Maximize This Year’s Marketing Budget
I was surprised by the results of a recent survey. They showed that 95% of meeting planners said their organization does an adequate job of sharing information across departments revealing the total sum of meetings costs and identifying suppliers. But when asked if they must use, or even consider using, the suppliers with volume agreements, almost 50% of the planners said they had no such restrictions. (Meeting News Nov. 2007) This doesn’t make sense. It isn’t enough to wrap your arms around total meeting spend. Companies must leverage this knowledge and spend to significantly lower and/or avoid internal and external costs.
The best way to achieve this goal (and savings!) is to implement a Strategic Meetings Management Program (SMMP).
The SMMP (also known as Meetings Consolidation) defines the process of consolidating the activity of meeting/event planning into one centralized location thus affording a company tighter control over internal and external spending and resources. The IT Exchange Group has created some guidelines that should be employed when developing such a program. They are:
Assess
First conduct due diligence to determine what is actually happening in your company with respect to current spend, processes, policies and personnel involved in planning meetings and events. This step should include internal interviews, historical data analysis, and supplier research. These are necessary to develop a baseline from which solid recommendations based upon fact and not conjecture can be developed. The more data obtained in this process, the more valuable it will be in selecting and employing specific support strategies. This exercise can identify planning loopholes, expenditure levels, and other metrics to use in validating and benchmarking total company-wide activity in meetings and events.
Evaluate the Opportunities
Once you have established a clearly-defined picture of the actual scope of the current situation, the next step is to evaluate what opportunities exist. The opportunity in this context can be in a single area or in multiple areas, depending on your specific company, its goals, and its culture. Potential areas of opportunity may include process efficiencies (overlapping activity and duplication of efforts), risk management, cost savings and avoidance, and best practices.
Creating an SMMP Framework
Now that you have a solid understanding of the current state of meetings and event planning activity in your organization, and a clear understanding of the opportunity that exists, you can begin creating the framework of your SMMP. To do this, first put together a comprehensive document detailing all results of your research for internal review and validation. Once validated, this comprehensive report should flow into the development of a business case for the project. The business case should include a gap analysis. The business case will allow your company to determine what is required in terms of human resources as well as financial costs to move forward toward the desired state. At the heart of the business case will be the difference between the costs and quantified opportunity. The structure of the business case should include four main parts: Current Situation, Opportunity, Gap Analysis, and Action Plan/Best Practices.
In short, if done properly, SMMPs will accomplish two things: significantly lower your meeting costs and reduce the strain on internal resources.
As each company’s goals and cultures are unique, SMMPs should be unique. However, there are some underlying steps that should be considered best practices and incorporated, where appropriate, into the process. We will discuss these steps and the execution of your SMMP in next week’s newsletter. In the meantime, if you have any questions or would like to discuss further, please contact us.
Founder and
president of IT Exchange Group, Dana Toland oversees conference programs and services, as well as operations. Under Dana's
leadership, IT Exchange Group has evolved into a premier strategic marketing and meeting planning company primarily serving
companies in the IT industry. She has over fourteen years of experience in event marketing and operations, and was previously
employed by Daratech, Inc. and Relocation Resources International.