There's a New Way to Add Production to Your SMMP
Photo Credit: Companies have a new way to add AV and event production to the SMMPs. Unsplash / Johannes Spallek
Skift Take
As strategic meetings management expands beyond hotel and air spend to take on things like AV and event production, there’s growing potential for increased savings.
A new offering from BCD Meetings & Events known as Strategic Production Management is reflective of the ongoing expansion of companies' strategic meetings management programs (SMMPs).
The service helps organizations both manage event production enterprise-wide and consolidate production-related costs. The transparency into the combined spend allows companies with multiple events to negotiate pricing and streamline their processes.
Those principles are at the heart of strategic meetings managment (SMM), an initiative used by large corporations to manage their enterprise-wide meeting and event activities. By creating transparency into meeting costs, creating a centralized process to consolidate spend, and negotiating volume purchases, companies have saved millions.
The BCD offering comes at a time when more organizations are expanding their SMMPs beyond hotel and flight bookings to other cost centers, including AV. Some are mandating that all internal teams and external event planners book from a roster of preferred, vetted AV suppliers.
Some companies are also consolidating ground transportation and corporate travel expenses into their overall travel spend. Even catering can be consolidated for preferred rates from vetted vendors.
Jenna Monell, director of strategic accounts and solutions, production and creative at BCD Meetings & Events, calls Strategic Production Management a “an SMM approach to production. It can integrate with a client’s existing SMM program, be part of a broader SMM implementation, or operate on its own if a company does not have an existing SMM program in place.
"Production has long been managed one event at a time, but that model often creates inconsistency, limits visibility, and drives up costs for organizations with high-volume programs.”
By creating visibility into event production and AV spend and processes, the ultimate goal is to create cost savings and increase efficiency. “We can then navigate negotiations with existing vendors and partners,” said Monnell.
