Procurement, meetings data consolidation, strategic meeting planning, and return on investment were the buzzwords at this year's MeetingWorld, held late last month at the Grand Hyatt New York.
At one session, Jack Phillips, chairman of the ROI Institute and the industry's current ROI guru, presented his method for quantifying the return on investment in meetings.
At another, corporate planner Camille Paluscio and independent planners Elizabeth Zielinski and Christy Lamagna talked about ways independent planners can forge preferred-supplier relationships with companies.
Procurement and strategic meetings management also played front and center at the keynote general session, featuring high-powered panelists Fred Shea, vice president of sales for Hyatt Hotels; Carol Lynch, sales VP for Starwood Hotels; Colin Rorrie Jr., CEO of Meeting Professionals International; Richard Del Colle, a meetings supplier (read: procurement) manager for Hewlett-Packard; and Jay Roseman, VP of Corporate Meeting Solutions for American Express Business Travel.
All the industry talk about corporate meetings procurement programs is matched by talk in the executive suites — that is, a lot of talk and relatively little action so far, according to Dick Zeller, who at an Executive Track session presented a detailed analysis about how corporate planners can leverage procurement procedures to their advantage.
"Only a small number of companies are actually doing it, but many are seriously talking about it," said Zeller, who helps companies establish enterprise-wide meetings procurement programs as vice president of consolidation for Maritz Travel Company.
More companies are turning talk into action, however, so planners better get with the procurement program before the program gets them, said Zeller.
That's a message industry leaders are preaching hard, including Zeller's boss, Christine Duffy, Maritz CEO and current MPI chairwoman. For years, Duffy has proselytized about the career benefits of strategic planning.
Zeller was very upbeat about how procurement practices can help planners win a seat at the executive table, where the early — and most important — decisions about meetings and company-wide meetings programs are made.
But when questioned about procurement's downside, Zeller acknowledged that it can be a pain, especially in the beginning but also if it's done poorly.
For example, planners may have to budget meetings differently than they are accustomed to doing, and they may no longer be allowed to sign contracts.
Moreover, procurement can create greater bureaucracy: more levels of approval, more paperwork. And that can mean delays in signing contracts with hotels, which in turn can mean losing tentative holds on space.
If nothing else, delays mean a lot of hassles for the planner, who has to explain to the sales rep why she really wants to hold her company's meeting at the rep's property but hasn't yet returned the contract. It also means a chain-reaction of delays. Why arrange for destination-specific or property-specific services if you're not absolutely sure your group is actually going to that destination or property?