The Next Big Thing: Self-Served, Centralized Meeting Management

Anyone who’s ever been tasked with coordinating a group meeting knows how challenging it can be. You have to find the right venues, set up dinners and events, keep track of attendee dietary restrictions and shirt sizes, on top of making sure that everyone involved knows where they have to be, when they have to be there, and how they’re going to get there.

All of a sudden, coordinating a seemingly simple departmental meeting is taking up a big chunk of time.  

But, coping with logistical complexity is just one part of the challenge. Although meeting costs make up, on average, 41% of most organizations’ T&E budgets, those expenditures are typically spread out among different systems, cost centers, and spreadsheets. So, there’s no real visibility into total meeting costs, much less enough spend data to measure meeting ROI.

Was the meeting over budget? Were the costs in compliance? Did we negotiate the best possible rates? For most organizations, the answer is, “We don’t know.”

A smarter approach to meeting management

Susan Isaacson, Principal Solutions Consultant for SAP Concur, recently sat down with Alisa de Gaspe Beaubien, CEO and COO of Groupize on the SAP Concur Conversations podcast, to discuss the logistical, budgetary and compliance challenges of traditional meeting management — and how Concur Event Management by Groupize can help solve them all.

You can listen to this episode on Apple | Amazon | Spotify | Listen Notes | Acast | Google or read the transcript.

“Concur Event Management democratizes individual meeting planning and management, and gives companies the opportunity to seamlessly bundle this spend management into their core solution,” de Gaspe Beaubien, CEO and COO of Groupize, explained. 

Anyone at the company who is coordinating a meeting can log into the solution and be guided through the planning process, step by step.

“Just as Concur Travel has rules, Concur Event Management has rules that add controls and ensure compliance,” de Gaspe Beaubien explained. “Users log in, and the solution walks them through the entire logistical process, from setting a date and a venue-on, with customizable rules that identify what that user can do on their own, and when additional approvals are needed.”

In many ways, Concur Event Management brings the same self-service ease to meeting planning that Concur Travel brings to travel booking, with the safety net of automated rules and oversight to mitigate risk.  

“You can login to the solution, select the date and city where you want to have the meeting, the number of attendees, and the number of nights you’ll need hotel rooms. Then, enter the must-haves for the meeting venue—catered breakfasts and lunches, A/V equipment, whatever requirements you need,” de Gaspe Beaubien said. “What Concur Event Management does is allow you to shop all venues at your specific location that fit your meeting criteria at one time, instead of going from hotel site to hotel site to make your choice.”

You simply select which venues you want to get bids from, and the solution sends these requests directly to those hotels.  When responses comes in, it takes that information and uses it to populate a spreadsheet for review and selection.

In short, Concur Event Management does all of the legwork for you and helps you plan the meeting from start to finish.  

The COVID connection

The solution can also help organizers and meeting planners cope with the realities of in-person meetings in a world of “not-quite-done-with-COVID.”

“You can add safety protocols to your hotel vetting process,” de Gaspe Beaubien said. “You can also use the tool’s registration function to enable your attendees upload a vaccination card, along with their other information, like emergency contact and dietary preferences.”

This capability helps you improve the attendee experience by eliminating long vaccine card check-in lines and also helps keep attendees safe by minimizing exposure. It also gives you an auditable record of attendee vaccination status, as well as  reports that can be used for contact tracing, in case this is needed after the meeting’s over. 

If circumstances change, and you need to pivot, the solution makes this easier, too.

“Concur Event Management allows a person, or an entire event, to be shifted to virtual with the click of a button,” de Gaspe Beaubien said. “That’s a unique feature in this tool. You don’t have to start over, like you do with other meeting planning tools.”

A true picture of meeting costs

In addition to simplifying logistics, having an all-in-one meeting management solution is critical to monitoring and controlling costs.

“The tool enables attendees to automate expenses associated with travel, and enables organizations to track costs from initial budget, to negotiated budget, to final budget, for a true picture of costs,” de Gaspe Beaubien said. “It also allows you to report on individual meetings as well as look at your entire meeting program, so you have the visibility you need to improve cost control.”

Dashboards make it easy to track cross-event spend, logistics reports and attendee metrics, so companies can really assess the ROI of their various meetings. That enables leaders to create a game plan for the future, assess the value of in-person meetings versus virtual gatherings, and make more informed decisions going forward.

In today’s world, companies can no longer manage meetings and meeting costs via spreadsheet. Concur Event Management provides the compliance, oversight and controls organizations need to keep their people safe, reduce costs and improve the experience for everyone involved.

For more information on Concur Event Management by Groupize, click here.

To listen to the SAP Concur Conversations podcast, click here.