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NBTA, MPI focus on senior management.

Article Excerpt
Senior management wants six facts when evaluating a meetings management program, most notably the amount spent on events, how much money can be saved and what it will take to achieve those savings, according to senior meeting managers at National Business Travel Association's annual International Convention and Exposition, held last month in Chicago.

Senior financial executives also need to know what the company can lose by maintaining the status quo, baseline measurements and targets and plans for change management and building compliance, said Debi Scholar, director of meeting and event services for PricewaterhouseCoopers, during an educational session at the conference.

Scholar said that travel managers can estimate meetings-related travel expenditures as 30 percent to 40 percent of overall travel and entertainment spend, and she worked to determine a few key areas of potential savings (see story, page 17). While the meetings department forecasted hard savings, soft savings (defined as intangibles such as risk mitigation that are difficult to quantify) and cost avoidance, Scholar said CFOs usually focus solely on hard-dollar savings.

Seven meetings management education sessions were offered at the conference, including the return of a two-part course for...

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