 2000, MAI has been a Nationally Certified Women s Business Enterprise. She is an energetic member of the Global Business Travel Association and completed a four year stint on the Association s Board of Governors. Carol has been the Chairperson of the Education Committee in the U.S., Shanghai and Brazil and is a past President of the Connecticut/Westchester Chapter of the organization. She is the recipient of the GBTA Professional Service Award from the Chapter Presidents Council of GBTA. 1 Meetings and Events: Where Savings Meet Success, CWT Travel Management Institute research, The Role of Business Travel in the U.S. Economic Recovery, 2013, conducted by Oxford Economics and funded by the U.S. Travel Association Strategic Meetings Management Survey of 295 corporate travel & meeting professionals 16

6 by Kari Wendel, SMMC, Senior Director, SMM Strategy + Solutions, Carlson Wagonlit Travel Meetings & Events Maximizing Supplier Relations with erfps: How to Create a Win-Win When Sourcing E-RFPs are simply an electronic version of a traditional request for proposal that enables apples-to-apples comparisons of multiple bids. They can also bind responding suppliers to prices and terms, and require responding suppliers to identify issues they may have with your contracts or addendums. They ve also dramatically changed the meetings industry in a very short period of time. Hotel selection was historically a very manual process. Planners were limited to the hotels they knew and could find in print collateral. Sourcing multiple hotel options across multiple cities could take months. Then ACTIVE Network Starcite and others built online marketplaces where we could enter key meeting parameters and receive previously unimaginable amounts of information in a short time frame. Today, it is common to expect a 24-hour turnaround time for most bids. 17

7 This dramatic increase in volume and decrease in turnaround time caused a necessary shift in the hotel industry s RFP response and sales practices. Prior to the proliferation of erfps, the effort required to introduce properties to meeting planners throughout the U.S. was monumental, and limited to the scope and skill of phone-based sales efforts. And though they still have to work to build relationships and trust, the meeting leads are pushed to the hoteliers and many resources are diverted now to responding to opportunities online. The upsides to these changes are many efficiency, accuracy of information, volume of information, qualitative information (such as reviews from peers) time savings in negotiating and much more. But there are downsides, as well. Anyone can find a hotel that meets their needs, but many would argue it takes a depth of knowledge that can t be replicated by a computer to get the right hotel. And, just because you can put your erfp out to 50 hotels, it doesn t mean you should. The resources and energy the hotels expend to turn those 50 bids around in 24 hours are measurable and don t result in business for 49 of them. Those costs are being passed on to all of us. Future Opportunities: Information First Many have proposed the industry adopt an erfi process an electronic request for information. If you re not ready to offer the business yet because your meeting sponsor is still choosing between four locations, you could issue an RFI to ask for information, rather than making ten hotels in four locations bid for your business. You d get information back which the meeting host could use to make a more consolidated decision. And your reputation for issuing real offers of business as a competent hotel sourcing expert will be protected. Expanding the use of erfps outside the hotel universe is another next practice. Today, many companies tweak the system built for hotel RFPs to work for production services, ground transportation, audio visual services, etc. It would be a huge improvement to have purpose-built functionality for these other areas. Just as it did with hotel booking, an erfp system for other commodity services would improve efficiency, accuracy, negotiating, speed, etc. Kari Wendel s Top 3 Best Practices Optimizing the use of your SMM system at the planner level is critical if you want to reap the benefits at an enterprise level, says Kari Wendel, SMMC, Senior Director, SMM Strategy + Solutions at Carlson Wagonlit Travel Meetings & Events. Here are her recommendations: 1. Manage your reputation. With hotels getting more bids than they can possibly manage, and expectations of turnaround at 24 hours, they often have to prioritize which bids they respond to quickest. If you want to be at the top of their list, check your close ratio and your average number of bids per meeting. Hotels know who is serious about offering real business opportunities. 2. Training, training, training. It s essential that stakeholders understand not just how to use the erfp system, but why. What benefits do they, and the organization, derive from it? How can it make their lives easier? Use your outputs to continually manage the process. Note, for instance, that someone booked a hotel in Minneapolis that isn t one of your two preferred hotels and find out why. Explain how this can damage your reputation with preferred suppliers. This can be another opportunity for education. 3. Keep your supplier relationships strong. erfps don t take away the importance of a personal relationship with your preferred hotels. Facilitate your bids electronically, but pick up the phone and build those relationships. You want your hotel to feel comfortable calling you to say, We don t have the exact dates on your erfp, but if you could shift by one week, we could offer a great rate. 18

8 Training is Critical Key Elements in an erfp The elements in your erfp are there not only to elicit prices from vendors, but to make them aware of your internal policies by which they must abide. In addition to your meeting essentials (dates, room blocks, F&B, etc.), your RFP should include (or have attachments for): Stakeholder management is critical to the success of SMM programs, and training to drive compliance to erfps is central to that cause. Engage and train your stakeholders purposefully so that they see value in the process both to the company and to their own work. Many companies purchase ACTIVE Starcite and other meeting technologies, send a link internally, and wait for the magic to happen. But if stakeholders aren t adequately trained in their use, or don t understand how the systems benefit them, the magic never happens. The lack of stakeholder management is the #1 reason SMM efforts stall or fail. Using the reporting tools to produce metrics on supplier-specific results will also help manage your supplier relationships. These systems will finally put the power of your hotel data in your hands, as opposed to counting on your suppliers for quality data. When hotel reps say they want more of your business, for instance, you can respond with facts on the number of times they were offered an opportunity to bid, the percentage of non-responses, the times the hotel s rates weren t competitive, etc. With a high level of adoption to the erfp processes, you can have the right level of discussion with suppliers and use the outputs to better support the enterprise-level goals and objectives linked to your SMMP. + Your meeting goals + Your desired list of concessions + Prohibited expenses + Company travel rules + A conflict of interest disclosure form + Prohibited venues + A commission disclosure policy + A confidentiality statement + The selection criteria that will be used to award the bid + Any conditions of bidding + Legal compliance requirements + Competitive and/or privacy requirements + Insurance requirements + Payment timing requirements + Contract templates or language (essential clauses such as attrition, force majeure, hotel quality, price adjustments, etc.) + Any special security requirements + Alcohol policies + Sustainability policies + Food donation policies + Your social media and/or brand usage guidelines Kari Wendel SMMC, Senior Director, SMM Strategy + Solutions, Carlson Wagonlit Travel Meetings & Events Kari (Kesler) Wendel has over 20 years in strategic meetings, travel and sourcing, and in her role as the Senior Director of SMM Strategy and Solutions, she is responsible for leading the team of strategic and operational leaders who identify and implement strategies for ongoing improvement of clients M&E programs. In conjunction with the CWT Solutions Group, she also leads CWT M&E s consulting practice, which focuses on implementing and managing strategic meetings management (SMM) programs on behalf of clients. Prior to rejoining CWT, Kari created and led her own consultancy in 2009/2010, KK Strategic Solutions, where she supported creative strategies for companies who endeavor to drive innovative solutions in the meetings, travel, and sourcing space. In prior years, Kari developed and managed strategic meetings and travel programs for Honeywell International, ING, and Xerox. In 2010, Kari was named the MVP of SMM, and in 2009, Kari was named a top Changemaker in the industry. In 2006, she was elected to the Board of the Global Business Travel Association, and in 2004 she was named Best Meetings Practitioner by Business Travel News. She spearheaded successful development of the industry s first professional certification in Strategic Meetings Management and co-chaired the development of another industry first: the SMM Maturity Model. 19

9 by Betsy Bondurant, Founder, President of Bondurant Consulting Integrating a Meeting Card into Your SMMP Card Benefits in Action: Meeting cards are beneficial to the management of a strategic meetings management program (SMMP) because they are used exclusively to pay for meetingand event-related expenditures. In order to keep the data on the meeting expenses clean, these meeting cards are not to be used for personal travel and entertainment (T&E) expenses, nor are they to be used for purchases that would go onto a Purchasing Card (P-card), such as office supplies. 20

10 Here are some of the key benefits of using a meeting card: + Increased visibility into total meeting spend, since all meeting spend is aggregated on the meeting card, versus having to pull information from Purchase Orders, T&E card information, and General Ledger line items. + Greater insight into the total meeting and event spend for suppliers allows for increased leverage with hotels, destination management companies (DMCs), audio/visual and ground transportation companies. + Improved process efficiencies because employees have fewer touch points when paying for services, as the invoice payment and reconciliation process is simplified with fewer steps required. Plus staff is not chasing invoices with an accounts payable department to check status if the suppliers have been paid or not + Speedier payment and reconciliation of meeting invoices, because once the invoice is approved, payment is authorized immediately on the meeting card. Today, there is still a huge opportunity for companies to adopt and benefit from meeting cards. 1 Case Study: Card Brings $168,000 in Savings When I think back on all the times I have helped companies implement meeting cards as part of their SMMPs, one really interesting case stands out because the client raised productivity and reduced processing time. At that firm, the finance department helped to determine that the company spent an average $112 to process each supplier purchase order (PO) and issue a check for payment. When using a meeting card, there is no need to initiate a PO or issue individual checks, as you pay all suppliers each month via a single billing statement. Once the company started using the card, they totaled up how many transactions were on each card per month. Some planners only had 15 transactions, while others had 30 or more (the entire planning team had on average 110 transactions). When the total number of transactions was multiplied by that $112 benchmark cost to process POs and checks, the savings came out to $14,000 cost avoidance per month, or $168,000 annually. This was a significant savings metric to add to the dashboard that went to senior leadership. Additionally, the centralized meeting planning team had been tracking time spent on various aspects of the planning process. One of the process categories was reconciliation and payment, and it found that with the implementation of the meeting card, the time spent to reconcile and pay dropped by about 20%. That essentially freed up the total of one full-time employee for a year. Yes, the planners still had to reconcile the supplier invoice, but it was a much simpler process with the card: once the charges were authorized by the planner, the supplier applied the charges to the card. Everyone knew that the supplier had been paid, and in record time! Thus there was no need for time-consuming, follow-up calls from the supplier to the planner looking for payment (and subsequently from the planner to Accounts Payable to check on the status of payment). Get Leadership, Stakeholders on Board If you already have some of the elements of an SMMP in place, the benefits outlined above are typically enough to get the endorsement from senior leadership to move forward with a meeting card. It s likely that you will work with someone in your finance department, the T&E card administrator and procurement to help determine if your card should be issued by the same company as the existing T&E or P-card issuer. Chasing unpaid supplier invoices adds hours monthly and days annually to a meeting planner s time. Typically, planners get calls from hotels, destination management companies, or other suppliers seeking information on the payment status of an invoice sent or they have to make calls to vendors in the days or weeks following an event to get final bills. Planners must then track down the information with their A/P department or investigate internally within the financial system. But with a meeting card, once you reconcile the invoice, you can tell the supplier it is approved and it is immediately processed and paid. There is no second-guessing when they ll receive payment. 1 Fewer than 50% of nearly 300 corporate travel and meeting professionals surveyed in Business Travel News 2012 Strategic Meetings Management Survey noted their companies use meeting cards for payment. 21

11 There may be a compelling argument to keep it with the existing provider. For example, the card company may be willing to pay a higher rebate, as it also issues a P-card and T&E card to your company. Or there could be just as compelling an argument to go to another issuing company. Perhaps another issuer has more global acceptance levels among merchants. Also, the meeting manager should realize that when it comes to making the decision on which card to use, there will likely have to be much more input from other areas outside of the meeting organization, such as finance. Additionally, there very likely could be a role for the meeting card with the technology you use to support your SMMP. Some end-to-end solutions help enhance the reconciliation process and increase data visibility, so it would be wise to keep this in mind as one of your potential business requirements. The bottom line is that you need to select a meeting card that will meet all the business requirements you have identified in order to make your card program successful. In recent years, there has been a need to provide a globally accepted card as a key business requirement, as more and more companies are broadening the reach of their programs outside North America. As more card providers expand their acceptance levels globally, the ability to work with one card has become more of a reality. That being said, some companies use more than one card to cover different regions of the globe. As long as you are doing a good job of aggregating the data, this solution, although not ideal, can be very workable. A meeting card can be appropriate for just about any SMMP. It can be especially helpful for a centralized program where the majority of spend is managed by a few people. In this case, you could easily assign a card to each individual meeting planner in the group, who would then have the responsibility for using the card and handling the reconciliation according to your standard operating procedures (SOPs). Likely there may be other power users in your organization who would be issued a meeting card, in addition to those in the meeting department. There are other examples of card deployment where a card is issued for each meeting. This sounds as if it could be cumbersome but, in fact, is usually a pretty automated process, depending on the provider. Once the meeting and related budget is approved, the card administrator can go online to the program management section of the issuer and automatically request a card for the meeting planner. The planner usually has a card within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Betsy Bondurant s Top 3 Best Practices Implementing a meeting card offers superior visibility into total meeting spend, elevated leverage with suppliers such as hotels and greater administrative efficiencies and savings, such as around payment. Below, Bondurant offers three best practices for adopting and using a dedicated meeting charge card: 1. Implementation Recordkeeping. Work with existing card administrators within your company to identify the best meeting card solution for your program. Develop written Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in collaboration with audit, finance, legal and the card issuer. Conduct a beta test with a small group of users for a few months to work out any bugs in the system before it is rolled out company-wide. 2. Communication Provide live training and develop a training manual for everyone who will be using the cards include Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) in the manual, for example, How do I input the account codes for expenses during the reconciliation process? Communicate to your suppliers that you will begin using a meeting card to pay for meeting and event purchases. 3. Monitoring Track and report on statistics: + Volume of transactions (overall and by each card holder) + Cost avoidance of processing # of transactions via the card, versus through traditional methods + Total dollar volume monthly, quarterly, and annually + Expenses by category hotel, DMC, etc. + Identify trends and maverick spending (in order to monitor compliance) 22

12 The amount of funds available on the card is equal to the meeting budget, which really helps with controlling spending. If more money is required because of a change in scope of the meeting, the card limit can be increased through preexisting approval procedure. If you have an outsourced program where your planners are third-party professionals, you can still implement a card program and have it managed by the third party. Most suppliers embrace the meeting card because it gives them speedy payment for services, even though they are paying a nominal service fee to the card issuer. Many suppliers make the strategic decision to accept the meeting card because it is a requirement of becoming a preferred supplier for a specific organization. But once they integrate meeting card acceptance into their method of operation, they see how it improves their client relationships. Preventing fraud SOPs were mentioned earlier. This is one major aspect of implementing a meeting card that cannot be overlooked. Internal auditing departments, in addition to the card provider and corporate program administrator, can develop well-thought-out SOPs that protect their companies from fraudulent use of cards. It is important to remember that card data is a tremendous enhancement to the overall Some factors to consider when developing meeting card SOPs + Clearly identify what suppliers and types of charges are appropriate for the meeting card, and specify those that are not. + Assign monthly spend limits to planners based on the scope of meetings they typically plan. + Develop a reconciliation review process to be administered by supervisors. + Identify cut-off dates for online reconciliation and approval in alignment with the corporate payment timeline. understanding of your SMMP spend. The card data reflects actual spend (versus bookings only) and supplies another layer of business intelligence that helps to maximize your buying power, provides clarity to spending patterns of those utilizing the card, and helps to control expenditures by placing spend limits by planner, meeting, or supplier type. Data is power. Meeting cards, and the business intelligence they provide, are truly powerful. Betsy Bondurant Founder, President of Bondurant Consulting Betsy offers a unique 360 perspective with over 30 years industry expertise in hotel sales, meeting & trade show management, including 12 years of direct involvement in the discipline of Strategic Meetings Management. Betsy began her career in restaurants in 1977, transitioned into hotel sales and ultimately found her passion in meeting and trade show management. During her 15 year tenure at the world s largest biotech company, Betsy developed and implemented a pioneering corporate-wide strategic meeting management program. This experience also provided her deep insight into the regulations affecting the Life Sciences industry. In 2007, she moved from the corporate meeting world to consulting, much of which has been within procurement organizations. In addition to her current work with Fortune 500 companies, Betsy is considered a Subject Matter Expert in the area of Strategic Meetings Management Programs and as such, has authored many articles, developed educational content, and presented to audiences in North America, Europe and Asia. Betsy holds a Bachelor of Science in Hotel Administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has been an active member of Meeting Professionals International (MPI) since 1994; having served on many international committees, as a member of the International Board of Directors and is currently the chair of the Knowledge Advisory Council. Betsy believes in giving back, and as a result has participated in a number of industry advisory boards, panels, and forums. In 2009, Betsy was one of the first to achieve MPI s Accredited Trainer designation. Betsy has been recognized as one of Business Travel News Best Practitioners and has been honored as one of Meeting News 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry and was awarded the 2010 MPI Chairwoman s Award. 23