“It was the worst of times, it was the best of times.” This flip-flopped version of that classic line from Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities aptly describes the meetings industry in 2009. After all, the year kicked off in the worst possible way — especially insofar as budget cuts and perception issues, and the year ended with mild improvement and high hopes for the best of times (or at least better times). Indeed, some industry leaders predict that the hard lessons learned during these worst of times will bring about a leaner, meaner meetings industry, one with reordered priorities.

Companies reconfirmed that face-to-face meetings are necessary for business success, and that a better handle on the meeting process and meeting spend was vital. Thus, the practice of strategic meetings management (SMM) jumped to the top of the to-do list. Moreover, meeting planners who want to stay in the game must broaden their professional horizons by embracing the concept and achieving SMM expertise and certification.

Timing Is Everything

Fortunately, the National Business Travel Association (NBTA), the organization that pioneered the body of thought around SMM in 2004, recently launched its new Strategic Meetings Management Certification (SMMC) professional development program. In November, more than 20 meeting and travel professionals attended the sold-out Core Week 1 event at Emory University in Atlanta, which focused on the theory and practice of SMM.

Craig Banikowski, CCTE, C.P.M., CMM, NBTA president and CEO, said that as soon as the new course was announced early in the fall, people from around the world contacted them for additional information. “The SMMP concept has garnered such a positive response over the years, it is no surprise that the program’s first core week sold out and has already received rave reviews,” he said.

To earn the SMMC designation, enrollees must complete the educational program, which consists of two core weeks and three elective classes. According to the NBTA, the curriculum is designed to drive further development of accepted best practices and “next-practices,” as well as the further communication and enhancement of leadership skills in developing and implementing global meeting policies, workflows and technologies.

The first class of SMMC professionals is expected to graduate in August at the NBTA International Convention and Exposition in Houston.

Good times or bad, SMM couldn’t happen at a better time. In fact, as Kari Knoll Kesler, one of the prominent figures in the SMM evolution, noted in a recent interview, the slow economy and a shaken public perception of corporate meetings have “acted like a turbo injection to the maturation of the SMM discipline.”

Let’s meet four of the movers and shakers, the VIPs of SMM who helped shape and guide the discipline of strategic meetings management.

Kari Knoll Kesler President and Chief Strategist KK Strategic Solutions Savage, MN

Kari Knoll Kesler has been involved from day one in the SMM movement. She just completed a three-year term on the NBTA’s board of directors, where she spearheaded “a cross-function team of industry icons in the development of the Strategic Meetings Management certification program.”

Kesler, who now heads KK Strategic Solutions as its president and chief strategist, has accumulated more than 18 years experience in strategic meetings, travel and sourcing. Today, she supports creative strategies for companies who endeavor to drive innovative solutions in the meetings, travel and sourcing space.

In an ironic twist, Kesler is perhaps, the most talented non-meeting planner in the meetings planning industry. “As luck would have it, I may be the only person in the industry to have developed and deployed strategic meetings management programs three times over — not by design, but rather by accident.”

So, who is Kari Kesler and what is it, exactly, that she’s so darned good at? Kesler, who holds an undergraduate degree in marketing, landed her first “real” job at a small hotel company where she spent several years earning a paycheck and pursuing two MBAs: one in marketing and the other in international management. In 1996, she managed Xerox’s Global Hotel Program, and was responsible for consolidating their meeting spend and activity — her strategic meetings management debut.

Next, Kesler accepted a position with a software company that provides revenue management software for hotels; and then joined ING’s corporate travel procurement department. Fortuitously, her professional career path lead her to SMMP once more: “While there (at ING), I was asked to assist my CPO’s former colleague at Aetna by helping her put together a meetings management program for her company. Some time after completion of that project, that colleague then went to work for Honeywell and asked me, once again, to help her do the same for Honeywell,” explained Kesler. “Then, she hired me to work with them.”

It wasn’t long before the well-educated marketer started thinking that if so many people were asking her to share her knowledge about strategic meetings management programs, then why not offer formal consulting services based around SMM for pay? Thus, KK Strategic Solutions was hatched.

“SMM is about the business of managing all meetings from a strategic, enterprise-wide perspective focused on alignment with business values and objectives, progressive procurement principles and repeatable processes in control,” Kesler said.

Now, through the efforts of the NBTA, the nonprofit group Kesler has been heavily committed to for most of her professional life, and thanks to the former executive director, Bill Connors, a certification program has been designed and implemented for people who want to become meetings management strategists.

Kesler is thrilled to witness the fulfillment of the SMM field of study in such a short time: “This is so exciting as we see it come to fruition,” Kesler said. “We’re laying the groundwork for future experts to enable every business to be best in class. 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.

“We expect that over the next five years, everything in the industry will continue to morph and change from what we once knew, and we need to be prepared as the SMM discipline continues to mature,” she added.

Given the state of the global economy, Kesler believes the time is ripe for companies to have an SMMP in place as all the questions senior executives are now asking about meeting spend and tracking spend cannot be answered without one.

Kesler’s best advice for meeting professionals: “Get certified! SMM is the only best way to ensure your company has the infrastructure in place to continuously manage business and regulatory requirements across all of your meetings and events. So, if a meeting professional wants to make sure they are ‘in the know’ on all the aspects of professional meeting management, they must understand and embrace SMM.”

Debi Scholar, GLP, CMM, CMP, CTE, CTT Assurance Director PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Florham Park, NJ

Why is SMMP so important today for meeting professionals, the organizations they serve and the meetings industry as a whole? According to Debi Scholar, a sought-after industry expert on strategic meetings management and virtual meetings, too many organizations tend to focus on how to reduce travel and entertainment costs but that few leaders realize meetings are often not part of T&E, “although they are part of indirect spend.”

Furthermore, she said, “Because they are so decentralized in most organizations, the leaders are not aware of the volume or risk. Often, meeting planners are hesitant for someone to help them uncover meeting spend because they believe it may lead to centralization or outsourcing.”

As PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) assurance director in hospitality and leisure who consults with clients on travel and entertainment expenses, strategic meetings management, cost reduction and virtual meetings, Scholar has more than 12 years of experience in the industry and currently consults with Fortune 1000 companies on a variety of expense management categories such as airlines, hotels, meetings, ground transportation, corporate card programs, travel management companies and entertainment assets such as country club memberships, venue suites, boxes and tickets. She has also led numerous projects for global organizations, entertainment venues and government agencies. She has a unique advantage as a consultant because she started as a practitioner by leading PricewaterhouseCoopers’ internal group travel and meetings departments.

More than that, Scholar is acknowledged nationally for several groundbreaking efforts in shaping the strategic meetings and events industry, and linking travel and meetings teams. For example, several years ago, her former PwC meetings team collaborated with a major meetings technology company and helped it define the technology processes used to manage meetings and events. This same team provided input to create the industry’s first “meeting card” some years ago.

Often referred to as a pioneer in the face-to-face and virtual meetings industry, using virtual technologies beginning in 1998 to connect distant training participants, Scholar was the first meeting director to include virtual meetings under her direction back in 2002 and, since, has become a leading expert in how to “effectively drive virtual meeting adoption to reduce travel costs, as well as complement or reduce face-to-face meetings,” she said.

Scholar was the co-chair of the NBTA Groups & Meetings Committee for four years and currently participates on the NBTA Foundation Board of Trustees and an industry magazine editorial advisory board. She has been featured in numerous industry articles and was the highest rated speaker for two consecutive years at the Strategic Meetings Management Forum. She continues to be a requested speaker at numerous conferences, conventions and events globally.

Scholar was employed by West­inghouse Electric and Dean Witter, and also had her own company for three years. Her professional designations include: Global Leadership Professional (GLP), developed by the NBTA Foundation and The Wharton School; the Meeting Professionals International’s Certificate in Meetings Management (CMM); the Convention Industry Council’s Certified Meet­ing Professional (CMP); the NBTA’s Corpo­rate Travel Expert (CTE); and the Chauncey Group’s Certified Technical Trainer (CTT). She is also a PwC Six Sigma Green Belt.

When queried how SMM is different from meeting planning management and why the two should not be confused, Scholar said, “Strategic Meetings Management is a disciplined approach to managing enterprise-wide meeting and event activities, processes, suppliers and data in order to achieve measurable business objectives aligned with the organization’s strategic goals and vision, and deliver value in the form of quantitative savings, risk mitigation and service quality. It is a multiyear strategy customized to the corporate culture that is often led by a meeting, travel or procurement leader, or a meetings council made up of the key stakeholders. Whereas, Strategic Meeting Planning Delivery (SMPD) is an approach for one or more meeting planners to manage and implement their meetings using a service delivery model that best aligns with their meeting sponsors’ requirements. The two should not be confused, although both are needed in an organization.”

That said, does Scholar think the current economic situation might slow down the pace of the strategic meetings management movement? She observed that, although large meeting volume has been reduced, many leaders are increasing the number of small meetings they are having at the local level. Consequently, some of these organizations do not believe that SMM is necessary to their corporate needs. “In contrast, with an increasing number of ad-hoc planners involved with small meetings,” she continued, “the risk and spend become opaque to leaders without a SMM in place.” Best advice? “Show the leaders the ‘size of the prize’ by uncovering all of the meeting spend and providing the leaders with a cost reduction and risk mitigation business case,” she concluded. “For instance, after we perform an AP and T&E corporate card spend analysis, CFOs and CPOs understand that an SMMP is needed and have been very receptive.”

Tracey Wilt Manager/Global Travel & Meetings Management Xerox Corporation Webster, NY

Tracey Wilt is responsible for a $130 million global travel and entertainment budget for Xerox Corporation, and deploys strategies to reduce the company’s travel spend with conferencing alternatives and virtual meetings.

With nearly 20 years of experience in the travel trade industry, Wilt previously held travel management positions with such corporate icons as Lucent Technologies and Carlson Wagonlit Travel.

Armed with a Bachelor of Science degree in Travel Management/Business Administration from the Rochester Institute of Technology, she originally started her career, however, as an intern with Xerox Travel Services division, left to pursue other professional endeavors and then rejoined the company in 1999.

Wilt has shared her expertise as a volunteer for the NBTA for more than nine years. She served as co-chair of the Hotel Committee; was the founding co-chair of NBTA’s Groups and Meetings Committee; and currently serves on the Strategic Meetings Management Certification Task Force. In addition, she served on the NBTA Board of Directors from 2004–2007 and was recognized by various industry publications as a leading force in the meetings industry.

Like her other colleagues, Wilt explained that SMM is more about the business of managing all meetings within a firm or organization “from a strategic, enterprise-wide perspective focused on alignment with business values and objectives, progressive procurement principles and repeatable processes in control. “It’s about building standard processes for all meetings to follow, allowing for full visibility to spend and approvals, while mitigating company risk (contracting and crisis management),” she said. “It’s the overall strategic approach to managing meetings and events within a company as compared to the successful execution of one meeting or event at a time. Both are important but both are very different in how they are managed within the company.”

In reviewing the task force’s accomplishments to date, Wilt is proud that the committee has developed and successfully launched the first core week. “It’s just amazing to see this evolve in five short years from a simple white paper on what is strategic meetings management, to a full-blown certification program and career path within the industry”.

As Wilt observed, strategic meetings management is the best way to ensure a corporation has the infrastructure in place to continuously manage all business and regulatory requirements across all of its meetings and events on an annual basis. Her best advice to interested parties is, “Build a strong business case for your SMMP whether you are in the beginning phase of deploying or in a more mature phase of globalizing your program. Use a phased approach — you will never be successful trying to accomplish all your goals at once,” said Wilt. “Stakeholder management is extremely important along with communications around program success. Take it one step at a time and continually look for process and productivity improvements.”

Kevin Iwamoto, GLP Vice President Of Enterprise Strategy StarCite Inc. Philadelphia, PA

On November 5, 2009 Kevin Iwamoto declared in his StarCite blog space, “pretty special in my books.” He was commenting on the first-ever Core Week 1 of the Strategic Meetings Management Certification program that was taking place November 2–6 at Emory University.

Iwamoto, who played an instrumental role in creating NBTA’s SMMC program, said that even though he wasn’t there to share in the chills and thrills of it all, he was proud of the hard work he put in to achieve the goal, starting with the formation of the NBTA Groups & Meetings Committee in 2001; and more than proud to witness the hard work of his astute colleagues pay off. In the November 5 blog he added: “My friend and a true SMM pioneer, Kari Knoll Kesler is busy teaching (the program). But, we’ve managed to keep in touch via e-mail this week, and I’ll share a line that I think best describes her excitement: ‘You would be amazed if you were here — it almost brings me to tears how cool this is — 20 brilliant industry pioneers.’?Wish I could be a fly on the wall,” Iwamoto blogged.

Before StarCite, Iwamoto was a key manager in the Hewlett-Packard Global Travel & Meetings Team. Iwamoto also held positions at Northwest Airlines and The Walt Disney Company.

Iwamoto, a former president and CEO of NBTA, noted that the SMMC is the first of its kind and is especially designed to educate meetings managers and other interested professionals on all aspects of SMM.

Iwamoto, who is one of six recipients of NBTA’s Industry Icon Award, said one of his primary activities at StarCite, is to “evangelize the necessity for corporations to embrace the SMMP concept and deploy it worldwide, as well as maximize their cost savings and mitigate risk.” (StarCite is a provider of Web-based solutions that help buyers and suppliers strategically manage corporate meeting and events.)

Iwamoto works diligently with “key influencers across industries to raise awareness of the benefits of strategic meetings management in the marketplace.” As a key figure in the SMMP evolution, the reception to the industrious program to date, he reported, has been overwhelmingly favorable and that, with the recent TARP guidelines and global recession, companies are now finally feeling the heat to manage their meetings and events spend, not because they want to but, rather, because they have to.

When asked if the economy or public perception in any way affected the pace of the SMM movement within the industry, Iwamoto indicated a strong affirmative. “Absolutely. Many companies are realizing that SMM is not a luxury, it’s a must-have. It is the only way that you can evaluate your program strategically and achieve greater efficiencies and cost savings rather than simply cutting valuable meetings that are critical to your business’ success.

“With strategic meetings management, planners can prove to corporate management the value of its meetings programs,” he added. “It raises the profile of meetings programs to the C-suite and helps you prove your value to the organization as a significant stakeholder in supporting the company’s efforts in marketing, sales and human resource development, as well as growth and financial stability.”

To interested parties, all this does not come easy. To facilitate the process, it is imperative for corporate executives and managers to build the case for SMMP within their firms and, as Iwamoto advised, “garner the necessary executive support to make it happen. Companies that do not have an SMMP in place are at a severe disadvantage against their competitors,” concluded Iwamoto.    C&IT