decisions are made. People changing minds, people deciding they need different things is stan- dard within the industry, but really at a corporate level, we can find out a week before a meeting that they need to gather a sales force in this city at this time. We are really responding to very last- minute requests.
What department or function do you report to within your company? And why does it make sense for you to be located there?
Kelley Butler
‘We are very much at the table when it comes to message development.’
KQ I just switched to the worldwide partner group, but I am still in the marketing team of the worldwide partner group. That makes sense, because how Microsoft looks at events is as a vehicle for marketing and for us to be able to reach our customers, our partners, [and] accelerate the sales cycle. We have strong partners in procurement and finance, but we are separated and have different goals.
LS I’m in the global meetings and events department, and as I said, we report into corporate services and directly up to global finance. That was a realignment made about five years ago. And I suppose there could be a case made for the benefits of reporting up to finance and also up to event marketing, which is where we were before under the global brand. From a strategic meeting management standpoint, it does make sense to report into finance. However, we are managing meetings and events for internal clients who are the business units, and so from that standpoint sometimes there is not always an alignment of goals from the corporate side to the individual business units.
KB We report into system communications, which is part of corporate relations. A majority of the things that our department is responsible for behind the strategic side of the communications and managing is similar. It’s a lot of internal business audiences, as well as our franchisees. We do not do a lot of customer-type events, outside of the things that we support within Olympics and World Cup, from a marketing standpoint. So for us it does make sense. We are very much at the table in all of the planning process when it comes to communicating and message development.
Do you operate under an agency model, where your clients are the other departments and they come to you with their meeting needs?
LS For us, our clients come to us. They have a meeting, they register the meeting, and then we assign the appropriate meeting planner for that group. So we are then working with them to create the meeting that they are initiating.
KQ For the job I just left [at Microsoft], we had internal clients where we produced and executed on the events from the other areas of the company. And the job I just moved to, I am actually now a client to them. So I own and create the event itself. It is a really good new perspective on the world; I’m going with depth versus breadth.
KB It’s similar to what Lisa does. We actually are responsible for our strategic meeting management program as well as the fact that we support internal customers who come to us with a meeting request, but then we also are responsible for designing and executing our two largest conventions. One goes to our franchisees worldwide, and then the other one is actually done for our U.S. managers.
How is meeting planning seen at your company? Is it considered a valuable professional skill set in its own right?
SK Absolutely. I think as we have been able to prove our value both in thought processes and bottom line, people ask us now in advance. The goal is to get them to involve us early, so that we can help them achieve their final goals.
CP I think upper management sees value in having events driven from an organization where professional event knowledge and execution is the core competency, and not second to another job function. As an organization, we are the hub of internal and external event and meeting services, encompassing market intelligence, strategic engagement, virtual events, Cisco TV, on-site conference centers, event technologies/global meetings portal, the Cisco Speakers Bureau, our incentive concierge, tier-one shows and conferences, metrics and measurement, and our global SMM program. Because of consolidating all of these event-related services and disciplines