Meeting News - August 10, 2009 - (Page 6)

Meetings Spotlight By Seth Harris sharris@meetingnews.com Siemens Platform Leverages Integrated Meetings Booking, Payment Data Siemens, a multinational conThe company plans to take its glomerate, in June began deploying technology integration even furin the United States an end-to-end ther on Nov. 1, when its version of meetings management platform Meetings360 is set to integrate with that integrates its meetings payment its new Rearden Commerce online system with automated planning booking tool. and booking processes. The implementation of MeetThe new platform enables the ings360 is part of an initiative that company to consolidate its meetings began in March 2008 and involved spending data, gain full visibility garnering buy-in from the highest into its actual meeting costs and tie levels of senior leadership, tweaking the data into its budgeting and the expense systems, customizing financial modules. It also enables the tools to fit Siemens’ business meetings space deposit payments processes and policies and developand can combine meetings data ing training modules to prepare with transient travel data through various Siemens employees to prothe company’s reporting tools. cure and plan a meeting. While Siemens is not the first corWhat developed is a hybrid fullporation to use the American service and do-it-yourself meetExpress and StarCite Meetings360 ings management system called platform, it is one of the largest, with Siemens Event Management Ser$550 million in 2008 U.S. travel and vices On Demand, designed for entertainment spending and 430,000 use by Siemens meeting planners, employees, 97,600 of whom are in administrators and third-party the Americas. agencies. By Sept. 30, the end of Siemens’ Such a hybrid model offers an fiscal year, director of Siemens easy-to-use process that can delivevent management services Bobby er greater policy compliance with Badalamenti expects to have most more complete data and cost savcorporate divisions on the tool, including Siemens’ central planning group, which began training in June and now is processing meetings through the system. Siemens is using different training modules for the tool to meet the needs of its —Steven Schoen, Siemens’ director of travel and event management services different types of users. The implementation will allow Siemens to develop a ings, according to Badalamenti. more concrete idea of its combined “If you are outsourcing to a third travel and meetings volumes—a party who is using this platform and feat relatively unattainable before we’re doing all of the hard work on the implementation of the end-to- the front end, that minimizes the end platform. work you would give to a third party, and you could do it yourself,” she said. The project team also had to bring the expense systems on board with Meetings360. To do that, they had to work with the finance and budget. A director could plan a meeting and think he is able to lock it up for $10,000, but he doesn’t know that when all is said and done with the travel costs, he actually spent $20,000.” The internal lobbying efforts proved successful, as the project was approved by Siemens’ strategic governance board as part of a larger supply chain management initiative in North America. Then, the project team undertook a consistent communications and branding effort to bring the rest of the employees on board. “We learned from a compliance and a branding perspective that we can preload the tool with a Siemensbranded template,” according to Badalamenti. The company built its own portal with access to the booking tool, industry information, policies, internal and virtual meeting options and libraries of forms and templates. Meetings360 also will live as a portal on the Rearden Commerce online procurement platform, where profiles from the meetings tool will be linked into both systems. Siemens, which is made up of five operating units with their own management, business processes and cultures, had StarCite further customize the tool to fit with each unit’s ways of doing business. The customization included building in various control functions so reports and data could be designated to the appropriate people across the company. “It is built is for compliance and to mitigate risk,” Badalamenti said. “You do that by giving control to the operating company or division as it conforms to their policies.” r www.meetingnews.com Bobby Badalamenti accounting business lines within Siemens’ shared services operations to correctly code the meetings card payment processes so such charges could be identified on the back end as separate from individual corporate and purchasing cards. When travel and meetings operated separately, such travel expenses as airfare and lodging went to an individual’s corporate card and would not be recognized as part of a meeting expenditure. Combining that was a key tenet the mobility services team used to gain buy-in for the project. “That has been our mantra,” said director of travel and event management services Steven Schoen. “We’re able to point out to our associates and internal customers that to a great degree they don’t really track the full cost of a meeting. They only track what is centrally billed and comes out of their director could plan “aAmeeting he thinks costs $10,000 that with all travel costs actually could cost $20,000. ” 6 MeetingNews August 10, 2009 http://www.meetingnews.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - August 10, 2009

Meeting News - August 10, 2009
Contents
Meetings Spotlight
MeetingNews Research
Meeting People
Construction Cites
Travel Dashboard
West Regional

Meeting News - August 10, 2009