Marsha Willett, director of corporate events
with 14 years of service at Ingram Metro,
doesn’t wait for management to ask for
greater efficiency and cost savings.
The past several years have been challenging to
say the least for corporate meeting planners. In some companies,
operational cutbacks and sweeping layoffs have decimated entire
planning departments. At the same time, a growing movement by
in-house procurement specialists to contain costs has marginalized
the responsibilities of some in the meetings arena.
So why do some planners survive, even thrive, year after year
with the same company in such a difficult milieu? To find out what
skills it takes to have staying power in today’s volatile business
world, M&C spoke with seven very senior corporate meeting
planners, who together have more than 125 years of experience.
Their companies employ thousands globally, generate billions in
revenue annually and span the spectrum of American industry from
health care and food services to technology and electronics.
These veterans agree that business acumen and unwavering
standards are a must for staying in, and ahead of, the game. So,
too, are a willingness to embrace and implement change and a
cutthroat approach to driving cost savings.
Taking the initiative
Four years ago, Marsha Willett, CMP, decided her company
stood to benefit greatly in cost savings and data analysis if it
moved to an online meetings registration system. Nobody had asked
her to undertake the task, but “we had to keep up with the growing
number of meetings we were doing,” says Willet, who for the past 14
years has served as director of corporate events for Santa Ana,
Calif.-based Ingram Metro, a $23 billion worldwide technology
distributor.
In fact, Willett and her staff of 15 found themselves
arranging 500-plus meetings and events a year often as many as
seven per day. So she looked at third-party providers and
benchmarked Ingram Micro’s needs against online registration
systems in place at other companies. Nothing fit well enough, so
Willett and the company’s IT experts put together the
specifications for a system that was customized to meet their
needs.
“The program includes specialized reporting to more easily
customize requirements for special events, a scheduling function to
manage multiple meetings that run concurrently, and assigned
seating for dinners or programs for five nights in a row,” says
Willett. “Controlling the seating arrangements promotes more
networking and, for VIPs in attendance, encourages more strategic
interaction.”
Finally, a broad range of training sessions was devised, put
into the system and rolled out to Ingram Micro’s 11,000 employees.
“It was imperative they understood how important the system was to
the company in managing meetings,” Willett notes.
The system has indeed proved important to the tech firm. Aside
from enjoying the functional improvements noted above, says
Willett, “We benefit from a sizeable cost and time savings.
Automating our planning process also lightens our workload, so we
can concentrate on more important things like negotiating hotel
contracts and meeting content. We are very pleased with the
results.”
Stepping forward to demonstrate expertise and devise
solutions, rather than waiting on a directive from senior
management to implement change, highlights an employee’s vested
interest in his or her company, Willett says. And as a result of
her efforts, she adds, “My company sees my department as
instrumental in driving the corporation’s objectives and
controlling costs that help achieve their goals.”
And it doesn’t end there. Every year Willett and several IT
gurus analyze new technology developments. “If we find something we
think will be beneficial, we incorporate it,” she says.
Beyond being on the cutting edge of technological solutions,
Willett also has turned her department into a profit center. “We
have executives who bring us business. They will talk to a
customer, and then the customer will ask us for help in planning an
event which we will do and we charge them for it.”
Collaborations
As corporations seek to tighten operational spend, the long arm of
procurement has reached into meetings departments. For some
planners, procurement’s role and the control its minions wield over
vendor selection has become largely adversarial. That’s not the
case for Sharon Marsh, CMP, manager of corporate meeting services
for Pleasanton, Calif.-based PeopleSoft, or for Evelyn Laxgang,
CMP, director of marketing support operations at Schaumburg,
Ill.-based Motorola.
“Having a turf war within the
company
doesn’t help anybody.”
Sharon Marsh, CMP, PeopleSoft
Marsh joined PeopleSoft more than four years ago following
a 16-year run at Houston-based financial services company Valic.
She credits teamwork as the key to her long tenures. “You have to
learn to collaborate with other departments or you’ll get left
out,” she says. “Having a turf war within the company doesn’t help
anybody.”
Marsh keeps track of her company’s meeting statistics,
including spend and room nights, and shares those numbers with the
travel and procurement departments. Her volume is then combined
with individual business volume to create a more powerful
bargaining tool.
“I say to procurement, ‘Look, this is how much business we did
in group travel. Isn’t that worth something here?’” says Marsh. “I
can use it as a tool, and so can they. It helps us all meet our
objectives.”
For the past two years, Marsh and representatives from her
company’s corporate travel and procurement departments have been
working together, benchmarking online meeting and travel management
programs. The aim, she says, is to find a program that will drive
cost savings and allow the company to truly track and analyze
meeting and travel spend. “We are so close. We have picked a
product that we think will help us be successful,” says Marsh. “Now
we will get management’s buy-in, implement it and start training
people.”
“If you take hold of a
project
and offer a solution, you will be
recognized as an expert.”
Evelyn Laxgang, Motorola
Evelyn Laxgang is similarly driven to forge effective
partnerships to produce results for her company. She began with
telecommunications giant Motorola back in 1981 as an administrative
assistant and evolved through four other positions before becoming
the head of marketing support operations. Along the way she has
seen executives come and go, experienced heady periods of expansion
and tense times of cutbacks, all of which has helped burnish her
respect for the bottom line. Procurement, she says, is an ally, not
an adversary, and by helping that office achieve its goals she
helps her own department as well.
Several months ago, when the head of Motorola’s procurement
division asked Laxgang to take a look at several online
registration systems the company was considering, she embraced the
opportunity to collaborate. “The systems they were looking at would
have been difficult for a planner to use,” she says. “They gave
procurement their data, but they didn’t give us anything.”
She voiced her concerns from a meeting professional’s
perspective and then persuaded procurement to take a look at
something she was familiar with a product from StarCite, the
Philadelphia-based meetings technology and services company. She
invited representatives from StarCite to visit Motorola’s
headquarters to demonstrate their system. Procurement was
impressed.
Today, Motorola is in the process of rolling out StarCite’s
online meeting registration and management program to all
employees. Laxgang anticipates the company will see cost savings of
10 percent as a result of the new system.
A survivor’s advice: “You need to show you’re an expert in
your field,” says Laxgang. “If you take hold of a project and offer
a solution, you will be recognized as an expert.” It also helps to
have a voice in your industry, she adds. For years, Laxgang served
as a board member for Dallas-based Meeting Professionals
International, a post Marsh assumed in June.
Along with industry visibility, Laxgang says being on the board of
MPI honed her communication skills. “You have to be able to talk to
management about what you do and what you bring to the corporation
in a succinct manner,” she notes. “And going around speaking to
thousands of people at industry events gave me that.”
THROUGH GOOD TIMES AND BAD
During her 26 years with Watsonville, Calif.-based Granite Construction Inc., Charlotte Patterson, CMP, has served under four CEOs and held the titles of administrative assistant, accounting clerk, architectural draftsperson and computer programmer. In 2000, after earning her Certified Meeting Professional credentials, she took on the role of corporate meeting planner. In her own words, Patterson reflects on her long tenure with Granite.
Being with the company for more than a quarter century, I have many memories of co-workers. We have bonded together in grief over the loss of some employees and rejoiced together at family gatherings to celebrate good times.
I don’t work for a company at least I don’t feel that way. I work for a family business, where my work and opinions matter. I know that what I do impacts the bottom line, as well as my pocket, because I am a vested stockholder. The role I play might be a small piece of the puzzle, but it is a very important one.
I think our executives have made good choices for the company. Even in lean times, Granite has never been afraid to invest in its employees and encourage self-development. In January 2004, Granite was listed as one of Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. That is a hard title to win, but we did it.
I work a lot with administrative assistants, so I recently started a training program to share meeting planning techniques and planning tools with them. When our company decided to move to videoconferencing to help reduce travel costs, I took charge of researching different systems. Today, we have roughly 40 videoconference units installed at different branches and job sites. We average about 10 to 12 videoconference meetings a month, and the units already have paid for themselves.
The bottom line: When I see our equipment on the highways, I am proud to be part of the team.
Keeping the vision sharp
How well a corporate meeting planner knows and understands the
company’s vision and strategic path can make all the difference
between driving a meeting’s agenda and just executing it. It also
can make the difference between enjoying a substantial professional
life with that company or experiencing just another short stay in a
crowded career itinerary.
In his 15 years of employment with Woodland Hills,
Calif.-based Health Net, an $11 billion managed health-care
corporation, Tom Smith, CMP, director of meetings and events, has
watched his company grow from approximately 600 associates to
12,000. With every merger, acquisition and management change, he
has had to master a new direction and sometimes an entirely new
corporate culture.
“Business is being done differently today than it was even
five years ago,” says Smith. “For example, now we have to be more
sensitive to sponsorships from pharmaceutical companies.”
Today, Smith’s team is responsible for planning every company
event, whether a one-booth presence at a trade show, a reception
for 500 doctors or the annual employee holiday pageant, which
collects thousands of toys for underprivileged children. As diverse
at the events are, Smith says, a central tone of seriousness of
purpose prevails.
“I don’t think the public wants to see a health-care industry
event being lavish,” he notes. “We are in the business of helping
people.”
To that end, Smith has kept his own department’s makeup modest just
three “gray heads,” as he calls his small staff of industry
veterans and targeted. “We have a small team that does really good
work, and we keep our expenses to a minimum,” he says. “With
everything that goes on with companies, the ups and downs, we have
remained constant.” And that translates to a constancy in Smith’s
résumé.
RoseAnn Howard is another “constant,” having served for 15
years with the same employer. She started out as a convention
manager for Kentucky Fried Chicken under the PepsiCo umbrella; in
1998, KFC was sold to a company that in 2002 became Yum! Brands.
Today, the Louisville, Ky.-based corporation comprises six brands,
including A&W, Long John Silver, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,
representing some 33,000 restaurants in 100 countries.
Now the director of meetings and events, Howard concentrates
on driving Yum! Brands’ new corporate culture, one largely devoted
to employee recognition.
“We believe in finding reasons to celebrate the achievements
of others,” says Howard. “The restaurant manager is now our
number-one priority, since it is this position that directly
relates to and serves our customers.”
To ensure these principles are reflected throughout the company’s
meetings and events, Howard encourages her team to act as owners,
to coach and support each other, and she encourages both teamwork
and individual innovation. It is a mind-set her team needs to live
by, she says, if they are to help the company meet its new
objective of driving customer satisfaction through intense employee
training across all brands. And that, she adds, is the secret to
keeping one’s job.
“You have to know your corporation’s business, know the
culture and the operating principles and weave them into everything
you do,” says Howard. “Make it part of the meeting plan, and make
it obvious to the attendees.”
While Yum! Brands has turned to employee recognition as a
defining company ethos, American Express has embraced security
specifically the safety of corporate clients in the post-9/11
world. As a result, Marilouise Berdow, senior meeting manager with
New York City-based American Express Corporate Meeting Solutions,
has become a de facto security expert, her newest incarnation in 14
years with the company.
“We have had to grow and deal with the emphasis our clients
now place on security,” says Berdow, who recalls that in years past
the most pressing security-relative imperative was to learn how not
to get your wallet stolen.
“Today, I spend a great deal of time and attention on details
like TV monitors and bodyguards,” Berdow adds. That she can meet
the changing needs of her employer has kept this security-conscious
planner’s job secure.
Speaking up
Another key to corporate survival: “Don’t be afraid to talk to the
big guys,” says Yum! Brands’ RoseAnn Howard. “If you have a good
idea, they will be smart enough to hear it.”
One of the best ways to establish a rapport with top
management, Howard says, is to run ideas by a mentor, someone who
can connect you with the right manager. “This can be your
supervisor, or anyone you can rely on to take your ideas and your
input forward,” she notes.
“Don’t be afraid to
talk to the big guys.
If you have a good idea,
they will be smart
enough to hear it.”
RoseAnn Howard, Yum! Brands
Several years ago, while looking for ways to simplify the
execution process of company meetings and cut through the data
process, Howard took her idea of a customized computer program to
management and got the go-ahead. Now in place, the program allows
Howard and her team to enter timelines, agendas, staging
preferences, etc., for every type of meeting, which are then
printed and distributed to various vendors. “It is a marvelous way
for us to collect and distribute all the data for a meeting,” says
Howard.
Indeed, if you demonstrate hard work, vision and results,
management will take notice, says Ingram Micro’s Marsha Willett. “I
can pick up the phone any time and have access to any executive in
this company and tell them what I need to get the job done,” she
says. “I feel blessed to know I have management’s full backing,
because I often hear from other planners at industry events that
they don’t.”
The excellence factor
All across the corporate meetings world, planners are being asked
to do more with less, under crushing deadlines and in the face of
mind-boggling demands. If any one characteristic can be applied to
the criteria for successful long-term employment, it’s a relentless
effort to excel.
“Instead of an hour, you have to learn to do something in five
minutes,” says Tom Smith of Health Net. “So you do it. The best way
to propel yourself is to do your job really well. Come to work
every day prepared to do your very best.”
But just because you finished one program that garnered the
praise of top brass doesn’t mean you can coast on another, Smith
adds. Success must be delivered over and over, for every event,
because every event affects the bottom line.
Excellence, says Marilouise Berdow, should be a given. “For
every task that comes to me, whether it’s a product kickoff, an
incentive or a dealer event, I have to say to myself, ‘This could
be their pinnacle event’ and not lose sight of that,” she says. “If
the shoe were on the other foot, and I was doing the hiring, I
would want killer service.”