“We really don’t feel
the difference day to day,”
says Louise Paul, CMP, CMM.
“There’s no demarcation line,
and that’s what I love.”
Every weekday morning,
Louise D. Paul drives her new silver BMW Z4 Roadster to tech giant
Cisco Systems’ campus in Research Triangle Park, N.C. She walks
through the doors and scans her ID, which she refers to as a “red
badge.” The color defines her as one of many vendors working
on-site, while “blue badges” signify direct Cisco employees.
But that’s the only visible difference
that Paul, who gets her paycheck from Twinsburg, Ohio-based
Experient Inc., notices working as a meetings and events manager on
the Cisco account. Experient recently began providing meeting
planners and services to Cisco, taking over the contract from
StarCite of Philadelphia.
“My direct manager is an Experient
employee in San Jose [Calif., Cisco’s headquarters], but here I sit
outside the office of Cisco’s manager for meeting services, U.S.
and Canada,” says Paul, who has both her CMP and CMM
certifications. She has been working for Cisco for three years,
previously as a StarCite employee. When Experient took over the
account at the beginning of this year, Paul was hired by the
company to continue with Cisco. “We really don’t feel the
difference day to day,” she says. “There is no demarcation line,
and that’s what I really love.”
It’s an interesting position to be in,
juggling two corporate cultures and keeping an eye on two goals:
producing great meetings for the client, and helping to keep the
client satisfied for the third-party company.
Filling in the
blanks
Experient is not the only third party
supplying planners to high-powered corporations. Maritz Travel of
Fenton, Mo., and New York City-based American Express also embed
their own employees at client locations.
“We go in to the customer, find out
what their objectives are and figure out what the best third-party
model would be for them,” says Rhonda Brewer, vice president of
strategy, communication and administration for Maritz. “We can set
up employees within their offices or we can fully support them from
our offices. There’s not a one-size-fits-all.”
At the beginning of the relationship,
Maritz conducts a full assessment to evaluate what will work best.
“Right now, we have put someone on-site for one of our clients
because they are trying to grow their overall strategy,” says
Brewer. “Our person is there to work with the owners to build a
motivation program and a loyalty program. We are trying to help
them out from a strategic standpoint.” For another client, Maritz
has two people on-site buying all the hotel and function space;
they sign all contracts and capture the data to help manage the
company’s meetings spend.
Experient has planners “implanted” --
as Jerry Murphy, vice president of the strategic meetings
management program, puts it -- in six major companies, including
Cisco and Coca-Cola. “Any employee on-site is an employee of
Experient,” he says. “Legally, the client companies can’t direct
these people. I look at it as you are working with a client, but
you happen to be in their building. You have a closer relationship
with them, obviously, but it is still a client relationship.”
This lesson has been embraced by Laura
Cella, a meetings sourcing manager implanted by Experient into a
large communications company. She has been an Experient employee
since 2001; before that she was working for the same communications
corporation for two years as an independent contractor.
“Ultimately, my company is Experient, and I am there to make sure I
am meeting the needs of my client,” Cella says. “The scope of
services my client is looking for is all put into writing in the
contract, and that is what Experient expects me to do.”
SAFETY NET
Peter ShellyWhile a few associates of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based HelmsBriscoe work with just one client, employees of the third-party site-selection and RFP firm are encouraged to have more diverse business dealings.
Many of the 930 people who work for the company have virtual offices and are not required to be on-site with clients. Their pay is commission-based, so the more accounts they handle, the bigger the paycheck.
“The average number of clients comes out to 12 per associate,” says Peter Shelly, executive vice president of the company. “The more broad-based their clients, the less exposed our associates are if one account goes away.”
He adds that many HelmsBriscoe associates like the diversity in their client portfolios, allowing them to work on different types of meetings, different personalities, even different time zones.
The firm does not put a cap on the number of meetings an associate can work on, the number of clients they can have or the amount of money they must generate. “They can cultivate as few or as many as they want,” says Shelly.
Ultimately, however, the decision to put someone on site in a clients’ office is up to the client. Explains Shelly: “If they say, ‘We want somebody here,’ we would have them there the next morning.” -- S.B.
One model
Michele Snock, CMM, manager of global
travel, meetings and events out of Cisco’s San Jose headquarters,
has been instrumental in outsourcing the logistical, nuts-and-bolts
elements of the company’s 1,400 yearly events.
“We’ve outsourced all tactical work, so
my in-house staff are able to focus on strategic initiatives such
as compliance, policy and adoption,” says Snock, who employs about
35 planners -- vendor partners, as she calls them -- who have desks
on Cisco campuses throughout the world. Experient handles Cisco
events in the United States, Canada and Asia, while American
Express has been named the vendor for Cisco’s European
meetings.
The process of converting the company’s
meetings operation from a centralized department to an outsourced
one began about two years ago. “At the time,” Snock says,
“contractors were our best option for supporting our growing
demands. It became apparent that, since meeting planning was not a
core competency of a technology company, we needed to partner with
a meeting planning company that could become our permanent
‘engine.’ We are now poised to become a best-in-class organization
that focuses on meeting-spend optimization rather than tactical
support.”
When Cisco began contracting with
third-party planners, the company’s meetings had just gone through
a centralizing process, although using the meetings department to
create a Cisco event, even now, is not mandated. “Many companies
have decentralized meeting planning, where everybody plans their
own meetings,” says Snock. “They work with any supplier they
choose. There are no guidelines to use preferred suppliers and
there’s no management around the meeting spend at all. The other
extreme is centralized, where it’s mandated you have to go through
the meetings department. We’re not mandated; we’re ‘center-led’ --
a procurement term.”
Snock’s in-house staff has to sell
compliance to the rest of the company; currently, about 35 percent
of the meeting spend goes through the central department. “We have
to knock on doors and influence people on the value-add we bring
the company,” Snock says. “I have five theater managers, for
Europe, U.S./Canada, emerging markets, India and Asia-Pacific, who
support this effort.”
Her aim in capturing every last bit of
data on how much is being paid out for meetings is, of course, to
save the company money. And that’s another reason she goes outside
Cisco to buy meeting planning services. A company like Experient
“is constantly on top of the best practices of running a meetings
department like this,” Snock says. Since the third-party firm has
other customers and solid relationships with hotel companies and
other suppliers, Experient can save Cisco more money than her
department could on its own, Snock maintains. Furthermore, “they
take care of all the human resources and training,” she adds.
Being
cross-cultural
For a planner who physically works in a
client’s office, straddling two corporate cultures can be
challenging. One planner, who spoke with M&C and
requested anonymity, works for a third-party planning company and
serves a major pharmaceutical corporation. She identifies herself
as an employee of both companies. She works virtually (from home
and other locations) two to three days a week, mostly because she
handles a lot of international meetings and needs to be available
at odd hours of the day. But she spends the rest of her time at a
desk at the pharmaceutical firm’s main office.
“The client likes to see us,” says the
planner, who arranges all types of events for the company,
including investor meetings and product launches. “But I do my
international work on my own time frame. They don’t micromanage,
and they respect us enough to let us do our jobs. I am integrated
into their culture because I have to understand their regulations;
I have to know what is allowed. We’re not singled out, though. I am
just another person working there. I feel we’re all working for the
same goal.
“They definitely embrace us, and not
like a stepchild. You’re one of the family,” she adds.
For Laura Cella, the culture of the
communications company she services for Experient touches her
mostly in the form of office rules, like dress code. “Everything is
professional here,” says the contract-negotiating specialist, who
serves as the first point of contact for the in-house meeting
planners, administrators and anybody else who might decide to hold
an event for the company. “But whatever happens internally here,
I’m not privy to that information. I don’t have anything to do with
HR or their benefits or anything that is related to being employed
by this company. Yes, I sit in a cubicle in a world with their
other employees. And it’s not that we don’t talk to each other --
we have that same professionalism toward each other.”
When StarCite was still servicing the
Cisco account, Louise Paul, working on-site in North Carolina, felt
she was more of a Cisco employee: Cisco paid for her to get her
Certification in Meetings Management; she won Cisco’s 2007 Meeting
Planner of the Year award, and Cisco was instrumental in getting
her promoted last year by StarCite. “I felt closer to Cisco,
because they took an interest in what I did,” she says.
Things are changing now that Experient
has taken over the Cisco contract. “We’re totally Experient
employees now,” says Paul. “They’ve gone above and beyond making us
feel welcome. It’s still a mixing of two cultures, but it’s been a
very positive change. It’s not one rule you live under; it’s a mix
of both.”
For Experient’s part, Jerry Murphy
prefers his implanted planners to remain a bit aloof. “I don’t like
them to become too immersed in their client’s corporate culture,”
he says. “I think you need to understand it, but you need to be
very careful to remember you’re a supplier. You’re not one of the
guys or one of the girls.
“If you don’t provide the service,”
Murphy adds, “we as a company can lose the client, and you can lose
your job. It’s too easy to become too familiar and maybe start
taking short cuts. You need to remember, quite frankly, who’s the
boss.”
STAYING IN TOUCH
Herve SedkyThird-party firms work hard to make the planners they place on-site at client offices feel they still have connections to the mother ship. At New York City-based American Express Business Travel, for example, about 20 percent of its planners work in an Amex office, 50 percent work virtually and 30 percent are embedded with clients.
“Regardless of where a person works, we have a number of things we do,” says Herve Sedky, who serves as vice president and general manager of AEBT and oversees the company’s Corporate Meetings Solutions group. “We have meetings they have to attend. And all planners are involved in specific projects and teams so they can network with each other, interface with their peers and share best practices. We don’t want them to operate on an island.”
According to Jerry Murphy, vice president of the strategic meetings management program at Twinsburg, Ohio-based Experient, “It’s always a challenge to remind the employees that they are not a Cisco or a Coke employee; they’re an Experient employee.”
Experient planners attend company meetings, and Murphy stresses constant communication between managers and embedded planners. Little details help solidify the relationship: Planners’ business cards and titles reference Experient, and many have Experient e-mail addresses. -- S.B.
Room for advancement
Working embedded at a client’s office
might sound like a dead-end position, but, in fact, there can be
ways to move up, as Louise Paul did. As an Experient employee now,
she has access to all of the company’s job postings, including
those on-site at other client companies.
“There’s more promotability and
opportunity to move around in the company,” she says. “That’s a
real positive.”
For the anonymous planner working
on-site for a pharmaceutical firm, “movement within the
organization could come from either side,” she says, as the client
and the third-party planning company listen to each other, and the
client still has some in-house planning positions. When positions
open up in either place, she is welcome to apply.
At Maritz, Rhonda Brewer says raises
and promotions have to be agreed upon by both the client and
Maritz.
The perfect plant
Not all planners are cut out to serve
the needs of two companies at once. Mostly, these people need to be
able to work autonomously.
When looking to fill an on-site
position, Brewer says Maritz looks for people who either have a lot
of planning experience or who already have an understanding of the
client’s corporate culture. “You need experience one way or the
other to go into that position,” she says.
Murphy of Experient adds that much
depends on the makeup of the on-site office. “If a planner is going
in by herself or into a small group, we look for a self-starter, a
self-motivator, someone who can manage herself,” he says. “If
they’re going into a larger group, we’re just looking for someone
with experience. I always like someone who has good customer
skills, because they’re in front of the customer eight hours a
day.”
“People in this position need to be
very organized, because there is a lot that goes on between the
companies,” says Laura Cella. “And you need to be able to separate
the two. Some people have difficulty reporting to two managers.
Some people might feel there are conflicting messages here. In this
situation, you are the middleman, and you need to make sure both
companies are happy.”
Paul adds that planners in her
situation need to be flexible. “As long as you understand going in
what the deal is, you’ll be OK,” she says. “Don’t go in hoping
someday soon you will become a direct employee of the corporation.
That might not ever happen.”