As BCD Meetings & Incentives heads into the third year of its five-year global growth strategy, it plans to fill some of its gaps in the United States and abroad, diversify its client portfolio and continue to build a network partner system in Asia/Pacific.
BCD embarked on an expansion with last month's acquisition of San Francisco Bay Area incentive, conference and meeting company One World Partners for an undisclosed amount.
The One World purchase gives BCD a West Coast brick-and-mortar presence and a platform to migrate into the technology industry meetings and user conference sector, according to BCD M&I president Scott Graf. BCD will maintain the One World moniker for the Sausalito, Calif.-based office, which houses 15 employees. One World founder Teri Hollowell now is executive director of that location. In the United States, BCD has major offices in Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia.
The deal brings BCD about 20 to 25 accounts, most of which are technology companies, Graf said. The company is integrating One World's user conference and events technology, creative services and corporate social responsibility solutions." Today they are very strong in handling the user conference markets, and today we're not," he said. "In the past, where we've not had the expertise or technology to address that market in any part of the country, we now pick up the technology and thought leadership that allows us to say yes to that."
The acquisition is the first for BCD M&I since the 2007 buy of U.K.-based Talking Point, which followed parent company BCD Holdings' purchase of U.K. travel agency The Travel Company, which at the time partly owned Talking Point. BCD M&I is an operating company of BCD Holdings, which also is the shareholder of travel management company BCD Travel and travel technology firm TRX.
While Graf expects organic growth as the industry begins to rebound with economic improvement, acquisition activity also is in the pipeline. "Now is a good time to be looking," Graf said. "The market is tough, and you can get some situations where owners of smaller or midsize companies are looking to liquidate some or all of their business. For us, it might be a good opportunity to extend in a certain market and a good time to buy."
In Asia/Pacific, BCD has strung together a 12-partner network in core markets like Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore. The program enables BCD to run business through local providers that are required to use specific technology that allows BCD to track data and work with a consistent pricing plan for its multinational clients.
"If you asked me a year ago, Asia would have been a gap for us and everybody in our competitive set," Graf said. "We all did quite a bit of work shoring things up there."
Although strides have been made in the region and elsewhere, as a result of the drop in demand the need to connect regional meetings programs into companies' overall strategic meetings program "has taken a little bit of a back seat to other pressures," Graf said.
Originally published Oct. 19, 2009