I just finished reading the new “Strategic Meetings Management” report from Aberdeen Group (see link to access a free copy at the end of this blog post), who surveyed nearly 200 enterprises regarding their experience, results, and intentions for SMM.  I’ll discuss a few points that struck me in particular.

Aberdeen uses a competitive framework to classify enterprises as “Best in Class” (top 20%), “Industry Average” (the next 50%), and “Laggards” (bottom 30%).  In the realm of Strategic Meetings Management, moving from Laggard to Best-in-Class increased the rate of compliance to meetings policies from 10% to 80%, and the number of meetings completed on or below budget from 6% to 82%.  For the average enterprise in this study, who spent $8.8 million in 2009 on strategic meetings, moving from Laggard to Best-in-Class could realize a 12% increase events with cost savings, potentially about $1 million each year.  That is a significant amount of money, and many enterprises spend much more on meetings than the average of this study.  Of course, site selection companies have preached this for decades – that well-managed events can reduce costs by more than 10%, control risk, and deliver better value on your meeting objectives.

The incentive to move from Laggard to Best-in-Class is clear.  The “enablers” used by Best-in-Class SMM enterprises are also not novel;  these technologies and services have been discussed in the meeting profession for years (from Table 2, the Best-in-Class PACE framework):
•    End-to-end meetings management solution
•    Expense management solution
•    Meetings card
•    Online / Self-booking tool
•    Virtual meeting / conferencing solution
•    Travel management company (TMC)
•    Third-party meeting planning services

But what has not been clear to many companies we work with is the path from Laggard to Best-in-Class.  Simply signing contracts with one provider from each “Enabler” service in the list above will not get you there.  Many companies have tried this, and only succeeded in spending more money on their meetings programs without realizing the promised cost savings and risk reduction.  At Certain Software, we advocate a phased deployment approach with small, well-defined, and readily achievable intermediate milestones.  This is a different path than the typical technology company who sells you a number of licenses, provides one-time training and installation, and then leaves you to handle the details.  I’ve covered this approach in more detail in our regular Strategic Meetings Management webinar series, and have found a ready audience of meeting professionals who are struggling to achieve the savings they hear about.

One surprise for me in this study was the relatively low importance placed on risk reduction by the respondents.  The main driving factors for SMM deployment included the usual suspects: cost control, improved value, greater visibility.  But after coming off a year where some enterprises may have paid more to cancel events then they paid to hold events, I would have thought that reducing the risk of future changes outside the enterprise’s control might have been in the front of many professional planners’ minds.  No one signs a contract for an event with the expectation that they will have to cancel, but 2009 reminded us how quickly things change, and those companies whose contracts reduced the financial risk of cancellation likely achieved up to 50% reduction in the penalties they incurred.  I hope the lesson is not lost during the next cycle.

To download the SMM report, please click here.

To sign up for one of Certain Software's Strategic Meetings Management webinars, please visit us here.