Publisher’s note: Since today’s topic is about virtual meetings, we’d like to take a minute to invite you to our own virtual meeting.
In the age of globalization, geography becomes less important. Technology has flattened the earth. Where you are becomes much less important than what you can do. In the new procurement there are three key dynamics that will separate the winners from the losers: agility, mobility, and visibility. Join us December 4th at 2 pm when Andrew Bartolini delivers a webinar presentation entitled:
Agility, Mobility, Visibility: Three Dynamics for the New Procurement
(click the link above to register or get more info)
The Virtual Factor
One of the many advantages of conducting business in our modern world is the wide variety of tools and technologies that organizations can leverage to improve everyday processes. In the realm of communication, video and virtual conferencing has helped to improve dialogue between disparate business units separated by state lines or continents, ensuring that distance isn’t a cause for a failure to communicate.
Now, those of you in procurement may be wondering, “Why should I be concerned with virtual conferencing? How does that play into what I do at my company?” It’s a fair sentiment, and one that I’m sure many Chief Procurement Officers and procurement executives may have asked themselves after clicking on this article. Well, the truth is that while the virtual / video technology itself may not sit in the direct purview of the procurement team, its effects can have major (and positive!) ramifications on overall spend management.
What the virtual factor really boils down to is two major aspects that can greatly benefit the average enterprise: supporting cost reduction efforts, and improving engagement management.
Virtual as Another Cog in the Engagement Lifecycle
When I first joined the Ardent Partners team back in the spring, I spoke of a new concept in the meetings management world: engagement management. (Click here for a refresher on this topic.) What this new world entails is a full lifecycle of steps and phases that all revolve around the engagement of attendees. No longer prevalent is the simplified “one-two punch” of simple registration and event reminders. Social media, social networking, one-on-one attendee appointment-matching…these are factors in the new regime of event management.
How does virtual conferencing fit into engagement management? It’s best to be viewed as a supplementary tool in the engagement lifecycle. Post-event webinars are, of course, a primary factor in driving home event messages and recapping key presentations / speakers. However, organizations aren’t taking full advantage of the virtual platform during the engagement lifecycle, and can easily touch attendees with more value by introducing speakers via webcast, holding “pre-event” or “preview” webinars, or even broadcasting the entire live event via streaming video.
Virtual Can Be Procurement’s Ally
As a complex spend management analyst, I often hear stories from procurement pros I interview about their efforts to reduce the cost of business travel, temporary labor, meetings / events, printed materials, marketing / digital media, services, etc. These spend categories are complex (hence the name) because they touch different functions within the organization, sometimes out of procurement’s direct reach. Thus, any additional cost reduction assistance that procurement can leverage is critical to developing Best-in-Class complex category management results.
Virtual and video conferencing should be considered an ally of procurement because it represents a means of outright replacing unnecessary live events, and, consequently reducing the massive costs that are often associated with resorts, hotels, catering, etc. Virtual conferences, much as they are deemed a supplementary component of engagement management, play another cost reduction role by helping to cut down on multiple-day meetings. A three-day sales training event can be reduced down to two days, with the third day as an interactive webinar or video conference.
Some automated systems for booking travel also include options that ask users if a trip could be replaced by a video conference, helping to create an environment in which virtual technology is a viable cost-cutting tool.
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