Talk about tight lead times: Alice Woychik and her team had 10 days to organize a product launch for 3,200 attendees. Before the director of meeting solutions at Novartis could finalize plans for the event, the new drug had to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Once the approval came through, it had to be launched immediately.

One of her first steps was to hold a brainstorming session to develop “innovative ideas for accelerating the planning process,” to which she invited her suppliers. “Everyone — including our suppliers — developed a can-do attitude after that initial meeting,” recalls Woychik. “They basically told us, ‘We are going to make this happen with you.'”

Working with hotel and logistics vendors, the team took some big risks. They began sourcing hotels in advance, so as soon as they got the go-ahead, they could sign the contracts immediately. “We worked with our travel vendor to do an air analysis and book 3,200 attendees on flights based on their location,” says Woychik. “Attendees are conditioned to making their own travel arrangements, so we developed a communications plan to let them know their airfare was being booked for them.” Anyone who could not attend was asked to notify Woychik and her team within 24 hours.

The June 2007 meeting in Dallas went off so smoothly that it is still viewed at Novartis as a model for product launches — an achievement Woychik says would not have been possible without her suppliers and their willingness to jump on board to make things happen.

“I think by engaging them in that initial brainstorming session, we got their buy-in,” she says, “and everyone had a stake in the meeting. I know if we didn't have those great relationships in place, it would not have been nearly as successful.”

Suppliers as Partners

Welcome to the new era of supplier relationship management. As companies rely more and more on preferred meeting suppliers, establishing strong partnerships with these vendors, as Woychik has, is essential. That means tossing aside the traditional view of the customer-vendor relationship and treating suppliers more as business partners with a vested interest in the success of the event as well as your overall corporate goals.

In the past couple of years, SRM, a standard procurement practice, has gained traction at companies that outsource meeting logistics to preferred suppliers.

“Companies are starting to take a hard look at their core competencies and ask, ‘What is it we need to spend our time and resources on?' And many are coming to the conclusion that they do not need to be experts on meeting logistics,” says George Odom, senior director of business development at Dallas-based Advito, a consulting arm of BCD Meetings & Incentives. Instead, many companies are elevating the planner's role to that of project manager, with a focus on strategic elements of the meeting, such as content management.

For example, at Novartis, meeting professionals act as account managers, liaising between internal clients and logistics vendors to ensure that a meeting is executed according to the client's standards. The company rolled out its SRM program to its five preferred meeting logistics providers in the first quarter of 2008, and to its four preferred hotel chains this summer. The SRM model is a five-step process that ranges from familiarizing suppliers on Novartis business processes to measuring and assessing performance, and finally, optimizing the relationship. (See box, page 23.)

Communication Comes First

The two keys to a successful SRM program are steady and strong communication with vendors, and a system of performance measurement and improvement. Financial services giant ING has taken communications with preferred hotel suppliers to a whole new level. Meeting planners, who are decentralized in ING's model, use centralized meeting management processes for registering and sourcing their meetings, and under this model, the use of preferred providers is strongly encouraged. One of the ways the company helps drive business to its preferred hotel chains is by cultivating relationships between its meeting planners and the hotel's national account managers.

“We bring in the national account managers regularly for training events to help them get a better understanding of what ING is looking for and familiarize them with our policies and procedures,” says Lisa Poulton, director of conference planning operations for ING, who is based in Windsor, Conn. One of those events is ING's annual M@I (Meetings at ING) Summit — a two-day event where ING planners and top suppliers are invited to participate in educational sessions and networking events. On the first day, Poulton and Deanna Bloodgood, sourcing specialist for travel, meetings, and incentives at ING, hold a pre-meeting with a preferred DMC and the top five to seven national sales managers from the major hotel chains with which ING does the most business.

“We go over processes and procedures, discuss any changes that have taken place in the organization, and answer their questions,” says Poulton. “We also recap our spend with them from the past year.” The meeting is an opportunity for long-term suppliers to get a refresher on the company and for new account managers to meet the ING team and ask questions about practices they may be unfamiliar with.”

“Our suppliers can do a better job of meeting our needs if they understand our expectations,” says Bloodgood. “If they are able to meet our needs, they are going to win or maintain more of our business.”

The M@I Summit has helped open the lines of communication between ING planners operating in various locations and their hotelier contacts. “The meeting planners within ING really value the relationships they have established with their national account managers,” says Poulton. “They see the national account manager as a point person and a partner — someone they can go to if they have an issue with a property.”

For future M@I Summits, Poulton is exploring the option of including different preferred-vendor categories, and she is looking into revamping the agenda to allow for national account managers to make presentations to planners during the event.

ING is also working to streamline its RFP technology platform so that when leads are generated, they go directly to the national account managers at its preferred hotel chains. The hotel rep can then act as a liaison between ING and the property where it is looking to place the meeting. “The new process will give a face to the lead and provide us with more leverage in negotiations,” says Poulton. “Our national account manager can talk to the property in question about what ING brings to the table collectively.”

As Kevin Iwamoto, global meetings commodity manager for HP, Palo Alto, Calif., [now with StarCite] says, “This is where the rubber meets the road. If you have suppliers that are familiar with your company and have been working with you for a long time, they become an extension of your company and an additional resource you can tap.”

Communicating with suppliers is an integral part of HP's supplier relationship management protocol and a key to the program's success. “The worst mistake you can make is signing a deal and walking away and hoping it manages itself. That is where you get into some pretty dangerous territory. Being fluid and having a constant dialogue is critical.”