The SMM certification train has not only arrived...it’s about to pull out of the station. And if you’re not on it yet, you’d better get a ticket — fast. Because the new Strategic Meetings Management Certification (SMMC) program is about to change the meetings industry forever.
How?
For one thing, it will help to “bring onboard” senior management that has often been reluctant to approve (and sometimes, even consider) meetings…because it will help make the entire process more transparent and more bottom-line friendly. For another thing, it will help demonstrate the ROI of meetings to these 
senior executives (along with, of course, other doubting sectors). It will dissect meeting spend and, in so doing, will help contain costs. It also will make the entire industry — so tarred by the AIG effect and a debilitating recession in which the average American thinks many companies are getting away with murder — more transparent to the public, and to the media.
In addition, SMMC will address the very important area of contracts and risk-management. Today, many companies are inadvertently putting themselves at severe legal risk. In many cases, the proper legal legwork is not done, or not done thoroughly enough. And in many cases, contracts are being signed by people who are not really qualified to be signing them with suppliers. In other cases, individual events require unique supplier contracts that bring even more exposure and risk to the company.
These days, there’s just too much at stake to be signing contracts that have not been analyzed by a team with legal expertise. Furthermore, if you sign contracts that you shouldn’t be signing, you’re not only putting your company at risk, you may be jeopardizing your own career.
A Strategic Meetings Management Program (SMMP) structure will ensure that this process is undertaken in the most efficient way.
And these are just the tip of the iceberg, as far as the benefits this new strategic thinking will bring to the meetings industry. The approach will shift from a reactive to a proactive one. For companies on the receiving end of TARP funds, it will demonstrate the transparency for which the government, the public and the investment community have been clamoring. Ditto for companies affected by the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation of 2002.
What about the benefits to those who are involved in the conception, planning and production of meetings? For one thing, if the SMMC process is widely adapted — which is expected — it will eventually make the job easier. And for another, it will be one of the greatest career-advancement tools ever developed in the industry.
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SMMC Core Week 1 Participants. Seated (l to r): Lynda Garvey, Nonie Ravenberg, Amy Harris, Stacey Slifka, Diane Bozicevich, Pam Schroeder. Standing (l to r) Karen Embrey, Sherry Awbrey, Melody LaMonica, Lasse Haugaard, Peggie Milane, Laura Cella, Wendy Dell, Kari Kesler, Deborah Borak, Christine Gorham, Joanie Miskowiec, Kathy Rust, Amy Zellmer, Brian Kelliher, Jane Wolfe, Teresa Bria. Nonie Ravenberg, managing director of financial management at Nth Degree Events, based in the Atlanta area, observed, “The course was excellent. The curriculum was very detailed. And it was loaded with practical, how-to information. Core Week 1 was definitely one of the most valuable training courses I’ve ever taken. ... As a result of getting certified, I’ll be able to help my own organization implement SMMP procedures that will better align with how our customers are trying to achieve their goals.” She added, “I also hire third-party vendors on behalf of my clients. The clients will now be able to have more faith in what we’re doing…because we’ll be applying the same controls that they would.”
Photo courtesy of NBTA |
SMMC Trailblazers
In November, the National Business Travel Association (NBTA), which pioneered the body of thought around strategic meetings management, kicked off the first of two Core Weeks in the new SMMC professional development program at Emory University in Atlanta. More than 20 meetings and travel professionals attended the sold-out Core Week 1, which focused on the theory and practice of SMMP. The second Core Week will be offered next summer and will focus on areas such as technology, risk-management and trending. In addition, candidates for SMMC will need to take three electives, each one with qualified content of six hours.
The NBTA states that the curriculum “is designed to drive further development of accepted best practices, lead to creative ‘next practices’ and enhance communication and leadership skills in developing and implementing global meeting policies, workflows and technologies.”
When these candidates graduate with an SMMC, they not only will have demonstrated a proficiency in SMM, they will bring a whole new dimension to their companies and to their industry.
Lasse Haugaard flew in from Denmark for Core Week 1. He works in corporate sourcing for the 
pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, and has been tasked with implementing an SMMP.
“Obviously, it takes a lot of work to get an overview of the meetings activities in a company with more than 25,000 employees worldwide,” he said. “I’ve been finding it difficult to find people who are at the same stage as me. And this is my primary reason (for coming): to seek inspiration from NBTA.”
Amy Harris, CMP, vice president of strategic meetings management for SunTrust Banks Inc., didn’t have to travel quite as far as Haugaard. She’s based in Atlanta. But she found the same kind of inspiration.
“It’s difficult to find such a concentrated group with this skillset,” Harris said. “And sitting for Core Week 1 with strategic meetings management peers allowed me to build my network. In fact, I think that this certification is as much about collaboration with peers as it is adding letters after my name.”
Harris came away very impressed with the depth of knowledge and experience among the attendees, the quality of the instructors and the course work.
“In taking my first step toward earning the certification, I’ve seen that it’s a great opportunity to network and share best practices with some of the real leaders in our industry,” she explained. “These are people who understand strategic meetings management and have real practice in the discipline. And it was really inspiring to hear their stories of their challenges and their successes.”
Harris came back from the class with a determination to adjust her 2010 goals, to reflect the knowledge she gained there.
“I’m charged with managing a successful program that grows and changes with the needs of my company,” Harris said. “With the knowledge I gained from the course, along with the perspective I gained from speaking with so many other leaders in our industry, I’ve gained a lot of confidence in my ability to face the challenges ahead.”
Long-time NBTA member and former NBTA president and CEO Kevin Iwamoto, GLP, is vice president of enterprise strategy at StarCite, a leading global meetings technology provider for SMMP. NBTA recognized Iwamoto for his travel management leadership and advocacy by presenting him with the Industry Icon Award at the 2009 NBTA International Convention & Exposition.
When speaking on behalf of SMMP, Iwamoto always asks audiences the same rhetorical question: “Is there anyone who really wouldn’t want to consolidate all the various processes which we now go through — while at the same time saving their companies money and advancing their own careers?”
StarCite provides services such as data and documentation trails that companies need to effectively manage their event spend. The company tells its clients that developing a customized strategic program is no longer an option — in the current business environment, it’s a necessity.
Iwamoto said the companies that place a high value on managing meeting spend have a better chance of establishing effective programs than companies that don’t place as much value on procurement.
“It’s about discipline and fiscal responsibility,” he said. “And it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. To be effective, a strategic meetings program has to be structured to meet the needs of each particular company, and it should be structured with the participation of those involved in meetings in that company.”
Iwamoto said that becoming certified in strategic meetings management is not just for planners. It’s actually geared more toward executives who have enterprise ownership of the meetings program within their companies: generally a travel or meetings procurement manager, a strategic sourcing manager, a travel director or a meetings manager.
“TARP, the AIG effect and the recession have pushed us to a fork in the road,” said Iwamoto. “And it’s essential that we pick the right road.”
How It All Began
Six years ago, a group of people from the NBTA got together in a room in Philadelphia to discuss an important issue: How to help their membership respond to the increasing requests by their senior management for more effective spending controls regarding company meetings.
The territory was uncharted. And the debate was lively, even about what to call the entire concept. By the end of the day, a majority of those present had agreed on the term “Strategic Meetings Management.” And with that agreement, the seeds of NBTA’s “Framework for Success: Strategic Meetings Management 
Programs” series of white papers were sown.
Beginning in 2004, the organization’s Groups and Meetings Committee began writing and publishing these papers (available at nbta.org) to alert its membership to the need for centralized structure and reporting systems, and to spark further conversation on the topic. And most recently, NBTA formally unveiled the SMMC program…and the results of six years of hard work. The first classes took place in November.
“Today,” said Alana Joyce, senior director of global education for NBTA, “there’s a widespread realization that our approach to meetings should be strategic, rather than meeting by meeting. We now have common sets of standards, and a common vocabulary for understanding these standards. And we now have a way — for the first time — to effectively demonstrate the ROI of a company’s meetings, to senior management as well as outside observers.”
Kelly Everhart, managing partner at the Minneapolis-based consulting company Strategic Management Solutions, noted that one of the best things about SMMP is its adaptability: Meetings managers can design a customized program that addresses an individual company’s specific needs. Everhart should know. She helped build the curriculum for the certification course now being given. She will be teaching “Procurement and Risk Management” for Core Week 2.
“We need a full-enterprise view rather than a narrow one,” Everhart said. “But this will always be an evolving process. And individual companies will always have the option to enhance the program on their own terms. In fact, in order to really be effective, an SMMP must be focused on the specific objectives of the company in which it’s implemented and on that company’s specific culture. That’s one of the beauties of this new program: It offers the opportunity to create a set of customized tools specific to your own organization.”
The Nuts And Bolts
Iwamoto helped develop an SMMP at Hewlett-Packard. He was involved in the writing of a series of NBTA white papers that defined the discipline thusly:
“Strategic meetings management is not just about meeting planning and logistics. SMM is the strategic management of enterprise-wide, meeting-related processes, spend, volumes, standards and suppliers to achieve quantitative cost savings, risk mitigation and superior service. It’s about creating a strategy, policy and using technology to enable your process/program, specifically in the six areas of: registration; approval; sourcing and procurement; planning and execution; payment and expense reconciliation; and data analysis and reporting.”
“For the individual professional,” said Joyce, “this is an unprecedented opportunity to lead the way. SMM certification enhances your 
skills and your competencies. And it identifies you as a strategic thinker.”
Almost unanimously, professionals who are involved with the creation of the certification process speak about ROI when talking about the advantages to both an individual and a company. When planners can demonstrate ROI on meetings, the approval process for meetings will become less cumbersome. Plus, senior management will be convinced that meetings have tangible benefits for the company, in addition to the intangible benefits about which we’ve known for so long. A structured, strategic plan to handle a company’s meetings will demonstrate convincingly that these meetings help add value to the company — and to the company’s bottom line.
“Companies need visibility into their total meeting spend in a centralized way,” Joyce said. “Until now, different business units have all been doing things in their own ways. This certification process can be an antidote to all the misperceptions. This is prescriptive. This is the answer to all the accusations being leveled against the meetings industry: that we spend needlessly; that meetings are not in the company’s best interest; that no one’s keeping tabs on the costs; and that one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing.”
Everhart noted that the more she speaks to people in the industry about the need for centralized expertise, the more buy-in she’s getting.
“This trend offers great benefits across the whole organization,” she said.
The people who have worked to set up the SMMC process still run into occasional confusion about how it compares to Meeting Professionals International’s “CMM” certification. In reality, it’s a case of apples and oranges. The CMM is targeted toward professionals who want to be strategic about delivering events. The SMMC, on the other hand, has little to do with the actual planning and execution of events. It’s more about maximizing value and minimizing risk, by developing a standardized structure in which meetings can be conceived, planned and managed, and then deploying this structure across a company.
Kari Knoll Kesler, president and chief strategist at KK Strategic Solutions in the Twin Cities area and former global manager, Honeywell Meeting Solutions, led the development of the SMM certification program. In her writing, Kesler, an NBTA board member and cofounder of NBTA’s Groups and Meetings Committee, has helped define SMMP by revealing what SMMP is NOT: It’s not about a single planner or group of planners becoming strategic about the delivery of their meetings. It’s not about Strategic Meeting Planning & Delivery (SMPD). It’s not about meeting architecture. And it’s not about meeting procurement/sourcing.
First Steps
Like any goal worth achieving, implementing SMMP begins with a project plan. The following steps to developing an SMMP are taken from the second edition of “Building a Strategic Meetings Management Program,” the first paper in the series “Framework for Success: Strategic Meetings Management Programs” created by the NBTA Groups and Meetings Committee:
It’s About ROI
“It’s a very different skillset than for planning meetings,” said Kesler, who was one of those people gathered in that room in Philadelphia six years ago.
“The certification will help tremendously from a public-perception aspect,” Kesler said. “For years, we’ve had to trot out every creative trick we could think of to ‘sell’ meetings to everyone from corporate boards to the public. And, in many cases, there were a lot of questions that we couldn’t really answer. But now we can, because we can now align the business objectives of the meeting to the overall corporate objectives.”
Having been involved in the process since the very beginning, Kesler sees the larger picture as to the time it’s going to take to get corporate leadership onboard. There are very few experts in the field now, and it’s going to take time to develop them. In addition, she said there’s still a lack of understanding among some senior executives about the benefits of the program.
One task, she noted, is to change the perception — in this case, the corporate perception — about meetings. She said that meetings have traditionally been viewed as an expense. It’s the job of the people involved in promoting the benefits of SMMP to demonstrate to management that the program is an investment, and that companies adopting this process will eventually see increases to their bottom lines as a result.
“This is so exciting as we see it come to fruition,” Kesler added. “We’re laying the groundwork for future experts to enable every business to be best in class. And we’re seeing that the industry and the people in it really want improved structure. That’s why, in only six weeks and at considerable expense to the companies or people who attended, we got 20 people in our very first session.
“It’s still very early in the maturation process,” she said. “We’ll be refreshing the curriculum on a regular basis. And the NBTA’s Groups and Meetings Committee will continue to improve the process.”
The Train Has Left The Station
Trailblazer Amy Harris has already punched her ticket and has a seat on the SMM certification train. And she takes a lot of pride in being one of the first people in our industry to sit for the certification.
“As more and more people learn about the real-life applications of this certification,” she said, “I believe it’s going to become an indispensable tool in our profession.” I&FMM