Strategic Meetings Management: The Strategy Quick Reference Guide: Roadmap to Strategic Meetings Management

Meetings and Events make up 25-35% of the total Travel and Entertainment spend of an organization. While most organizations do not allow staff to buy their own desks, or their own computers, yet allow these same staff the ability to "buy" meetings/events that cost thousands of dollars without consideration for risk, price, process, practicality, or people's time.

Design your Strategic Meetings Management (SMM) Program by using this SMM Quick Reference Guide. This Strategy Quick Reference Guide provides you with the ability to assess your current meetings/events program, plot your assessment score, benchmark against other companies, identify your program's position on the maturity model continuum and shape your meeting/event program strategy through the information provided in the Quick Reference Guide. Identify the: Risks of your meetings program remaining status quo; Action plan to move forward; and Best-in-class practices.

The planning of meetings and events requires complex activities, numerous suppliers, multiple resources, risk mitigation and result in significant spend. Many meetings/events are extremely visible to leaders and require high-touch services by numerous planners. Even though many large organizations have started SMM initiatives, few have implemented a mature, enterprise-wide program.

Many companies fail to manage meetings/events at the enterprise-level because leaders are:

a. unaware of the meeting/event spend impact;

b. uneducated as to how to control meetings/events;

c. unsure how to "tread lightly" when untouchable meetings leaders are in charge;

d. unauthorized as meetings/events may be out of their control; or

e. uninterested due to a perception of unimportance.

Strategic Meetings Management is a business strategy and initiative to coordinate meeting/event activities similar to the coordinated efforts of supply chain management. The discipline provides direction to guide the strategy, operations and tactical activities of meetings and events in order to improve business processes, quality, and return on investment, and reduce costs, risks and inefficiencies.