Many companies are missing opportunities to negotiate better deals with suppliers by failing to set up comprehensive systems to manage meetings, according to a new study.
Most are completely unaware of how much they are spending, it claims.
Research by AT Kearney on behalf of American Express found that only 41% of European and US firms employed dedicated inhouse meeting planners or external organisers.
Just under one third (30%) said they used both but 29% said they had recourse to neither.
“Dedicated planners live and breathe a company's meetings policy, and so they play a key role in helping to control expenditure,” said Stephen Etchells, vp head of American Express Business Travel, UK and Ireland.
“But, often, companies do not have a policy to ensure that planners make all meeting arrangements. This means that organisations are not getting the full picture of their meeting expenditure, resulting in missed opportunities to aggregate spend and consolidate savings.”
The study estimates global spending on meetings to be around US$100bn a year and rising. It quotes Meeting Professionals International which has forecast that figure to rise worldwide by another 5% this year.
Many firms employed some strategies to control meeting costs “on a limited basis.” But only 39% of those surveyed used preferred suppliers when organising meetings.
A similar proportion failed to combine meeting and transient travel spending as a way of exerting extra leverage on suppliers. And 59% paid for meetings with cash or cheques.
But a majority said they planned to make better control a priority over the next two years. Separate research by A.T. Kearney shows that companies can save as much as 10-15% on their annual meeting expenditure by implementing an end-to-end meetings programme aimed at eliminating unnecessary meetings, managing and monitoring suppliers and staff compliance with policy and company travel policy more effectively and streamlining the transaction process.