More than half of the meeting planners (57.6
percent) surveyed by Successful Meetings earlier this year say
that procurement departments have input on how their meeting
and event budgets are spent.
According to the 116 respondents to our "2013 Meeting
Procurement Trends Survey," which ran in February, just over
one quarter (26.3 percent) said those procurement departments
were "very involved." About 15 percent said procurement is in
charge or that meeting planners are required to run their
meeting budgets through a central department or website that
oversees how all of the company's meeting dollars are spent.
The most common procurement practices, according to the survey,
are limits to the dollar amount of contracts that each planner
can sign (60 percent); policies requiring the use of on-site
meeting facilities if possible (52.7 percent); and high-level
executive sign-off on each meeting (39.1 percent). A standard
payment process (36.4 percent) was also fairly common.
More than two-thirds of respondents said that their companies
consolidate the purchase of hotel accommodations (68 percent)
across their meetings, with nearly that many doing the same for
meeting space (63.1 percent) and food and beverage (58.3
percent). More organizations consolidated audiovisual services
procurement (46.6 percent) than airfare (42.7 percent) or site
selection costs (42.7 percent). Twice as many respondents said
the main reason their company consolidated its meeting spend
was to control budgets (78.1 percent) as said it was to improve
the quality of those meetings (38.1 percent).