into one organization, there is recognition of this team as having the professional expertise for Cisco events.
LS We have always been a really meeting-centric company. And those are really the essential vehicles that we use within the company to drive innovation and brand connections for both internal and external audiences. But up until now that innovation has really been applied more to the creative aspects of events. However, now what we are doing is really incorporating strategic meeting management, so that is changing our role a little bit within our company. So, again, we have two kinds of internal stake-
Susan Katz
‘We have been able to prove our value in both thought processes and bottom line.’
holders — key stakeholders — at our company, and one is our CFO, who really does rely on us to put in place the strategies that are going to help gain control over meeting-related costs and business practices and things like that across the company. But then from the other side of the fence, working with our internal clients, they really do rely on the professional event-management team to help them execute and plan their meetings.
KB We are very similar to what Lisa just said as it relates to her company. We have a culture that is very much about face-to-face meetings, so the meeting-planning and creative-services department has always been expected to be part of those things. The other thing that we do here because of how global we have gotten is that we
also provide training and education in meeting planning for folks that we cannot necessarily support full-service, so that they can actually go out and execute the things that they need to do in the way in which McDonald’s expects it to be done for the brand. So we do a lot of training to basically teach them to fish on their own.
KQ We do have a formal role that is defined globally for event marketing. We actually shifted it globally from event program manager to event marketing manager about five years ago to emphasize the importance it plays in the marketing and sales function. With that said, there are still several people around the company that think that it is the fun, easy part of their job, and so they try to do it without any sort of professional assistance. So it is still the wild, wild west in quite a few areas. But it has gotten much tighter and cleaner in the last few years.
What role do meetings and events play when it comes to helping your company achieve its goals and fulfill its mission?
KQ Well, if you look at it, we have external and internal [events], but they all lead to the bottom line at the end of the day. We are not an event- marketing company. We are out there to sell software, and so it has all got to lead to that. It is one of our largest marketing expenses, though — it is only second to advertising.
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‘We have always been a meeting-centric company. Those are the vehicles we use to drive innovation and brand connections.’