Debi_Scholar's Blog

I have a saying…"When paths ascend; Idleness descents; Momentum surpasses" which means climb your hill one step at a time to eliminate idleness. Step by step, you will build momentum to keep moving forward and upward. If you don't, you roll backward.  From where I sit, it does not appear that hotels have been practicing continuous improvement efforts to ascend the path of eRFPs.

As eRFP technology has been around since at least 1997* many hoteliers have practiced conscious incompetence in adopting eRFPs. For example, in a 2007 conversation with a prominent, large chain property in Florida, the Director of National Accounts said, "Debi, if we get two leads and one is through technology and the other is through the traditional method, I will always give first priority to the traditional RFP."  And, unfortunately, his response is echoed by hundreds of hoteliers today because they have not wanted to restructure their resources as Gaylord has so efficiently accomplished.  Granted, technology may be onerous, but improvements are being made regularly. In comparison, our first computers with floppy drives were hard to operate too, but we didn't ignore them, we used them.

Continue reading here:

http://www.teplus.net/2012/05/response-to-erfp-eruption-online-leads-swamp-hoteliers.html

From the Compliance Week article that I contributed to this week, "The areas of meetings and event planning have become bigger risks for T&E abuse, including FCPA infractions, in recent years, says Debi Scholar, an independent T&E consultant.

Read more:

http://www.teplus.net/2012/05/finding-fcpa-violations-in-employee-expense-reports.html

Organizations develop Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that may penalize suppliers for non-performance of service.  An SLA formalizes arrangements between an organization and a supplier to deliver specific services, at specific levels, and at an agreed upon price.  If the service is not met according to the agreement, the organization may be entitled to some form of compensation such as a payment or a credit. Learn the five steps that Organizations use to develop these SLAs and KPIs and how the remedy for non-performance may be calculated.

Continue reading:

http://www.teplus.net/2012/03/service-level-agreements.html

Communicating your return on investment from your meeting/event is not the same as showing beautiful charts and dashboards.  In fact, an ROI may look fairly boring compared to your beautiful, colorful charts but, when calculated properly and thoroughly with the right input, it portrays far more information and relevant data than your dashboards will ever show.

There are three different ROI calculations you may want to consider:

1.  The ROI of your strategic meetings management program

2.  The ROI of your involvement with sourcing and planning meetings/events (the savings and efficiency that you bring to the table)

3.  The ROI of the meeting/event including the calculation of the success of the business objective being met by holding the meeting/event

Keep reading..

http://www.teplus.net/2012/02/demystifying-return-on-investment-roi-in-meetings-and-events.html

Travel and meeting managers that use preferred suppliers become frustrated when their travelers or meeting attendees bypass the policies and use non-preferreds. Case in point, when we went through our Six Sigma measure stage at PwC (2007) to identify the rogue or maverick meeting spend that was not funneling through our meetings team, we learned that our strategic meetings management program only managed 49% of the total spend in the firm.  Shocking to us, because we thought we had corralled most of the costs.  Travel compliance returned better percentages, yet travelers still booked outside of the policy.  As a result, we developed proactive controls to stopgap rogue spenders and added numerous program enhancements. While arguments exist to reduce compliance requirements, managed travel with strong compliance is still the pot ‘o gold at the end of the rainbow.

Continue reading...

http://www.teplus.net/2012/02/reduce-unmanaged-travel-.html

Organizations want to move toward contracting less, saving more, and partnering for duration in an SMM environment. There are varying degrees of maturity in Strategic Meetings Management (SMM) supplier contracting and inevitably, most suppliers want to learn how to avoid the onerous contract negotiations in these environments. Even in a seller’s market, the Buyer wants to be in the driver’s seat of racing down the road of terms and conditions. Sometimes, the SMM contracting process penitentiary causes confinement for months with legal beagles shredding their opponent’s side of the contract.

Read more:

http://www.teplus.net/2012/02/negotiating-contracts-in-an-smm-environment.html

By definition, a virtual meeting or event provides for live or archived communications among small to large and local to global attendees. Virtual meetings and events, a critical component to a strategic meetings management (SMM) strategy, expand organizations’ options to communicate and offer an alternative method to deliver a meeting. Yet, many organizations do not understand the different tiers of virtual meetings, the ROI metrics that should be captured, or the roles and responsibilities of the virtual meeting planner.  The attached whitepaper may help you.

http://www.teplus.net/2011/12/creating-a-virtual-meetings-and-events-strategy.html

Travel, meeting and expense policies that are well-defined and frequently communicated provide a robust foundation for adherence to legal and regulatory compliance requirements. Compliance in travel, meetings and expense management is primarily itemized into a) policy compliance and b) legal and regulatory compliance. Before an organization can monitor and manage compliance, it must identity the proactive behaviors and processes, and communicate the expectations preemptively before the behavior or process occurs.   

Consider these conundrums: 

• A client wants to ensure that senior vice presidents or leaders with titles above that level sign all contracts. Yet, the reluctant procurement leaders prefer not to mandate their meeting policy nor communicate it thoroughly because these activities may deter employee morale.
• A client needs to monitor travel costs and identify traveler whereabouts. Yet, the leaders allow unrestrained travel bookings through unmonitored processes because the leaders do not want to dissuade creativity through imaginary boundaries.  

Dichotomy set aside of these true stories, some organizations do not believe that travel and meetings should be compliance-driven as part of its responsibility to maintain financial controls and manage risks. Curiously, leaders of cash cow organizations tend to abolish the proper management of indirect spend categories that seem to operate fine "as is."   

For those leaders and organizations that recognize that T&E spend and meetings requires policies and compliance to maintain financial controls, consider the use of the SCG C6-step© process to develop your compliance strategy:  

1.  Identify and Categorize compliance requirements:  What behavior, process, or risk do you want to monitor and manage compliance to? Are there risks that could be exposed without the compliance?  Brainstorm the risk exposure to non-compliance in the SCG© seven risk categories of strategy, reputation, operations, regulatory/legal, information technology, market position, and financial impact.  

For rest of story....navigate here:

http://www.teplus.net/2011/10/develop-a-compliance-strategy.html

With the GBTA announcement this week that the innovative, thought-leadership Groups & Meetings Committee has dissolved, I had quite a few people ask me if I would consider excerpting the Strategic Meetings Management History chapter of my book which is now available on Amazon and iTunes.  Honored to be a co-chair and participant of that genius group of leaders, I present the SMM History chapter in its entirety in the attached document.  

http://www.teplus.net/2011/10/strategic-meetings-management-the-history-by-debi-scholar.html

One paragraph excerpted follows: Kevin Iwamoto, who worked for Hewlett-Packard as Senior Global Commodity Manager and was finishing up his two-year term as President and CEO of the National Business Travel Association, noticed that travel and procurement managers had begun asking him advice on how to reduce the costs of all travel spend categories, including meetings and events. These curious leaders were becoming responsible for centralizing the travel and meeting expenses yet knew nothing about these indirect spend categories. Kevin could easily provide them with travel expertise, yet he could not find anything about meetings management. Sure, plenty of education existed on how to manage and plan meetings, but nothing about the business of meetings management. As if there were a darkened veil over far-fetched ideas during this era, he too was turned away by industry groups and associations claiming that he was delusional to even think that procurement could ever get involved in meetings management…”It’s too complicated and personal,” they claimed. With that rejection, he vowed to create a group of corporate travel and meeting experts who would create educational materials to guide travel and procurement managers in this new, unchartered territory. Approaching the NBTA Board seemed like an odd choice as NBTA was primarily devoted to business travel, yet why not expand the association’s business travel thought-leadership to include meetings management? After Kevin received support from his NBTA Board, he sought recommendations from industry friends and colleagues as to who should lead the new NBTA Committee. After much deliberation, he asked Tracey Wilt (Manager of Global Travel and Meetings Management at Xerox) and Maddy Caliri (AT&T Travel and Meetings Procurement Leader) to co-chair the new committee titled the NBTA Groups & Meetings (G&M) Committee.

Hoteliers who support their clients’ SMM initiatives win more group business and build stronger relationships. Strategic Meetings Management (SMM) is the #1 trend in the meetings industry. Simply, SMM is to meetings what Disney is to theme parks. SMM leaders expect hotels to offer high quality, consistent, flawless meetings for all business units in a controlled, compliance-driven environment with personalized attention that appears seamless to attendees, driven by the undercurrent of data consolidation. Those hotels that take the initiative in understanding and collaborating with organizations on SMM are viewed as solid contenders for inclusion in the organization’s program.

Continue reading:

http://bit.ly/r1FkKM  

Organizations are making big changes such as moving toward a new global travel management company, changing meeting management suppliers, switching meeting management technologies, etc. and this brainstorming exercise will help you prepare for that change.

Continue reading:  http://www.teplus.net/2011/07/what-is-the-cost-of-change.html

An updated T&E Plus rerun and some fun as we move into the summer travel season ....  enjoy the weekend.  

New Travel, Entertainment, and Meeting Policy  

http://www.teplus.net/2011/07/the-frugal-leaders-travel-and-meeting-policy.html

Every industry has rising stars that teach us and support their organizations with innovative meetings management initiatives.  This year, I honor and congratulate those people who have earned the 2011 Changemakers title, as identified by Corporate Meetings and Incentives!

Continue reading here: http://www.teplus.net/2011/07/congratulations-to-the-2011-changemakers.html

With a large 3,000-attendee conference only weeks away, a wise meeting planner saved time and her sanity by using meeting management technology to automate many of her tasks.  This wasn’t the first time she used the tool but it was the biggest meeting she ever planned.   Is there a difference between a) meeting planners wanting to use technology to automate their tasks and b) meeting directors wanting to use a technology to automate the meeting tasks AND manage their strategic meetings management program? ABSOLUTELY!

Continue reading: http://bit.ly/mgsayA

Dancing around in my head and transforming into usable content, my ideas gravitate into the ends of my finger, inside the Lenovo computer and onto the glaring screen.  Whether the carpet is worn or otherwise new, the bed so comfy or coffee brews, the large desk with visible plugs and without bedbugs, I eagerly enter the temporary sanctuary and anxiously await for the steady hum of my computer. With minimal noise and robust connectivity, a hotel room offers one of my favorite work environments.   It is true; I love working in a hotel room without any distractions.  A gorgeous window view feeds my creativity and keeps me moving because I know that as soon as the work is finished, I can enjoy the location.  Most recently, my work sanctuary was the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort and Spa; a perfect setting.

Continue reading: 

http://www.teplus.net/2011/03/getting-work-done-in-hotels.html

Do you consult with your clients (internal or external) before a meeting is registered into the meeting management technology?  How do you look at the whole environment (all meetings) rather than its parts (individual meetings)?   Do you obtain a forecast of your client’s meetings/events?  Learn how to be a Performance and Value Consultant and why it is important.

http://bit.ly/el4sSp