Bondurant Consulting provides the following services:
Assessment of SMMP potential for your organization
Development and implementation of SMMP for meeting & travel managers
Training programs for hotel companies and 3rd party meeting planning agencies which increase their understanding of Strategic Meetings Management, resulting in more successful engagements with clients who are involved with SMM
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Quick Links Newsletter Archive 2011
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Welcome to Year Two of "Keeping it SiMMPle", a bi-monthly newsletter aimed at making and keeping your Strategic Meetings Management Program Practical, Light, and Effective!
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Each issue of Keeping it SiMMPle addresses a component of the A to Z of SMM from a Practical, Light & Effective perspective. In this issue V is for Validating Value!
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For this issue I felt it was important to address the need to validate the value of your Strategic Meetings Management Program. In order to keep ongoing support for your SMMP, you must consistently prove the ongoing value of the program to all of stakeholders in the meetings sphere. Since there is a spectrum of stakeholders who have varying needs, specific reports that validate the value of the SMMP must be developed to address the needs of these various stakeholders.
During process of developing the business plan, specific objectives for the SMMP should have been identified. These objectives translate to specific value targets for the program, such as increased visibility, improved risk management, incremental cost savings. For those in highly regulated industries such as finance and life sciences, compliance would have been called out as a significant motivator of value. Below are ways to validate some of these specific values:
Increased visibility can be validated by a higher volume of meetings processed through the centralized sourcing and contracting entity. For example you may have agreed that a 33% increase in meetings through the system in Q1 was a reasonable target. Key values of this increased visibility are:
- Better understanding of how much is being spent with suppliers, which allows for the development of preferred supplier programs in order to drive additional savings and increased service levels
- Increased knowledge of who is planning meetings within the organization, thus improving adoption and compliance for the SMM Program
- Insight into new spending trends within the company for meetings and events
Similarly, the value of risk mitigation can be demonstrated by:
- Documenting re-use of cancelled meeting contracts
- Identifying duty of care issues that were resolved in a timely manner
- Ensuring that meetings and events are being held in appropriate destinations and venues - before they occur
For highly regulated industries, the value of compliance can be validated through:
- Demonstrating that all meetings were registered
- Documenting, via an auditable process, that all meetings were sourced and contracted according to policy
- Reporting on unique data points as required by internal and/or government policy
Certainly, savings are an expected outcome of any SMM, although as the discipline of SMM evolves, we find that savings is reducing in importance as the value targets described above are deemed as important or even more important than savings.
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SiMMPle Tips!
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TIP #1: Measure value on pre-determined targets
TIP #2: Compare the current metrics with data from previous time period
TIP #3: Report metrics out to key Stakeholders on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis.
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Did you know...
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Betsy will be conducting anSMM Co-Creation session Thursday morning, November 29 during EIBTM in Barcelona. Click here to participate in the session: http://mpismmeibtm.eventbrite.com
In January, the U.S. Travel Association (USTA), will officially launch Travel Blitz, a grassroots advocacy program to stress the power of the $1.9 trillion travel industry to Members of Congress.
Betsy will be teaching MPI's (Global Certification in Meetings and Business Events (GCMBE) in Beijing, China December 15-19, 2012. |
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