The Meeting Unprofessionals
Dr. Elling Hamso,
May 29, 2009 8:21 AM
When National Business Travelers Association (NBTA) recently launched the Strategic Meeting Management Certification programme (SMMC), meeting planners had it coming.
Meeting planners have been asking for ‘a seat at the table’, suggesting that general management should recognize the importance of meetings and place meeting managers alongside such professions as Human Relations, IT and Procurement managers.
General management took a quick look and asked meeting planners how they take care of the company’s money, applying good procurement practices, for example. The meeting planner explained that buying meeting services is too difficult for the professional buyer, who doesn’t understand meetings, and the meeting services providers agreed; leave meetings to the professionals!
Management didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Not knowing how to do your job is bad. Believing that you know something you don’t know, better than the professionals who know it, is deadly. The executioner is the professional travel manager who just launched the Strategic Meeting Management Certification.
Let us hope, for the sake of the meeting planner, that the General Manager has not asked any more questions, such as how do you manage meeting projects (online, of course), where are your quality assurance procedures, how do you manage risk? If a professional from any of these disciplines were to audit the average meeting planner, the meeting planner would be dead again, several times over. There are exceptions of course, like every reader of this blogpost.
Back to Strategic Meeting Management. What is it? In principle it is the application of good procurement principles to the total meetings spend across a corporation. In practice it means procedures whereby all meetings are registered and centrally approved, purchases are made from approved suppliers according to contracting policies and all payments are made through a system which captures and categorises spend. As a result, savings in the order of 15 – 30% are being reported by large corporations after implementing SMMP.
All of this was explained at the recent Paragon/NBTA Crossroads conference in Paris. I didn’t see many meeting planners there, but you may want to download Kari Kesler’s ‘Diving in to Strategic Meetings Management Programmes (SMMP)' (http://tinyurl.com/crossroadsparis) or check out some of the SMMP white papers on www.nbta.org.
Comments on articles
Kerstin, I like your plea to meeting planners to take control of their own destiny before a travel manager or procurement tell them what to do. Here is a recipe:
1. Read all the SMMP stuff on www.nbta.org (Resource Library Whitepapers & Articles). Also Google Strategic Meeting Management.
2. Go knock on your procurement manager's door and ask for a senior procurement officer to join your project. Remember this is not about planning meetings, it is about how to apply good procurement practices to meetings
3. Don't think you can do it on your own without the benefit of those who have already done it. Kari Kesler has now left Honeywell and set up her own consulting practice, she is probably the leading world expert on the subject (kariknollkesler@gmail.com, 001 952 250 3378)
4. Make sure you know how to prove the value of meetings, this will make your project different from the travel management version, you want to look at both sides of the equation, ROI Methodology and Meeting Architecture are key concepts.
5. Praise yourself lucky you got there in time, raise your head and be a proud meeting management professional
Meeting Unprofessionals – that’s tough, but the truth?
* Care of the company’s money:
Since your workshop on Return on Investment (ROI) I keep asking CIM readers and cimunity members: Why do you organise this conference, event or incentive? The answers are pretty similar: education, marketing, motivation…. I am insisting: What are your MESUARBALE objectives? If you cannot define them, how can you measure them and prove the impact of your meeting? How can you invest in something that may not pay off? And if you spend money: How do you do it?
* Applying good procurement practices:
Most of the corporation have travel guidelines. But does anybody have and apply EVENT GUIDELINES? If so: we are more then happy to report about it! Gerhard Bleile, President of Veranstaltungsplaner.de has opened a group to discuss this issue (unfortunately in German).
Meeting Professionals should not wait until procurement and travel management will define event guidelines for them!!!
Today is June 3, MPI Netherlands is taking the stand on Strategic Meetings Management with Marketing Communications heavyweights at MarCom 2009 in Amsterdam. Dear Ruud, please share with us your experience at the RAI. (P.S. www.mpiweb.nl and http://www.adformatie.nl/marcom are in Dutch ;-)). Kerstin Hoffmann, cim
Well, I've never known Dr. Hamso to shy away from a debate . . . well written. I will add that the importance of demonstrated value through an SMMP is critical - this allows for a trickle down effect that should support the value of each event.
Unfortunately, in most corporations today, the distance between the executives and the meeting planners is vast - both physically and in terms of priorities. Unless provided with compelling data, senior leaders will continue to see meetings and events as an expense rather than an investment. In order to do this well, we must have complete transparency in all things related to the event - process, funding, assessments, objectives, etc. This transparency may prove challenging for the planner who feels threatened by the inquiry or simply doesn't have all the information.
NBTA, via the SMMC program, is working diligently to bridge gaps in the industry and bring a keen focus to the cumulative value of all events to a company's business objectives by educating those who wish to take on this challenge.
I look forward to our launch of the certification and to continued maturation of this exciting and important industry.
Kari Kesler
Strategic Meetings Management Visionary
When the rubber hits the road, the meeting professionals are the service minded deliverers of succes. In the business process I must agree that common business practice of procedure, checkpoints and Key Performance Indicators are not in place as they should be in most meetings management departments.
Online collaboration can resolve the quest for due process and quality assurance including acountablility and building in checkpoints along the way. In a dynamic multi-supplier and stakeholder situation like a meeting or conference I wonder how people dare to work without it really?
TIME FOR HEROES:
On June 3 , 2009 MPI Netherlands will take the stand on Strategic Meetings Management with Marketing Communications heavyweights at MarCom 2009 in the Amsterdam RAI. I challenge thos intruiged by the Meetings Unprofessional that feel adressed to join the dialogue and learn about due process. For details see: www.mpiweb.nl or http://www.adformatie.nl/marcom/
Thank you Dr. Elling Hamso for pointing these links out, I shall read and aggregate knowledge and provide feedback while on this journey.
Ruud Janssen
Marketing Entrpreneur
©TNOC
www.newobjectivecollective.com
Good article on meetingsnet.com Getting Started with Strategic Meetings Management Program
http://meetingsnet.com/negotiating_contracts/getting_started_smmp_1208/
PS If you are Spanish ;-) and plan to attend Eventoplus e-days in Madrid 7-8 July, I shall do a workshop for corporate meeting planners as follows:
From logistics to strategy: how to become necessary in your organization
Why are meeting budgets reduced at a time when they are needed more than ever? Why have National Business Travel Association launched a Strategic Meeting Management Certification? Should Procurement and Travel Management be responsible for strategic meeting management? This workshop will discuss how corporate meeting planners take control of their destiny and receive the management recognition they deserve.
Elling