Bondurant Consultant has a practical objective for clients: provide customized recommendations that can be realistically activated by organizations that want to control and optimize their meeting/event expenditures.  We understand that meeting/event management in most organizations is very decentralized, with limited oversight and visibility, and that it is one of the most complex categories of spend there is. Putting processes and guardrails in place creates visibility, allows for risk mitigation, and generates cost savings for enterprise-wide meeting and event management, which is frequently referred to as Strategic Meetings Management (SMM).

 

At first glance, SMM can sound complicated and convoluted, but mostly, SMM is a centralized process to manage the entire meeting and event spend for your organization. For those of you in procurement, SMM is simply a category management approach specific to meeting/event spend. Most organizations have a managed travel program, yet surprisingly, a vast number of corporations do not have any meeting management program in place, which is why we are here!

 

Bondurant Consulting has a proven track record of engaging with respected clients in a variety of industries. Part of our success is our “Keeping it SiMMPle” strategy: developing customized SMM solutions that are practical to implement, light on cumbersome processes, and produce effective outcomes. Another differentiating factor is our unbiased, third-party perspective, ensuring that the recommendations provided are unique and applicable for your organization, your culture, and your business objectives. 

 

THE COVID-19 AFFECT: Certainly, the industry has been significantly impacted because of travel restriction and government bans on large gatherings. Our SMM clients were quickly able to identify meetings and events that needed to be canceled and postponed as a result of centralized visibility into the corporate events calendar, a distinct advantage over those with decentralized meeting planning throughout the company. Those with no process in place spent weeks trying to track down meetings, and usually had significant cancelation fees to pay. Additionally, our SMM clients have already amended policies to include virtual and hybrid event registration to enhance the visibility of ongoing events, even if they are not conducting live events at this time.