July 30, 2009 - Although the public outcry over "luxurious" corporate meetings has subsided in recent months, the experience underscored the need to ensure return on investment for every meeting--large and small. During an interactive chat hosted Wednesday by American Express Business Travel, UnitedHealth Group global travel and meetings director Tamara Gordon and Bayer Healthcare manager of sales performance and development Robyn Renner discussed how they reassure senior management that hosting a meeting is necessary--a difficult task in rough economic times, especially when a magnifying lens is placed over most costs to the corporation.
Gordon and Renner said their roles in meetings management have evolved to become more consultative as they guide internal and external meeting planners toward proving value for every meeting.
"Our senior management and our financial wing were looking at meetings as purely an expense item," said Renner. "We had to really get a mindset change around changing that from a pure expense to an investment--an investment in our business and in people."
Cost savings can be achieved in a variety ways, including by replacing some live with virtual meetings. Gordon said that during the past year, UnitedHealth Group installed Cisco's TelePresence technology in eight offices within the United States and one in India.
"The TelePresence locations are a great improvement over standard videoconferencing because you feel like you are actually right there with the person," said Gordon. "We have been able to cut back some of the [smaller internal meetings]. We track [why] people are traveling so they have to tell us if it is internal, external, a staff meeting or a sales meeting, and we target those people and suggest they use TelePresence."
Although use of the system was promoted throughout the corporation and on the online booking tool, face-to-face meetings are still preferred in many instances, Gordon continued.
"Virtual meetings work out fine, but when there is a lot of interaction or networking that needs to go on, we are still looking more to face-to-face meetings," agreed Ron Naples, an adjunct professor at New York University's Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports, who also spoke during the online chat.
Virtual conferencing exists at Bayer, but the content of each meeting is evaluated case-by-case so sometimes it proves to be more beneficial to meet in person as opposed to virtually, Renner said. By evaluating each meeting closely, managers are able to better understand the objectives of each meeting as opposed to blindly hosting as in the past, Renner said.
"The misconception that some people have is that you can use virtual meetings in place of in-person meetings--that's not a true statement," said Renner. "You have to reassess your actual purpose in having your meeting. This has actually helped us; we have increased the value of what we do at the in-person meetings because we are not covering some of those things that can be covered by different methods."
Renner explained that meeting planners previously were less involved in the content and value of the meeting and focused primarily on the planning. Now, her role within Bayer is much more complex as Renner and her team must evaluate and be able to prove the ROI for each meeting.
"We went from it literally being somebody calling at the last minute and expecting [planners] to go out and make reservations," said Renner, to recognition that the team is focused on aligning itself with senior management to accomplish participants' objectives--rather than just looking at cost, she said.
Small Meetings Have ROI, Too
All too often meeting professionals focus on large meetings, where spend can be significant, and forget that managing small meetings can deliver substantial savings, as well. Gordon said that by having consistency within her corporation where there is centralized sourcing technology in place for every meeting, UnitedHealth Group is able to achieve up to 20 percent in savings on their small meetings spend.
"You really have to track your negotiations and the process of purchasing for the meetings, as well as manage the meeting and the cost throughout the operation," said Gordon.
For any meeting to be approved at UnitedHealth Group, the planner--external or internal--must enter a request into an internal system, which suggests preferred vendors. Small meetings costs that often had gone unaccounted for now are tracked and reported through the approvals process, Gordon said. As an added bonus, this system increases meetings compliance, she said, acknowledging that some small meetings still slip through the cracks because of their small expense.
"We find less opportunity for savings and less risk in smaller meetings," said Gordon. "We don't have a real strict process around capturing a small meeting here or there that we might miss, but we track it right now the same as we track the large meetings."
Renner said that Bayer began to look closely at small meetings because oftentimes they had the highest rate of cancellations or changes. In an attempt to reduce those figures, Renner's team began asking small-meeting planners tough questions about the objectives of the meetings and whether they should even be held.
"We found that people weren't really thinking through whether they really needed [a small meeting] and what they were going to accomplish," said Renner. "We make them go through those types of questions prior to actually planning. They can't just put in a request and say, 'Here, I want you to go out there.' We have to gather that information first, and in that way we kind of reposition our meetings professionals to a higher consultative level within the organization."
Going Green
As meeting planners focus mostly on cost containment and proving ROI, environmentally sustainable initiatives have taken a "backseat," Gordon said.
"We are not at a point where we will forego cost to have sustainable products for our meetings," said Gordon. "Our meeting planning team with American Express is trained in sustainable green meetings, and they talk with our meeting sponsors about that. It is certainly brought up with people sponsoring meetings and then it really depends on the business if they want to pursue really sustainable meetings. We don't have strict policy around it, however."
But fellow panelist John Arenas, chairman and CEO of Worktopia, said he expects green meetings to become a "norm" once the economy rebounds.
"The economy has been a hiccup and it has certainly slowed down the green process," said Arenas. "As far as ROI, green is going to be measured like other data that we measure and based on the corporation's standard of green. Everyone is going to have some level of participation and what is going to help drive it is that vendors are going to be more onboard."
