Less typing, less paper — those are the small victories of online meeting management. Staying “ahead of the curve” in the eyes of attendees, your company, and the industry is a loftier goal.

But it's the big-time bottom-line impact that turns the heads of senior executives when you use technology to streamline operations. Especially at a company like Prudential Financial, whose stated goals include a strengthening of its core businesses and a lower cost structure.

The meeting department at the Newark, N.J. — based financial giant, therefore, is turning heads. With a dedicated effort to make every last keystroke count, through the use of outside vendors and its own technology department, the team reduced the amount of money and manpower needed to do its job — while at the same time getting better at demonstrating its value to the company.

The project centers around online registration. “Our department handles 400 meetings a year,” says Debbie Boschee, director, conference and meeting services. “We had 10,000 registrants in 2002. As we looked to the future, we realized that our in-house online registration system didn't have the capability to capture all of our data. Our needs had grown.”

But online registration isn't the whole story. Boschee and her department also launched online air reservations, created an internal database providing “at a glance” information about all meetings and all the department's planners, and enforced use of a corporate card that streamlined expense reporting and allows planners immediate access to data such as total dollars spent with a particular hotel chain.

“We need to quantify our value,” Boschee says. “All of these technological tools have made us more efficient, so planners are not tied up with administrative tasks but can be strategic partners to clients.” In other words, rather than typing in registration information, planners are advising meeting hosts on issues such as site selection and meeting flow.

CHOOSING OUTSOURCING

Prudential's own online registration system, created in 1998, was robust, but the investment that would have been required to upgrade it and continually maintain and enhance it was so large that the company decided to search for an outside vendor. After an exhaustive process of creating an RFP (see sidebar, page 22), Prudential signed on with seeUthere, based in Santa Clara, Calif., in November 2002. One benefit of outsourcing quickly came to the fore: With online meeting management as its core business and with other corporate clients using and tweaking its products, an outside vendor would be continually improving its offerings.

For example, Prudential's meeting team worked with seeUthere to resolve an issue which led to a product enhancement. The glitch was this: When attendees register for Prudential's major incentive conference, they have the option to arrive a day or two earlier than the start of the conference, so those dates are included in the system as valid dates. However, if a registrant neglected to fill in an arrival date, the system automatically defaulted to the earliest date loaded rather than the opening date of the conference. The quick fix was to add a lot of customized text prompting registrants to double-check their arrival dates. Ultimately seeUthere reworked its system so that clients can choose their own default dates.

Boschee and her team launched the new system in the fourth quarter of 2002, with a lot of notice to attendees and meeting sponsors. “When we first got the system we sent a note to all of our business partners,” explains Erin Longo, manager, meeting planning. “As we slowly piloted the registration system, we sent notes to attendees telling them to expect online invitations to appear in their e-mail boxes in a week.”

Invitations include a link to a Web-based registration form, which the attendee completes at his or her leisure. “We were aware that there would be a learning curve,” Longo continues, “but when we used the system for the first time with our large incentive conference in 2003, we got the quickest response rate ever for that conference.”

In addition to making the registration process so much more efficient, the online system also has increased the service level the meeting department offers its internal clients — the people holding the meetings. “We can generate hourly, daily, and weekly reports for meeting hosts with whatever information they need, such as who is registered or who is registered from a particular territory,” Longo notes.

And for attendees, the registration form includes links to the meeting hotel and to MapQuest for driving directions. “Our meeting participants have become more accustomed to instant information,” Boschee says. “With this system they get a confirmation right away and they can access their data whenever they want. It shows we're staying ahead of the curve.”

INFO AT A GLANCE

Instant access to information is the driving force behind the department's Team Database, a Lotus Notes — based system that was developed internally and continues to evolve. Check in here and you can find out anything about any meeting — or any meeting planner. “One thing that is unique is our team calendar,” Boschee explains. “When planners are traveling we can find out where everyone is at a glance,” right down to their flight numbers and precise itineraries.

The database is the repository of all meeting information, past, present, and future, and this information can be viewed or reported on in various ways. For example, the meeting department can run reports for individual business units regarding their own meetings, including negotiated savings — a critical measure of how well the meeting department is doing its job.

It's also a resource database, with standard contracts, standard addenda, and other planning documents immediately available. And one feature of the database has evolved into standard operating procedure for planners at Prudential: Canceled meetings are logged so that planners can look for opportunities to recoup those costs by booking other meetings in the space.

As with all technology, the database is upgraded regularly. Jennifer Bethune, administrative manager, offers an example of a recent enhancement. It used to be that an internal client would submit a meeting request as a Microsoft Word document, and a planner would have to retype the relevant information into the database. Now, clients fill out a meeting request form that was developed within the Lotus Notes system, so the necessary data fields move seamlessly to the meeting record. Typical of Boschee's team, they're already looking ahead to the next enhancement — pushing all that information one step further, into an RFP, without any retyping.

PIONEER IN THE AIR

Perhaps most innovative, meeting attendees are booking all their air reservations online. Corporate Travel Online, a product from American Express, searches not only Prudential's negotiated fares for transient travel but its negotiated group fares as well (see sidebar, page 21). Prudential was the second company to start using the product, which has helped to dramatically cut transaction costs for booking air tickets.

Travelers get immediate confirmation by e-mail, followed by an e-mailed itinerary, and the meeting department can run reports at any time. CTO also allows the department to charge the airfares to the appropriate cost center, Jennifer Bethune notes.

Attendees see a link on the online registration form prompting them to book flights, which has resulted in earlier bookings than when a phone number was provided for reservations. That has cut costs as well.

And Prudential's travel policy is embedded in the system, so that if an attendee tries to book against policy, a red error message appears. The person can still book, but takes the risk of not being reimbursed.

I NEED TO KNOW NOW

Rounding out the department's streamlining is mandated use of an American Express corporate card for meeting and travel purchases. It makes for simpler expense reporting, but in this case as in others what really changes the way the department does business is instant access to information. Planners can log on to the American Express Web site and find out which hotel chain the department has spent the most money with, for example, on a monthly basis or an annual basis. All meeting spending can be viewed using whatever parameters the planner selects.

Finally, the department created online meeting surveys that get sent to internal clients (the meeting hosts) after each event. The survey covers everything: what it was like to use the services of the meeting department, use of online air and meeting registration, and the entire meeting experience. Every quarter, the meeting team compiles the survey results to identify where their services excel and where they could be beefed up. In fact, Bethune points out, “the overall percentage rate is directly linked to our objectives for the year.”

A challenge? Indeed, but it's also a golden opportunity to quantify the unquantifiable — the perennial goal of planners interested in proving their value. And when you're the meetings experts at a Fortune 500 company, you want that value noticed.

NEWSFLASH: ONLINE AIR RESERVATIONS NOW INCLUDE GROUP FARES

UNTIL NOW, THE BUGABOO of online air reservations for meetings has been the challenge of building a system that could search all fares — group fares negotiated by a company's meeting director and transient fares negotiated by the corporate travel director. Prudential Financial is a pilot company for a new version of Corporate Travel Online, a package from American Express, that can look at all fares and offer attendees every option. (The system also checks leisure fares and online discounters in addition to searching the negotiated group and transient fares.) The switch means big savings in ticket fees alone: When an attendee makes a reservation online, it's nearly 50 percent cheaper than making that same reservation by phone. When you're talking about thousands of meeting attendees a year, that's a nice chunk of change.

For its part, Prudential streamlined air travel management by taking the negotiation of group fares off the desk of Debbie Boschee, director, conference and meeting services, and putting it in the hands of the corporate travel department. For some planners, those are fighting words. In Boschee's view, “It helps me because they're the experts. I sign the group contract, but corporate travel has the relationship with the airlines, and they can leverage both pieces,” she says. “They're very close partners with us.” Boschee also points out that it doesn't leave her group airline contacts out in the cold. “I still meet with them to keep the relationship up.”

THE RFP: HOW TO GET WHAT YOU NEED IN ONLINE REGISTRATION

First step: Expect a major time commitment. Prudential Financial's Tech Team spent nine months shaping the 35-page RFP it sent to online registration vendors. Here's an outline of the process:

• Research what's out there

  The team contacted industry colleagues and searched the Web to create a list of application service providers. They also found out about vendors through direct-marketing e-mails and sponsorships on industry e-mail newsletters they receive.

• Prioritize your individual needs

  Each team member created a list of “must-haves” (for example, the ability to dictate required and non-required fields on the registration form), “nice-to-haves” (for example, fully customizable survey/evaluation questions and response types), and “would-be-great-to-haves” (for example, the ability to support multiple front-end devices for future needs; e.g., Palm Pilot or cell phone access to the service).

• Do a merge/purge

  The team took the individual needs, eliminated duplicates, and used a rating system to prioritize what was left. Sounds straightforward, but depending on the number of stakeholders involved, it can be one of the more complex parts of the process.

• Work with your IT department

  The Prudential team called on their in-house technology experts to advise them on the company's security standards. The team also used the IT department's RFP as a shell for its own.

• Narrow the field

  Start sorting through the field of vendors by determining the exact target audience of each vendor.

• Call 'em in

  The team invited four vendors to give one-hour presentations explaining their products.

• Narrow the field again

  One vendor was eliminated after the presentations; ultimately three vendors received RFPs.

• Go for the must-haves, with flexibility

  The team decided to keep all the must-haves in the RFP and prioritize the nice-to-haves. Erin Longo, manager, meeting planning, says that Prudential “got all of our must-haves and 50 percent of our nice-to-haves.”

The must-haves came with some “work-arounds” once the vendor was selected, Longo says, which brings us to the next phase of the process — evaluating the proposals. The CDs and three-ring binders that came into the office were daunting. Be careful to dictate requirements on how the proposals should be written, but expect that it will still be confusing, especially because your goal is to compare apples to apples.

Ultimately the Prudential team pushed to have the vendors set them up for comprehensive demos. These were more than just the usual online walk-throughs offered by the companies. The team wanted to have the same level of access they'd have if they purchased the products. This can be a tedious way to go, because essentially you'll have to learn the product to evaluate it. But for Prudential, getting the inside look was critical to determining if the products were sophisticated enough to meet the company's needs.

The planning team also contacted references, which helped primarily in finding out about each vendor's customer service. There are going to be problems with any technology, so you need to know how the vendor will address them. Are they flexible and responsive? Will they work with you to come up with quick fixes as well as long-term solutions?

TOP EIGHTTIPS FOR MOVING TO ONLINE MEETING REGISTRATION

1. Check the financial stability of the vendors you're considering. During Prudential's selection process, one potential vendor went bankrupt.

2. Accept that you'll be making changes and enhancements on a continual basis.

3. Test, test, test. Before you go live, make sure links work and internal firewalls don't prevent users from getting where they need to go.

4. Act as a helpline for attendees using the system for the first time. “Be patient and make yourself available to walk them through the process,” says Erin Longo, manager, meeting planning. But don't do it for them.

5. Be sure you fully understand the vendor's payment scheme. For example, if you're charged a “transaction fee,” how is a transaction defined? Is it when each record (meeting invitation) is created? Or every time that record is touched?

6. Take help where you can get it: Search meeting industry publications and Web sites for checklists of questions to ask technology vendors. The Prudential team visited sites such as that of industry tech guru Corbin Ball (www.corbinball.com). You could also try ICP magazine's own site at www.meetingsnet.com: Click on “Technology” under the list called “Articles by Topics.”

7. Ask how often the vendor has a new release. That can tell you how often enhancements requested by you and other corporate clients will be folded into the product.

8. Find out when you can call customer service. If you're from a big company, you might assume it's 24-7, but that's probably not the case. Most application service providers you'll be considering are small companies without the resources (or necessarily the demand) for 24-hour help desks. The Prudential team advises a work-around, such as getting someone's cell phone number for after-hours emergencies.

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