I contend that common business plans are no longer effective to gain approval for Strategic Meetings Management Programs from senior leadership. In our post great recession reality, BOLD business plans that demonstrate your business acumen, understanding of the current environment, and ability to articulate the value proposition are crucial to gaining SMM prominence in the crowded landscape of competing organizational priorities! I have asked my good friend, Tim Brown, (CEO of Irvine, California based Meeting Sites Resource, a global specialist in meeting site research and hotel/contract negotiations.) to walk us through some of the concepts that would shift your business plan from basic to bold.

I agree with Tim when he says that the combination of the great recession and intense focus on the Strategic Meeting Management (SMM) initiative has clearly increased senior management's expectations for improved planner productivity, added meeting value, cost savings, risk reduction and ROI. Thus our focus in this issue on developing a bold business plan which will get the attention of senior leadership. Tim recommends the following:

Build your business acumen! Many business plans focus solely on the specific issue as a stand alone topic versus including content that also addresses how the issue affects the entire organization. Be sure you take the time to gain an in-depth understanding of "how your organization works" and how meetings & events play a major role in achieving management and stakeholder goals and objectives. You can develop a deeper understanding of the organization by taking a closer look at your mission and vision statements, current annual goals & objectives, and key strategic initiatives. Then analyze how an SMMP would positively help to support some or all of these initiatives.  

Conduct an Organizational Needs Assessment so you have an exhaustive understanding the current state of meetings and events of your organization. It's not enough to simply present volume data regarding the number of meetings and how much is being spent, that's basic! To be bold, you must:

• Include feedback from key meeting stakeholders regarding desired process improvements
• Present the current process as to how meetings are approved, sourced and planned
• Identify gaps and challenges to the existing processes and systems
• Generate specific recommendations on what should be improved
• Concisely identify the specific benefits of SMM in language that will help sway senior leadership to take action.

Articulate the Value Proposition by indicating how the "new value" components can be defined, measured, and reported. Believe it or not, cost containment is not the only outcome executives are looking for. There are other equally important benefits that are important decision factors to approving a new corporate initiative:

• Risk mitigation
• Increased visibility and demand management
• Improved meeting quality and learner outcomes
• Enhanced team productivity through streamlined processes and procedures
• Data management and business intelligence that drives strategic decisions

Integration of technology: A bold proposition in your business plan can be the strategy of integrating a technology solution into your SMMP. Best practice indicates that technology is a successful enabler to thriving Strategic Meetings Management Programs. In addition to managing the meeting registration, approval and electronic Request for Proposal process; technology can also integrate many other meeting functions, including participant management, attendee communications, meeting budgets and more. The benefit of 24/7/365 access to robust quality data is that you will be able to use analytics to understand the data and use it to make informed business decisions regarding your meeting and event program. There is no need to identify the specific technology you will be using for your SMMP in the business plan; however it is important to understand what technology tools are currently being utilized and what technology capabilities are required to deliver strategic outcomes and robust data management.