Meeting News - October 19, 2009 - (Page 16)

Meetings Spotlight Amgen Advances, Standardizes Meetings Reporting Technology tomizing the reports to Amgen’s Led by director of global meet- liking took some work, she said. ings management Marybeth “They kept telling us, we have all Roberts, pharma giant Amgen has this great reporting, but what we pushed tech vendor StarCite to really found was we were getting a reconfigure its systems to accom- data dump from them, so we realmodate conventions data, stan- ly took time to reconfigure the dardize input across business system the way we wanted it conunits and enhance reporting on figured,” Roberts said, adding, “I the company’s group spending. In addition to bolstering StarCite functionality and winning favor with Amgen’s senior management for adjusting the sharpness of its meetings picture, Roberts now is beginning to leverage that data for group hotel deals. Initially responsible for the sales and marketing meetings program, Roberts’ role expanded to include meetings for the entire corporation. Building on a program that gained momentum under predecessor Betsy Amgen’s Marybeth Roberts Bondurant and director of strategic sourcing and procurement Lynn thought the reporting that we had Ridzon, Roberts began expanding should really be standard in the the program to other divisions and industry, and apparently not a lot consolidating disparate suppliers, of people have it.” which led to the rollout of StarCite What Roberts wanted was 360as its primary source of data. degree view of the company’s “The most important thing was group spending, whether for a getting the technology in place convention or a meeting,“by busiand the robust reporting,” Roberts ness unit, by Amgen location, by said. However, tweaking the brand, by sponsor, by city, by StarCite offering, which the com- hotel,” Roberts said. “We’re able to pany has been using officially get the data we need now” after a since September 2008, and cus- number of tweaks. By Jay Boehmer Roberts guided StarCite in developing a way to capture convention activity. “Some of our roughly 120 annual conventions have people from the U.S. and people from Amgen Europe, so we have a lot of activity going on. At some, we might have 100 ancillary meetings and a huge booth and all of these people coming in. Before StarCite, we had all these different systems collecting the data, so no one could get the data in one place. We initially went to StarCite saying we were going to consoli- date meeting data in their system, but then we found that if we tweaked it here and there, we’d be able to get convention data.” The adjustments gave Amgen some of the most robust group reporting in the industry, Roberts said. “The first time I was called into a meeting with management,” Roberts said, “they didn’t realize I had this reporting. Our finance person said we need all of this data, and I pulled out my report and said, this is all of our spending, and he was absolutely Venue Change, Low-Tech Marketing Boost Annual Promo Product Event By Seth Harris The Promotional Products Association International in the past several years has significantly increased attendance and exhibitors at its annual exposition by changing cities, upgrading its technology tools and reversing 2003 moved to Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino from Dallas, its previous home of 27 years. The move generated an attendance increase of 35 percent from 2002 numbers. Exhibitor numbers peaked in 2007 at 3,920 booths. The last Dallas expo had of a location “The advantageyears setthat you for consecutive is don’t have to sell the site or city. We are diligent, though, in making sure there is an upgrade or added element every year. —Darel Cook, PPAI director of expositions and meetings ” course on its event marketing to a more old-fashioned method. The three-day PPAI Expo, which is held every January, in less than 3,400 booths. “The show was suffering somewhat, being left in Dallas, so it was hard to generate some new excitewww.meetingnews.com 16 MeetingNews October 19, 2009 http://www.meetingnews.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - October 19, 2009

Meeting News - October 19, 2009
Contents
Meeting Post
Meetings Spotlight
Event Profile
Construction Cites
Meeting People
Association Watch
VantagePoint
Gaming Destinations
Dateline: Florida
South Regional
Dateline: Guadalajara
Travel Dashboard

Meeting News - October 19, 2009