June 2009 - When Daiichi Sankyo consolidated travel in 2004, the finance director noticed an interesting trend: "The majority of travel was centered [on] travel to meetings." By November 2006, the New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company hired Karen Vander Ploeg to centralize meetings and leverage the combined spend.
Vander Ploeg first had to build the case for a strategic meetings management program. Daiichi Sankyo had no meetings policy or data on meetings spend, as employees throughout the company planned internal and external meetings. Vander Ploeg searched accounts payable data and "thought we were going to have about 200 meetings when we centralized. At the end of year one, we were at 370 to 380 meetings," said Vander Ploeg, now senior manager of travel and meetings.
To garner buy-in for the SMMP, Vander Ploeg pulled together an internal task force of meeting stakeholders whose events were "near and dear to their hearts." The planners developed operating procedures and drafted requests for proposals to third-party meetings management vendors, and were involved in the "weighting and rat- ing" of bidders in the RFP process.
In March 2008, Daiichi Sankyo debuted its meetings department with three internal planners and support staff, supplemented by external planners, managers and sourcing experts from two third-party meeting planning companies, one with dedicated staff and another that assists in sales meetings and internal meetings with more than 50 attendees.
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Organization:
Daiichi Sankyo, Parsippany, N.J.-based, wholly owned subsidiary of Japan's third-largest drug maker, 110-year-old, Tokyo-based Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd. |
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Volume:
$31 million in meetings expenditures from March 2008 to April 2009 and approximately 370 events |
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Challenge:
Provide high-touch service to attendees while leveraging group travel spend with preferred transient providers, increase air compliance, manage meetings-related travel data and minimize exposure to unused tickets |
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Approach:
Create an internal task force to ensure buy-in from planners and outsource logistical tasks to third-party vendors |
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Solution:
Formed one internal department to manage both meetings and transient travel that blends traditional call-in service with online booking tools |
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The travel and meetings department plans and manages all "commercial," internal and physician meetings, and is "making inroads" on meetings planned by the research and development side.
The three internal meeting planners now work more in an advisory role than a logistical one. "They aren't doing the menu selection; they're now working closely with the buyers in the negotiations and selection process," Vander Ploeg said. "They're also trying to forecast [for] the next year.
"We learned that our external meetings with physicians really drove how we were going to support the travel side," she added. "We tried doing it with an offsite location, but it really didn't work well." Instead, Daiichi Sankyo implanted an onsite travel agency to support client meetings, as well as executive and international travel. The solution provides the "white-glove" approach attendees expect and the consolidated reporting the company needs for leverage with preferred providers.
"Travel and meetings were engaged in February 2008, married in December," when Vander Ploeg implemented the onsite. Results thus far include "accurate arrival/departure reports for both online and traditional reservations," the ability to "leverage meetings spend during 2009 hotel program negotiations (meetings spend equaled 80-plus percent of total hotel spend) and reduce exposure for unused tickets by making them available to use for either transient or group," she noted.
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"The marriage of travel and meetings has proven successful. We're still in the honeymoon stage, but we have a cohesive team of agents and planners."
— Karen Vander Ploeg, Daiichi Sankyo senior manager of travel and meetings
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"The marriage of travel and meetings has proven successful. Yes, we're still in the honeymoon stage, but we have a cohesive team of agents and planners truly working together," Vander Ploeg said. "We basically have three partners and the internal department working together as one team. We have one source for all of our air and preferred carrier data spend, and we are leveraging our hotel spend." And satisfaction levels among the physician attendees-who are notoriously hard to please, she said-are more than 80 percent.
Since launching the meetings department in March 2008, the U.S. subsidiary of Daiichi Sankyo has achieved $3.7 million in savings on $31 million in total meetings expenditures, Vander Ploeg said. Even greater synergies with travel are expected to generate more savings.
"One year into the program," Vander Ploeg said, "and 15 percent savings isn't too shabby."
