Meeting News - April 12, 2010 - (Page 4)

News By Seth Harris Reporter’s Notebook: MPI Puts Focus On Business Acumen MANY CORPORATE MEETING BUYERS NOW ARE REQUIRED to show return on investment metrics, provide business cases before booking a meeting, leverage procurement departments within their organizations and apply strategic meetings management practices, independent planner Terri Breining stressed the importance for planners to move to a business-oriented strategy during an educational session on calculating and communicating meetings return on investment. “This is business,” she said,“it’s not meeting-planning lingo. This is business and this is the language that we need to speak.” Some speakers addressed how their organizations’ meetings teams are adapting to these new environments and how they are embracing working with procurement instead of shunning their influence. Deloitte is training planners to become “procurement specialists,” according to MPI Foundation chairwoman and Deloitte director Margaret Moynihan, who oversees the company’s meetings. Investors Group Financial Services’ procurement department has helped the company’s meetings team build more efficient processes and develop business cases for meetings,according to Angie Pfeifer, assistant vice president of corporate meetings,incentives and travel at the Winnipeg-based company. “They still value what you bring to the table as meeting professionals,” she said.“We need to put some input into this. It’s not all about the numbers.” The meetings team’s success came ings,with results to be released at the Americas Incentive, Business Travel & Meetings Exhibition as part of Americas Meetings Week in Baltimore in June 2011, said MPI president and CEO Bruce MacMillan. The agreement also will drive the development of educational content focused on the business of meetings for other Reed events in Barcelona, Abu Dhabi and Beijing. “If you want your ideas acted on, you have to have a business case for it,” MacMillan told MeetingNews. “We are really pushing the whole language-of business initiative because that is where this is all going. It’s got to drive performance.” MPI also plans to expand its university partnership initiative and develop an executive leadership program for senior management, according to Eli Gorin, president of GMeetings and founder of Train2Meet. * * * InterContinental Hotels Group announced a five-year, $500,000 donation to the MPI Foundation to fund research and development of standards, educational content focused on corporate social responsibility and tools to help evaluate meeting program performance. The foundation said it would build a “sustainable meeting and event training program and a recognized CSR meeting and event measurement platform.” “Corporate social responsibility is continued on page 31 “They still value what you bring to the table as meeting professionals. It’s not all about the numbers. —Investors Group’s Angie Pfeifer ” Terri Breining according to panelists and attendees at Meeting Professionals International’s MeetDifferent conference in February in Cancun, Mexico. Former MPI chairwoman and Contents No. 4 April 12, 2010 Vol. 34, s Meeting Post . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 s Newsmaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 s Meetings Spotlight . . . . . . . 12 s Viewpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 s MeetingNews Research . . . . 16 s Event Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 s Association Watch . . . . . . . 20 s Meeting People . . . . . . . . . . 22 s Construction Cites . . . . . . . 24 s Theme Parks . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 s MeetingNews Roundtable . . 28 s Conv. Center Showcase . . . 35 from providing management with a clear financial picture of the benefits the company was gaining from holding meetings and not drastically cutting events during the economic downturn, she said.“We have done a really good job of defining how we move the business forward,” Pfeifer said. “That directly goes down to the bottom line.” * * * MPI announced new research initiatives, educational formats and efforts to standardize meetings-related business performance metrics. Reed Travel Exhibitions and the MPI Foundation announced a research partnership to develop a report and standards on measuring the business performance of meet- MEETING NEWS (ISSN 0145-630X, USPS No.356-010, April 12, 2010, Vol. 34, No. 4 is published monthly by Northstar Travel Media, LLC, 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003-9595, tel. 646-654-5000. Subscriptions are offered free of charge to individuals actively engaged in planning meetings or conventions in the U.S. and Canada. 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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - April 12, 2010

Meeting News - April 12, 2010
Contents
Meeting Post
Newsmaker
Meetings Spotlight
Viewpoint
MeetingNews Research
Event Profile
Association Watch
Meeting People
Construction Cites
Theme Parks
MeetingNews Roundtable
Conv. Center Showcase

Meeting News - April 12, 2010