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What does your organisation spend on meetings?

19 Jan 2010

Source: SupplyManagement.com, 18 January 2010

Most businesses grossly underestimate what they spend on meetings and conferences, Amon Cohen has found, writing in the latest issue of SM.

In a special issue exploring business travel trends for 2010 out this week (21 January), Cohen, a business travel writer, discovered that inadequate processes and tools meant most organisations had no clue how much they spent in this area.

He suggested buyers made the case to bosses for a strategic meetings plan to capture and measure spend, improve negotiation power and reduce cost and risk.

Securing buy-in is tough, but a white paper from StarCite, a provider of meetings management technology, put forward that the answer was to demonstrate how the programme would nail key strategic targets for the business, such as cost reduction. It said the plan should include why there was a need for a meetings programme, as well as likely short-term and long-term costs, plus expected benefits and an implementation strategy.

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