Will SMM Kill Off Events Planning?
November 13, 2009
You may have seen that NBTA (National Business Travel Association) launched its Strategic Meetings Management Certification course this month at Emory University, in Atlanta.
The course targets corporate travel, meetings and/or procurement professionals and suppliers who work in a strategic meetings function.
More than a decade ago, Meeting Professionals International launched their CMM (Certification in Meeting Management) program, to promote a strategic approach to meetings management, and more than 500 meeting professionals have taken advantage of the in-depth learning offered.
‘Strategic Meetings Management’ (SMM) is the fancy name for the process of developing policies and procedures to ensure that enterprise-wide meetings and events are managed properly, to achieve corporate objectives.
This is not the same as meetings consolidation, which concentrates the planning and execution of events into a small team, to provide consistency of delivery.
SMM’s focus allows for event planning to be distributed throughout an organization, to ensure all events are properly planned and approved to maximize return on investment and support the corporate brand.
However, it is interesting that the push to control the enterprise-wide meetings process comes from the procurement or travel-management professionals, who are more focused on controlling budgets and maximizing the return on investment – as opposed to the planners, whose value to their organization is often difficult to articulate.
As SMM spreads, the event professional who is focused only on event strategy and logistics could very well be threatened with extinction.
If the planners cannot demonstrate that their events meet strict measurement objectives, they will increasingly find that they will be circumvented by others, who understand the strategic approach that is required in all forms of marketing. Once all policies and procedures are defined and instituted, corporations will question the value of a meetings expert for small or internal events.
For years, event professionals have said they wanted “a seat at the management table.”
Are you ready to talk the language of the people already sitting there? Or are you going to hope to keep focused on logistics and last long enough to retire?
Please feel free to submit any comments (agreeing, disagreeing or furthering the conversation) to the M&IT blog by using the Leave Comment link below.
If these articles stimulate the kind of conversation we all want, to elevate our professionalism, I look forward to featuring some of your comments in future blogs.
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2 Responses to “Will SMM Kill Off Events Planning?”
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February 25th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Les, wonderful explanation of the significance of SMM and great comment Susan
I spent many years on the client side, in management for a multi-national corporation, working with internal and external planners. The perception of most of my colleagues was that the internal planners had the fun job. They got to create lavish events, go on perq-filled site visits and didn’t have to worry about hitting revenue targets. External planners were taken more seriously as they had to justify their hiring and were more business like in their approach.
Executives are numbers orientated and event planners have to speak their language in order to be taken seriously. They need to be part of the business planning as well as the event planning process within their company. Courses in writing business planning documents and understanding the business side of corporations should be widely available for meeting planners. Imagine if every corporate planning department had a business plan that detailed how they were contributing to strategy & goals and producing revenue for the company. (I know, many do!) Management would know in terms they understand how meetings and events are contributing to their targets and growth of the business.
February 5th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Great blog post Les. Thanks for sharing.
I believe we need to start with the question WHY. Why do professional planners not have a seat at the table? Why do organizations hold meetings and events? Why are meetings and events, more often than not, viewed by c-suites as having no strategic business value?
I also believe, in its present model, SMM is ‘meeting consolidation’. And here’s why I think that. SMM core focus is on meeting and event efficiency (cost) and speaks to the what and how we do things instead of the why we do them. As you articulated so well in your post, there has been much discussion on the effectiveness (strategic value-why) and efficiency (cost containment-what & how) of meetings and events for a number of years now.
Piggy backing on your comments, I believe c-suite’s perception is that meetings and events are a cost centre and fall simply within the realm of travel. Even though, in many cases, a meeting or event is a marketing or communication initiative, the same way an advertisement or promotion is, and travel is just the means to attend the meeting or event. The Achilles’ heel in many Fortune 1000 companies is their failure to adequately measure meeting and event effectiveness. You mentioned the gap between the Professional Planner and the c-suite or business owner/sponsor. One reason for this is the c-suite doesn’t view meetings and events as being relevant to their vision, strategy and goals. Therefore the Professional Planner is often missing from sales, marketing and leadership discussions.
Meetings and events are marketing and communication-driven and every meeting and event, regardless of audience, includes all the essential marketing and communication ingredients: messaging, branding and visibility. This is why meetings and events should be aligned with marketing or communications and not with procurement. The practice of using meetings and events as ‘the’ business solution to help organizations reduce their operating costs is harmful to the Professional Planner and the Meeting & Event Industry.
Procurement does have a part to play specific to contractual needs and issues. But its role is not to make decisions on corporate brand or the best way for leadership to unleash its people potential. These decisions should not be based on what’s the most cost efficient solution, but rather answer the question why the solution can improve organizational performance and profitability.
I believe there is no one more qualified to answer the WHY of meetings and events for the c-suite then the Professional Planner.