Will businesses integrate their physical and virtual conferencing programs?
For some time now, corporations have been addressing the value of merging their meetings and transient travel functions. But should an enlarged program take on the management of video-conferencing and other forms of virtual communication as well?
Combining virtual and physical meetings
There has been much discussion among corporate travel professionals about the extent to which they can and should merge the management of transient travel and meetings. It is a debate that has still not been resolved. But perhaps there is an even bigger question that has become more relevant to ask: Should the management of physical meetings be merged not only with transient travel, but also with virtual meetings that use technologies such as Web conferencing, TelePresence and audio conferencing?
Virtual alternatives to travel have gained traction during the global economic crisis. According to a survey by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and London’s Business Travel Market, 79 percent of companies that have implemented travel cost-cutting measures have made greater use of them. However, although there is logic to bringing management of these alternatives under the same umbrella as management of physical meetings, it rarely happens in practice. In many organizations, IT remains in charge of the virtual meeting management function and related services.
George Odom, senior director of business solutions for Advito, the consulting division of BCD Travel, believes that may change.
“Strategic meetings management is about finding the best way to handle the purpose of a meeting that could be face-to-face or virtual,” says Odom. “Smart meetings management is going to start embracing that. Face-to-face meetings are not going to disappear completely, but surveys have shown that the total number of meetings are being reduced.”
Bruce Morgan, senior vice-president for BCD Meetings & Incentives, agrees. He believes organizations could be liberated to think more strategically and creatively if they were to combine physical and virtual meetings management in one department.
“Companies need to consider the business objective of their meeting and the communications objective,” he says. “Some virtual meetings technologies are not conducive for two-way communications, but for one-way communications, such as training or product demonstrations. Technologies like WebEx can potentially become viable alternatives to small group travel.
“Someone within the company will own the combined space,” Morgan continues. “Perhaps there will even be various owners working together. It could end up with a function in an organization to provide the resource management for reaching a communications objective, which may or may not involve travel. Any of the tools or suppliers available to the company would be under that one function.”
Morgan foresees a day when decision-making tools help decide between travel or seeking an alternative.
“Imagine,” he says, “a portal you can tap into that asks questions on the purpose of what you are doing, and the location of the people involved. It could help the business owner make a decision based not only on cost, but on reaching specific business and communication objectives.”
Combining meetings and travel
For many organizations, however, all this is some way into the future. Instead, they are still wrestling with whether to consolidate the management of physical meetings with transient travel. The country where this has happened most frequently to date is in the U.S., where it has also become clear that consolidation has its limitations too.
According to Morgan, the growing involvement of procurement has been the driver of melding travel and meetings, thanks to a wish to see more professional contracting with suppliers and, in some cases, to leverage better deals where the same suppliers are used for both. However, there are limits to what travel purchasers can do. They do not usually have the skills or time to organize individual meetings, which require sensitive handling by experienced event managers.
“The vice president of customer marketing is not solely interested in cost containment when external audiences are involved, and as such may feel it critical that the meeting be handled by someone who is a professional event manager,” says Morgan. “The event itself could be all about the brand, and how the company presents itself to the outside world.”
He cites the example of a pharmaceutical company staging a global meeting for physicians in Asia. “It is not just about moving your employees, so you cannot look at isolated costs in the same way. The service aspects and considerations can be very different.”
Procurement-based travel managers do have the right skills in many aspects of supplier negotiation, but leveraging meetings and transient spend is not always straightforward.
“At the hotel property level, buyers still have to talk to different people about transient and group business,” says Odom. “At a chain level, hotel companies are getting better about providing a single point of contact. A major challenge is getting good data, especially in Europe, where boutique and non-chain hotels are very popular. You have to look for the data from your card spend and your travel management company management information. This is an area where outsourced experts like us can be very useful.”