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What justification do you need to provide to senior level management to gain approval for a Strategic Meetings Management Program (SMMP)? Providing justification can be a stumbling block for those trying to develop an SMMP. It is not necessarily that executives don't want SMM programs in place at their organization; it is just that all new initiatives in a company need to go through a rigorous prioritization and approval process. Meetings span the depth and breadth of an organization, and there are innumerable people, (also called stakeholders) at all levels of the organization who are interested in the meetings process. So gaining approval can become much more complex and emotional than it seems it should. Also meetings and events remain two of the few areas of unmanaged indirect spend in many companies, and it needs to be harnessed for increased savings and reduced risks.
How do you use justification to overcome complex and emotional issues? One solution is to employ some of the proven business methods utilized by procurement departments that help to:
1. Quantify the opportunity
2. Call out the risk concerns
3. Delineate the cost of inaction
4. Identify the impact of internal and external conditions
5. Determine the stakeholder hierarchy
On the surface this might look like a pretty easy exercise, but let's dissect these five methods to see what all is entailed. How do you quantify the opportunity if the planners and associated spend is decentralized throughout your company, and with numerous suppliers? Use some of the metrics we have discussed previously: Identify the spend that you have under your control. Extrapolate what % of total meeting spend that might be. Go to suppliers for their data. Once you have a better idea of the spend, use some conservative savings percentages (12% savings in the first year of a program is very conservative) to extrapolate potential annual savings, which will be a compelling part of the opportunity analysis exercise.
I have found that one of the most effective ways to capture the attention of your audience when discussing risk concerns is to provide real life examples of contracts that were signed by occasional planners in the organization and subsequently had to be cancelled. Typically, those contract terms come with hefty cancellation penalties and no rebooking clauses which, unfortunately, can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Other examples can be contracts with inflexible terms which resulted in costly attrition penalties, or paying non-discounted pricing for food and beverage items. Be sure to articulate what the financial impact was to the company in these instances, and how this would have been minimized if a meeting planning department or centralized sourcing & contracting department had been involved in the contract negotiation process.
Be sure to delineate to leadership the cost of inaction: Lack of control in the meeting and event category, inability to manage demand and leverage spend, difficulty making decisions based on sound business intelligence, contracts being signed that have a negative impact for the company, and not knowing where staff are when traveling to meetings and events on behalf of the company which results in failed duty of care are just a few that come to mind. For those in the Life Sciences business, if there is lack of visibility into who is planning meetings, where they are being held, and which Health Care Professionals are attending, your ability to comply with upcoming governmental regulations will be limited, putting the leadership and the organization at risk.
Understanding the current internal and external conditions and how it impacts your organization is also a key part of providing justification for your SMM Program. Two vital tools in this process are the internal facing SWOT analysis: Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat analysis and the external facing PEST analysis: Political, Economic, Societal, and Technological analysis. When conducting the SWOT analysis, you should be extremely honest with what is taking place currently within your organization, and how this might impact your SMMP. Similarly, with the PEST analysis, you should take a close look at specif activities happening regionally and globally and how this might affect your SMMP.
Determining the stakeholder hierarchy, or stakeholder mapping, is a critical and often missed practice when developing justification for your program. Stakeholder mapping is important because it identifies who are the core stakeholders, who are extended stakeholders, the stakeholders who are not in favor of an SMM program, and most importantly, who your executive sponsor is. I know some meeting directors who are lucky enough to have the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) as their executive sponsor, which provides for a lot of program support. But others have the support of their Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or Chief Procurement Officer (CPO). You can be successful with the next level down sponsorship, but getting the "C-Level" is usually the most effective sponsor to have.
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