Companies that successfully measure the business value of their meetings report that the process has changed greatly over time.
Early measures centred on accomplishing objectives, but the understanding of those objectives and the ability to measure them has improved to the point at which they now provide a good understanding of the actual business value of meetings.
The challenge
Many meeting professionals believe traditional ROI is the only viable way to express value but consider it to be an expensive proposition (both in terms of time and money) that’s impossible to accurately estimate, so they just don’t measure for business value at all.
The challenge is to understand the costs and benefits of measuring the real value of meetings compared to simply making sure attendees and stakeholders are satisfied.
Research findings
MPI’s Business Value of Meetings (BVOM) research has revealed two significant findings relative to this challenge:
1. Many corporate cultures embrace measures of value other than traditional ROI. They want to know if
a meeting accomplished its stated objectives, because this implies a business value, even if that value is not reduced to a monetary quantity. Most corporate cultures don’t see a need to determine traditional meetings ROI.
2. Most organisations that successfully measure the business value of their meetings focus on only a few key elements, making the costs of measurement less than most perceive.
The benefits of measuring BVOM
MPI’s BVOM research revealed several benefits resulting from proper measurement, reporting and planning:
Clarity of purpose: By understanding the measurable outcomes, professionals can make their meetings more cost efficient and more clearly align their activities, and environments with clear objectives.
Quantification of meeting success: Meeting professionals and the organisations they serve learn just how much needs to be done to accomplish their goals by creating, deploying and reporting on measures of meeting success. This allows them to establish budgets, make strategic decisions about meeting logistics and design, set future goals and establish realistic expectations.
Identification of strengths and weaknesses: By understanding a meeting’s strengths and weaknesses, professionals can better concentrate resources where they are needed most and leverage asset areas.
Creation of better measures: Gaining insights into meeting permance relative to objectives requires trial and error to get meaningful information for the lowest cost. Implementing an intentional and planned strategy for understanding the business value of events leads meeting professionals to develop better measures over time, making the process more valuable.
Comprehensive measures: Each individual measure can be assessed for value. New measures can be introduced to help understand and use that information. This process results in more comprehensive views of the business value of meetings and leads to a better understanding of the contribution of meetings to an organisation, and in many cases leads to good approximations of ROI.
Easier evaluations: Successful strategies for understanding the business value of meetings lead to a process for improving meetings. This is central to assessing value. As meetings become ‘better’,
they become more clearly aligned with objectives, therefore more efficient and effective.
The reduction of time, money and personnel, combined with clearly stated objectives, makes the actual costs and benefits of meetings easier to evaluate. Events with unclear purposes are difficult to assess, because proper budgets and outcomes are speculative.
What it means
Meeting planners who are concerned about the price, value or ROI of implementing a BVOM measurement strategy may be assured that the costs are controllable, and the benefits are immediate and long term. For a measurement strategy to be effective, it needs to be implemented as part of a process wherein stakeholders are engaged, objectives clearly defined, measures appropriate and results used to make improvements to meetings, and the process itself.
Any comments? Email conferencenews@mashmedia.net
