MeetingsNet

• Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) — A not-for-profit association established to provide executive-level global education and peer-to-peer networking opportunities. Membership spans all of business travel, from corporate buyers to agencies to suppliers, and accords all sectors equal membership. ACTE serves more than 6,000 executives in over 80 countries.
• C-Level Executive — Starting an SMMP requires C-level support, typically from the CPO, CFO, and/or CEO.
• Cause-and-Effect Analysis — A cause-and-effect analysis generates and sorts hypotheses about possible causes of problems within a process by asking participants to list all of the possible causes and effects for the identified problem and showing links between events and their potential or actual causes. This kind of analysis can reveal why a problem is occurring and possible effects of that cause, and can be used to support the case for an SMMP.
• Compliance — For an SMMP to be effective, companies need enterprisewide visibility of all meetings. To get that, employees must comply with corporate policies and register their meetings through the meetings department. Companies measure compliance by the percentage of employees registering meetings.
• Cost-Benefit Analysis — A cost-benefit analysis finds, quantifies, and adds all the positive factors, or benefits. Then it identifies, quantifies, and subtracts all the costs. The difference between the two indicates whether the planned action is advisable. This kind of analysis can be used to support the case for an SMMP.
• Cost Avoidance — Actions taken to reduce future costs. Cost avoidance may incur higher (or additional) costs in the short run, but the final cost will be lower.
• Cost Savings — Immediate cost benefits to the company, which can be measured year over year, quoted vs. actual, or budget vs. actual
• Executive Sponsor — A senior-level executive who understands the merits of your SMM initiative and helps to remove barriers and allocate resources to ensure its success
• General Ledger Codes (GL Codes) — These are used in submitting invoices and typically follow the structure: Company-Division-Project-Function (for example: 04.556.7664.002).
• In-source — To keep a function, such as meeting planning, in-house
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) — The measurements by which companies rate suppliers on quality, service, cost-savings, timeliness, and consistency. KPIs are usually contained within a service-level agreement and reviewed quarterly between the supplier and meeting manager.
• Meeting Card — A charge card that is used only for meeting purchases. Meeting cards are distributed to all planners throughout the company and are used to track and manage meeting spend.
• Meeting Definition — One of the first steps in starting an SMMP is to create a standard definition of a meeting that is used by everyone in the company. (Example: “A meeting is a gathering of 25 or more employees or associates for which at least 10 attendees require an airline ticket or an overnight hotel stay.”)
• Meeting Management Software — This software does the following:
  1. Routes meeting requests through the approval process and tracks (or impedes) meetings that do not receive the necessary approvals,
  2. Collects meeting data, including expenses, across departments, to be able to report a consolidated view of the company's meeting activity that can be analyzed by vendor and meeting type,
  3. Includes a searchable online supplier database that directs users to the company's preferred suppliers,
  4. Helps planners create, submit, and compare RFPs — as well as save the bids for future reference,
  5. Integrates with a company's meeting-planning software for attendee registration, housing, and air, or have these capabilities itself,
  6. Automatically notifies legal or procurement departments if RFPs are of a certain size,
  7. Creates both standard and customizable reports.
• Meeting Policy — A meeting policy includes the same general information — definitions, roles and responsibilities, references, and scope — as other company policies. It should encompass the following 15 items:
  1. Meeting registration and approval thresholds or criteria
  2. Accommodations
  3. Air travel
  4. Food-and-beverage guidelines
  5. Guests and spouses
  6. Use of and interactions with suppliers, both preferred and other
  7. Venue/hotel sourcing
  8. Contracting and risk management
  9. Meeting budgeting and currency conversion methods
     
  10. Use of online attendee registration and event Web sites
      
  11. Payment methods and process
  12. Meeting-related ethics (rewards programs, familiarization and site-inspection trips, gifts from suppliers)
  13. Compliance requirements and consequences for noncompliance
  14. Shipping
  15. Security
• Meeting Registration — A system by which planners across a company submit certain required data every time they are about to plan a meeting. This results in an approval process before the meeting planning begins, after which the meeting is assigned its own ID number. A registration system can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or a component of a broader meetings management technology.
• Meeting Sponsor — The person within the company who has called for the meeting to take place, also known as the "internal client"
• National Business Travel Association (NBTA) — An association that represents over 5,000 corporate travel managers and travel service providers who collectively manage and direct more than $340 billion of expenditures within the business travel industry, primarily for Fortune 1000 companies. In 2011, NBTA will change its name to the Global Business Travel Association to convey its new global direction. In January 2010, NBTA announced the creation of NBTA Europe, a combination of partnerships with several European meetings associations, including the Institute of Travel and Meetings in the U.K. and Ireland, representing 2,000 members.
  
• Opportunity Analysis — An assessment of the potential an SMM brings to an organization. It should include information on process efficiencies, risk management, and cost savings and avoidance
• Outsource — The contracting of a business function — such as meeting planning — that was performed in-house to an independent outside provider
• Preferred Suppliers — Hotels, airlines, and meeting planning companies chosen by internal meeting managers to handle the majority of the company's meeting business. Using preferred suppliers offers companies more buying power and leverage, and makes it easier to do business.
• Procurement — The centralized support organization within a company that is responsible for the acquisition of goods and services, payment of vendors, and development of vendor contracts.
• Request for Proposal (RFP) — An invitation for suppliers, often through a bidding process, to submit a proposal on a specific commodity or service, such as meeting planning for a specific event
• Risk Management — By discouraging the signing of contracts by planners throughout an organization and using the legal department to include the necessary clauses and addendums, SMMPs manage contractual risk.
• Return on Investment (ROI) — The results, strategic value, and contributions of each meeting toward achieving of the organizational goals. A related measurement is ROO, a determination of how well an event achieved its objectives.
• Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) — Also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002, it is a United States federal law enacted in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals. The Sarbanes-Oxley requirements that are most likely to benefit from a successful SMMP are as follows:
  1. Section 302 – Corporate Responsibility for Financial Audits
  2. Section 401 – Disclosures in Periodic Reports
  3. Section 404 – Management Assessment of Internal Controls
  4. Section 906 – Corporate Responsibility for Financial Reports
• Situation Analysis — Part of the discovery phase of implementing an SMMP, it involves an understanding of the company's meeting spend, processes, and policies to establish a baseline. That baseline is used to make recommendations for improvements and measure program results. The fact-gathering process used to develop the baseline is critical to avoid decisions founded on intuition or inaccurate data. Key actions in this phase include:
  
  • Conducting stakeholder interviews
  • Gathering and analyzing historical data
  • Researching interactions with and comparing data from suppliers
• Service-level agreement — A formal agreement that lays out the expectations a corporation has for its suppliers. These expectations center around savings, risk management, compliance, quality, timeliness, and service.
• Stakeholders — The people whose buy-in and involvement you must have to implement an SMMP. They may include:
  
  • Procurement
  • Legal
  • Risk Management
  • Ethics and Compliance
  • Security
  • Technology
  • Finance
  • Real Estate
  • Learning and Education / Training
  • Sales and Marketing
• Strategic Meetings Management (SMM) — A disciplined approach to managing enterprisewide meeting and event activities, processes, suppliers, and data in order to achieve measurable business objectives that align with the organization's strategic goals/vision and deliver value in the form of quantitative savings, risk mitigation, and service quality
• Strategic Sourcing — An institutional procurement process that continuously improves and re-evaluates the purchasing activities of a company. In the case of SMM, strategic sourcing is primarily used for hotel, air, travel management serices, and meeting planning contractors.

Sources: Cvent, NBTA, SignUp4