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Be a Meetings Champion
Planners who push for strategic meetings management elevate their role from tactician to strategist and gain visibility as the company expert in sourcing best practices.
By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor
Before Honeywell International implemented a strategic meetings management program (SMMP) in October 2004, the diversified technology and manufacturing leader had no idea it was spending more than $30 million on nearly 5,000 meetings each year.
“A Six Sigma Black Belt analyzed the state of meeting planning at Honeywell and discovered that we didn’t know who was planning meetings or how much they were spending,” says Kari Knoll Kesler, global manager of Honeywell Meeting Solutions for Honeywell, St. Louis Park, Minn., in reference to the methodology used at companies to eliminate defects and achieve quality. “There were no controls, no standards, and no best practices.”
The report resulted in Kesler being hired to build a center of excellence for meeting planning services. “When people want help planning their meetings, they can use our tools,” she says. “Technology enables the processes we put into place.”
Organizations that view meetings management as a logistics function overlook the opportunity to optimize program quality and service while reducing costs, say Kesler. She is one of a number of strategic meeting managers who have initiated changes to ease their workloads, control costs, and align their planning functions with organizational goals and strategies.
This white paper reviews how SMMPs can achieve cost reductions and process efficiencies. To
illustrate, we present three case studies of planning professionals who are benefiting from SMMP. Learn how you, too, can pull off double-digit savings, raise awareness of the strategic value of meetings, and elevate your status within your organization.
Excerpt from "Be a Meetings Champion," The Meetngs Group, Publisher of Corporate Meetings & Incentives, Financial & Insurance Meetings, Medical Meetings, Association Meetings, and Religious Conference Manager (meetingsnet.com). A White Paper sponsored by OnVantage. Copyright 2006 The Meetings Group, Stowe, MA. |
