Bright Spots

Drastically slashed budgets and misperception issues have pummeled the meetings industry in 2009. Ironically, these same factors have contributed in some way to the success of several key segments that had shown potential even before the global economic slump. M&C spoke with industry experts and analysts regarding these bright spots, and how they might affect our evolving industry. Planners who are well informed about these topics likely will find themselves in demand over the coming years.

Strategic meetings management
The increasingly popular acronym SMM traditionally has meant different things to different industry segments, but growing buzz around a strategic approach to slashing meeting costs has helped to usher in a more stringent definition.

Early this year, representatives of the National Business Travel Association -- which has been publishing white papers on strategic meetings management programs (SMMP) since 2004 -- sat down with top brass at Meeting Professionals International, which has long offered a strategic management educational track at its conferences. The two groups agreed on a definition of SMM as "a disciplined approach to managing enterprisewide meeting and event activities, processes, suppliers and data in order to achieve measurable business objectives aligned with an organization's strategic goals/vision, and to deliver value in the form of quantitative savings, risk mitigation and service quality."

The importance of this joint agreement can't be overstated, according to Kari Kesler, president and chief strategist of Minneapolis-based consulting firm KK Strategic Solutions, as it clarifies differences between the associations' approaches and allows this field to progress to the next level. Specifically, Kesler is referring to NBTA's new SMMC (the "C" is for Certification) program, the development of which she has worked hard to facilitate. The program consists of two core weeks of classes and electives that will earn participants the credential.

Demand for Core Week 1, set for Nov. 2-6, was brisk when it was announced in September, says Kesler. NBTA received far more than 25 applications, the expected maximum class size.

"SMM really stemmed from this need for data and the ability to apply spend management principles to it," Kesler explains, "and I'm thrilled to say that it has morphed into more than that. It really has to do with SMMP and the infrastructure within a corporation to drive value and to illustrate value. That's where the worlds of NBTA and MPI and other organizations can come together very productively."

While NBTA's SMMC focuses on building a centralized meetings management infrastructure within a corporation (a role often assumed by travel and/or procurement managers, as well as meeting managers), MPI traditionally has focused more on the content and return on investment of strategic management and planning. Both approaches emphasize the need to demonstrate value.

Kate Lastinger, CMP, CMM, founding partner of the Atlanta-based consulting company Metaphrasis Group and an SMM proponent for the past decade through MPI, has seen a "tremendous increase in interest" in strategic meetings management, from companies large and small. "It's about the need to standardize contracts, risk mitigation and measuring ROI," she says. "These are things that can be put to use on any scale."

How to capitalize:
• Read about SMMC .

• Check out strategic meetings management seminars through MPI chapters.

• Download NBTA's SMMP white papers.

• View M&C's recent webcast, "The ABCs of SMMP," now archived at mcmag.com/webcasts.aspx.

Online event management
The most essential ingredient in a strategically managed meetings program is data. Without centralized registration and sourcing, however, that data can be very difficult to acquire on any meaningful level. "I believe that the very first and most important step is to go ahead and purchase a technology solution," says Lastinger, "and to create a process whereby all meetings register."

Lastinger advises her clients to collect the following data for every event: who's planning it, the name and purpose of the meeting, how many people are attending, how much money was budgeted initially, how much actually was spent and the basic details of supplier contracts. "Even if that's all they do," she notes, "in a year they have a lot of valuable and very specific data."

Technology suppliers that facilitate strategic management -- through online site selection, data collection and reporting -- are getting a lot of attention. Philadelphia-based StarCite achieved record growth in the second quarter of this year, due to clients' expansion of their strategic meetings management programs at a greater rate than ever before. The 10-year-old company recently processed its 4-millionth electronic request for proposal.

Technology can capture typically difficult-to-wrangle data such as that from small meetings, says Kevin Iwamoto, StarCite's vice president of enterprise strategy. He adds, "Why wouldn't a responsible meetings manager go after this area? Standard terms and conditions and the organization's preferred relationships can be uploaded. With all information captured in the tool, companies can begin to see trends and leverage data for future agreements."

Also booming is Cvent, a McLean, Va.-based supplier of meetings management and site-selection software. The company has posted double-digit growth every quarter since its 2000 launch and has been profitable for the past 26 consecutive quarters. This past spring, the company unveiled an enhanced, streamlined set of strategic meetings management tools based on extensive feedback from planners.

Harrison, N.Y.-based Worktopia also has had a busy year. Focusing on meetings of fewer than 50 attendees, Worktopia offers a database of venues through which planners can search, compare and book meeting space in real time. Companies can load meeting policy and contracts into the system.

"The solution decentralizes booking while centralizing visibility," says CEO and founder John Arenas. "Anyone in the company tasked with booking a meeting can use it." In the past year, Worktopia has become the engine that powers small meeting bookings for American Express, GetThere and Travelocity Business.

How to capitalize:
• Research a technology solution for your company. Find one that best meets your technology, functionality and reporting requirements.

• If such a system already is in place, help to market it internally so that you're capturing as much data as possible.
 

 

Association management companies
An increasing number of associations are outsourcing management duties to association management companies, according to a survey conducted this summer by the Philadelphia-based Association Management Company Institute. This industry -- which consists of professional service organizations that provide management and/or consultative services -- has grown by 150 percent in the past 20 years, says the institute. And this year has been a good one, based on answers from the 74 AMCs that responded to the survey, representing 650 associations and not-for-profit groups. Two-thirds forecast a growth in the number of clients for 2009 vs. 2008. About one-third of AMCs added staff in the first half of the year.

"Outsourcing tends to rise in down economies," points out John Graham, president and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership, "especially when job freezes are adopted by many organizations. Associations are looking for ways to increase productivity with limited resources and budget cuts. It is often cheaper to employ the help of consultants or AMCs who work on short-term projects and don't require as many resources. Additionally, having an outside perspective, consultants and AMCs might offer new and innovative ideas."

Half of the AMC Institute survey respondents reported a rise in RFPs for the first half of the year, while 23 percent were matching their 2008 pace. Nearly half (45 percent) of AMCs either are seeing or expect to see increased business among existing clients for the year.

How to capitalize
• Peruse the directory of nearly 300 AMC Institute member companies at member.amcinstitute.org/directory/index.cfm either for management or employment possibilities.

Accountability/ROI experts
"For years planners have been flying under the radar, and nobody really understood what we were doing," says Terri Breining, CMP, CMM, principal for The Breining Group, which focuses on consulting and training in the meeting industry. "That was fine with most of us. They didn't really understand it, so they didn't ask a lot of questions. That's just not the case anymore."

Overall, says Breining, this is a good thing."It has forced the meetings industry to become more accountable for the work being done in and around meetings," she notes, "and has forced us to talk about meetings in the same way that we talk about any other business investment. That's all good -- and part of the natural evolution of the industry."

This accountability, Breining explains, goes beyond merely defending what planners do, to being the key to exercising companywide influence. "We don't get a seat at the table just because we say we want it," she says. "We get a seat because we're able to communicate to other business professionals about developments in meetings in general, and specific meetings, in terms of their measurements and their impact on the organization. I think the skill set of meeting planners is going to have to expand to include that."

We're not there just yet, cautions Dawn Penfold, CMP, president of Southern Pines, N.C.-based Meetingjobs LLC, but change is on the horizon. "I don't know if the C-level people are to the point where they're actually seeking our opinions," she asserts, "but we do need to take the proactive approach, to get their attention and provide the numbers. We have the ability to be very strategically important, but we have to tell them that." The demand among planners for the best ways to approach this is definitely there, Penfold adds. In September, she presented a seminar about getting the ears of C-level executives, and 40 to 50 high-level meetings managers attended.

Calculating the return on investment for specific meetings is a huge part of making the case, believes Breining. Five years ago she became a certified practitioner of the ROI Methodology, the measurement approach developed by the Birmingham, Ala.-based ROI Institute. She has since co-authored a book on the subject with the institute's leaders, Jack Phillips and Patricia Pulliam Phillips (see below), and spoken on the topic extensively.

"One reason that I like it so much is because the methodology was not created for the meetings industry," Breining explains. "It was created for other industries, with solid business principles, and then it was overlaid onto the meetings industry." That, she says, is key in getting the attention of upper management. "We can't use whatever words or acronyms we make up to describe the success of meetings. We need to start talking about meetings in the same light and using the same terms as any other business investment and in relation to the overall objectives of the organization."

Because in-depth ROI studies need only be applied to a company's largest,  most visible events -- and such analyses typically cost only 1 percent of the budget for such an event when conducted by an expert -- Breining is confident the demand will only increase. "The current economic crisis has awakened a need for this and an interest I haven't seen before," she says.

How to capitalize:
• Learn about ROI principles from Return on Investment in Meetings & Events (Phillips, Breining and Phillips; Butterworth-Heinemann) and Proving the Value of Meetings & Events (Phillips, Myhill and McDonough; ROI Institute/MPI).

• For certification and consultant information, contact the ROI Institute.

• Investigate software tools such as MeetingMetrics.

Face-to-face alternatives
For five consecutive years, the "collaboration tools" market -- instant messaging, audio/video/webconferencing, and shared-workspace collaboration platforms -- has grown by more than 20 percent, and it will continue to grow at that rate through 2012, according to Stamford, Conn.-based technology research firm Gartner.

While industry pundits agree that there is no real substitute for meeting face-to-face, the fact is that with diminished travel budgets, people will find other ways to meet when appropriate. Virtual meeting technology opens the opportunity to meet more often -- including instances when people might not have considered travel.  

This has been acknowledged by the corporate travel industry, as the ability to book web and videoconferences has been integrated into booking tools, right alongside flight options.

Booking platform GetThere announced in September its new Collaboration Suite, an acknowledgement that "travel management" is evolving into "collaboration management" and should include virtual meeting options such as conferencing via web, video or audio, or even social media platforms.

Having the skills to plan technology alternatives, or to integrate them into face-to-face options, is going to be a real plus for planners, suggests East Northport, N.Y.-based Jill Adler, CMP, president of Meeting Matters Inc. and an associate with Meetingjobs LLC. "There aren't as many in-person meetings now; there are a ton of webcasts and other different kinds of learning opportunities. So, planners who have a technology background and experience in planning those types of programs are definitely going to have a leg up," she notes.

"One of my clients at Meeting Matters has probably tripled the number of webinars they're doing this year vs. having in-person conferences," adds Adler. "It's a huge market. But you still need to have the person who's going to coordinate the logistics of it. The logistics are just different."

Rather than traveling to a hotel and working with the convention services and food and beverage managers, she says, you work with a platform host. "You still have to have speakers, program content and registration for it. You still need to make sure registrants have all the materials they need. You still need to get them the evaluations. All of the steps are there, they're just a little different, and you're working with different people. Planners out there shouldn't be afraid of it; it's just a new challenge and a new way to do business."

Fortunately, the technology has advanced to the point that these virtual meetings can be very productive. "Virtual event technology is getting a lot easier to use, and far more reliable," says consultant Corbin Ball, CMP, of Bellingham, Wash.-based Corbin Ball Associates. "The fact that it works is very big; in the past, it could be a great source of frustration. Now, it's a way that people can still meet but save money. It can help planners do more with less."

How to capitalize:
• Jump right in. Jill Adler likens the field of virtual meetings to the field of meeting planning a couple of decades ago. Most people are learning as they go. Gaining experience and thinking creatively will serve you well.

Mobile technology
By 2014, the amount of data transmitted by mobile technology every month will exceed the amount sent for all of 2008, according to Oyster Bay, N.Y.-based ABI Research. That estimate includes information sent from laptops, but there's no question that smart phones will play a big role in the mobile revolution. A September 2009 report from Barclays Capital pointed out the still relatively low penetration rate in the corporate smart-phone market (only 5 percent of corporate e-mail accounts are accessed by a mobile device). Barclays expects that number to grow dramatically in coming years, and for devices such as the iPhone to gain some market share from Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices, which currently own more than 80 percent of the corporate market.

We've seen relatively little of mobile's potential thus far at events, points out Corbin Ball, but what's currently being developed will revolutionize the meetings business, he believes. "As rich-media mobile web-browsing devices become ubiquitous," says Ball, "they will have a greater impact on trade shows, meetings and events than they will in many other segments." Considering that convention and trade show attendees are generally frequent travelers who tend to be early adopters where such technology is concerned, "all the paper -- surveys, lead exchange, programs, everything -- will go by the wayside," predicts Ball.

Consider as well the amount of information that show organizers will be able to deliver, and at the appropriate time, to attendees. In this cost-cutting age, people are pickier about the events they attend; if they receive the right information in the most efficient manner, they'll be satisfied attendees.

How to capitalize:
• Look for mobile delivery and access functionality from your technology suppliers. While relatively few attendees may be using these devices today, many more will be using them in the coming years. Now's the time to start working out the kinks and finding creative ways to deliver information.