T&E Plus

Reclaim your Value Added Taxes

If you had a rebate coming to you, would you claim it?  Most likely, right?  In today’s economy, we need all the cash that we can get.  Yet, may organizations leave thousands of dollars (and other currencies) unclaimed.  How? Organizations fail to reclaim Value Added Taxes.   Learn from an expert, Mark Houtzager, how to reclaim the Value Added Taxes for your organization.

Mark and I worked side-by-side to help our clients uncover Value Added Tax opportunities at PricewaterhouseCoopers.  Specifically, I remember the unfortunate situations when our clients had lost thousands of dollars on expired Value Added Taxes.  Thank you to Mark for writing this guest blog on Value Added Taxes for T&E Plus.

Following content is by Mark Houtzager, US-VAT

Value-Added Tax (“VAT”) is a broad-based sales tax that is levied in almost every country outside the U.S. - it also goes by the name of Goods and Services Tax (“GST”). It is not for the squeamish – typical rates are around 20% (in the UK, for example), and anyone who is responsible for overseas supplier management should understand what the impact of VAT can be on their bottom line.

VAT is charged on pretty much every supply – be it goods or services. The VAT rules in the 27 member states of European Union are centrally regulated – they are all based on a European Directive. This Directive has been simplified over the past couple of years, and with some exceptions all services that are provided to non-resident businesses are now free of local VAT.

The exceptions, unfortunately, include catering and lodging, as well as various local expenses, such as transportation and admission fees. These services will continue to attract local VAT in the country where they are provided.

The good news is that a number of countries provide the opportunity to obtain a refund of these VAT charges. There are many boutique firms that can help you with these filings – I work with Corporate VAT Management (www.autovat.com), because they apply a smart process to analyze the credit-card or p-card data. With many small charges for many individual travelers it is easy to overlook refund opportunities, and this data analysis ensures that every charge that appears on the credit card is included in the refund request.

Even though there is still a need for dealing with VAT, the new European VAT rules have significantly simplified the tax position for event organizers and attendees. Filing and compliance requirements have been minimized, and the number of services that attract VAT has been decimated.

If you want to know more about VAT, please read Mark's website and blog: www.us-vat.com, or e-mail him at [email protected].

Visit Debi at one of her upcoming speaking engagements:
Topics vary per conference
Some sessions include components of SMM Bootcamp^© and/or SMM Challenge^© 

March 17 – MPI SCC Educational Tradeshow and Conference
March 18 – EMC Venue’s Annual Buyer Supplier Summit – SMM Bootcamp^©
March 31 – ISM’s Conference on Managing in Times of Uncertainty
April 10-12 – ACTE Global Education Conference
May 20 – MPI Orange County’s 6^th Annual Education Conference and Expo
May 25 – Financial and Insurance Meeting Planners Conference
June 30 – EMC Venue’s MEET
August 2 – Georgia BTA
Sept 7 – HSMAI Affordable Meetings
December 1 – EMC Venue’s MEET

Thank you for visiting the T&E Plus Blog on expense management, travel management, business meetings, events, incentives, strategic meetings management, entertainment, virtual meetings, tickets, hotels, airlines, ground transportation, T&E policy, plus more...

Debi Scholar, GLP, CMM, CMP, CTE, CTT, Six Sigma Green Belt

• Meetings Management Mover and Shaker as selected by Corporate and Incentive Travel Magazine (2010)
• Top 20 Changemaker who influenced the meetings management industry by Corporate Meetings and Incentives (2008)
• Best Meeting Practitioner as selected by Business Travel News (2007)

The Scholar Consulting Group LLC
[email protected]
908-304-4954
Benchmark your Strategic Meetings Management Program:  http://www.smmbenchmark.com

Debi has the following designations:

• Wharton Aresty Executive Education/National Business Travel Association (NBTA) Global Leadership Professional (GLP)
• Meeting Professionals International Certificate in Meetings Management (CMM)
• Convention Industry Council Certified Meeting Professional (CMP)
• NBTA Corporate Travel Expert (CTE)
• Six Sigma Green Belt
• Chauncey Certified Technical Trainer (CTT)

Strategic Meetings Management: Become a Performance and Value Consultant

Dapper in his new duds, the newly appointed manager navigates his way from the airplane to ground transportation when he bumps into another manager from his company.

“Whataya here for?” the first manager asks.
“Management skills” the second manager answers. “and you?”
“Same thing” the first manager responds confidently as they weave their way through the harried crowds of O’Hare looking for their ride.

Soon, both managers recognize that they are not going to the same hotel, in the same class or using the same transportation method.  What is wrong with this picture?   How could two meetings with the same content be registered in the same meeting management technology for the same audience but not be integrated? Or, at least be considered for some form of integration? (Presume that integration was not considered because this is a true story).

Do you consult with your clients (internal or external) before a meeting is registered into the meeting management technology?  How do you look at the whole environment (all meetings) rather than its parts (individual meetings)?   Do you obtain a forecast of your client’s meetings/events? 

A seasoned meeting manager frequently met with her client about the upcoming 2,000 person product launch.  Yet, when I asked the meeting manager about the client’s forecasted meetings, she had no knowledge of any other meetings.  I believe that the traditional planner should evolve into a Consultant role.  It is not that the traditional planner role is wrong; rather, it is no longer enough when organizations move toward Strategic Meetings Management.  Whereas the Planner plans, a Consultant has an antennae that reaches throughout the organization and advises, supports, and educates.  And, sometimes these Consultants also plan meetings. The Planner often needs to act as a Consultant and consider the "whole" environment.

Before a meeting is registered in any system, preemptive consulting, also known as Performance and Value Consulting provides a framework for planners to analyze opportunities and advise a client on the best choices to move their business objectives toward peak performance.  If a planner or planning manager knows the client’s expectations and upcoming business objectives, then he or she can anticipate the client’s needs and offer solutions that make sense.  Using the example above, it may have been possible to integrate the content, the participants and the properties.  Another reason to consult with clients is to gain a forecast of meetings/events.  During the consulting phase, the consultant builds a trusting relationship with the client, and then together they can build a cohesive meeting/event strategy.  In practice, these consultative roles are often called “Relationship Managers,” “Meeting Liaisons” or “Meetings Account Managers.” 

The primary role of the Relationship Manager is to be the frontline to the meeting sponsors in order to learn their business, understand their requirements and assist in building cohesive sourcing/planning teams that drive the initiative on the road to success.  A few years ago while at PwC, we identified the need for national Relationship Managers to work directly with our internal clients.  An integral role in Strategic Meetings Management (SMM), this role still exists today in the firm.   As time progressed, I recognized the need to expand the consultative role into local markets and created the “Market Event Manager” role in July 2007.  The planners in these consultative roles also plan meetings locally and are the frontline for local leaders and meeting sponsors.  While presenting at MPI in San Francisco last week, I was thrilled to reconnect with Mary Malmgren, a Market Event Manager in San Francisco, who told me that she loves her job.  She strategically works with clients in her market to understand and forecast their meeting/event requirements in addition to planning those meetings.  Of course, she uses the SMM standard operating procedures.   It is rewarding to hear that the consulting strategy that I developed and implemented years ago is still valued and operational at the firm.

Although a Performance and Value Consultant (PVC) can facilitate discussion and guide the client towards superior performance, it is still the meeting sponsor who owns the initiative.  The PVC’s job is to leverage all resources to bring the right solutions to the client.   A common PVC process is:

 

Following are the PVC principles, common PVC questions to ask of your clients during regular meetings, the PVC skillset and a sample PVC process map.

Three of the ten principles of becoming a Performance and Value Consultant are:

• Look at the whole rather than its parts; Bring, connect and co-develop ideas; Learn the client’s business
• Educate clients; demonstrate experience, credibility and integrity
• Move outside of comfort zones; encourage and perform with flexibility and fluidity

(Download the PVC Guide for the remainder of the PVC principles)
Download Performance and Value Consulting (PVC) 15 Feb 2011

Three of the ten questions to ask your client during PVC are:

• What is on your horizon?  (learn to forecast meetings)
• What are the most important aspects of your business plan for the next 24 months and how can meetings and events support your goals? (learn to identify business objectives)
• What delivery method would best suit your business objectives and encourage attendance? (identify virtual and hybrid meeting opportunities)

(Download the PVC Guide for the remainder of the PVC questions)
Download Performance and Value Consulting (PVC) 15 Feb 2011

Three of the nine skills needed for the Relationship Manager are:

• Emotional intelligence
• Relationship building
• Problem solving/diagnosis

(Download the PVC Guide for the remainder of the PVC skills needed)
Download Performance and Value Consulting (PVC) 15 Feb 2011

Learn how to become a Performance and Value Consultant (PVC) by attending a two-hour PVC experiential learning course which includes behavioral activities, role plays and templates that you can use in your organization.  The PVC course is available virtually or face-to-face and can be conducted for one or more people. Contact me for more information.

Visit me at one of my upcoming speaking engagements;  topics vary per conference
Some sessions include components of Debi's SMM Bootcamp and/or SMM Challenge

• March 17 – MPI SCC Educational Tradeshow and Conference
• March 18 – EMC Venue’s Annual Buyer Supplier Summit – SMM Bootcamp
• March 31 – ISM’s Conference on Managing in Times of Uncertainty
• April 10-12 – ACTE Global Education Conference
• May 20 – MPI Orange County’s 6^th Annual Education Conference and Expo
• May 25 – Financial and Insurance Meeting Planners Conference
• June 30 – EMC Venue’s MEET
• August 2 – Georgia BTA
• Sept 7 – HSMAI Affordable Meetings
• December 1 – EMC Venue’s MEET

Thank you for visiting the T&E Plus Blog on expense management, travel management, business meetings, events, incentives, strategic meetings management, entertainment, virtual meetings, tickets, hotels, airlines, ground transportation, T&E policy, plus more...

Debi Scholar, GLP, CMM, CMP, CTE, CTT, Six Sigma Green Belt

• Meetings Management Mover and Shaker as selected by Corporate and Incentive Travel Magazine (2010)
• Top 20 Changemaker who influenced the meetings management industry by Corporate Meetings and Incentives (2008)
• Best Meeting Practitioner as selected by Business Travel News (2007)

The Scholar Consulting Group LLC
[email protected]
908-304-4954
Benchmark your Strategic Meetings Management Program:  http://www.smmbenchmark.com

Debi has the following designations:

• Wharton Aresty Executive Education/National Business Travel Association (NBTA) Global Leadership Professional (GLP)
• Meeting Professionals International Certificate in Meetings Management (CMM)
• Convention Industry Council Certified Meeting Professional (CMP)
• NBTA Corporate Travel Expert (CTE)
• Six Sigma Green Belt
• Chauncey Certified Technical Trainer (CTT)

Take the SMM Challenge

Today’s meeting environment includes planners, leaders, technology companies, hotels, destination management companies, travel management companies, meeting management companies and … the list goes on and on.  No wonder we are all struggling with paramount questions such as, “how and why do we develop a strategic meetings management program?” and “how do we work with our suppliers?”   We may fail to set a vision, buy the right tools, select the skilled resources and communicate with our stakeholders.   Now, you have the opportunity to test your theories and foster a team environment using safe, experiential learning.  Bring together your team, leaders, suppliers and engage in this fun, challenging activity.

Download The SMM Challenge Placemat

Experiential Learning cultivates a safe and credible environment where decisions can be tested without retribution and self-discovery can evolve with successes.

Overview

The SMM Challenge^© addresses the common pitfalls of creating an SMM program while maintaining a busy meeting/event schedule.  Participants are placed in circumstances and in roles that may be unfamiliar to them yet occur when leaders, planners and suppliers come together to achieve a common goal.

The Experience

Teams are immersed into a competitive, challenging and captivating experience to work on a realistic strategic meetings management (SMM) initiative. Their goal is to create the highest scoring SMM program with limited time and resources in a constantly changing environment with roles ever evolving.  Participants will experience the benefits of creating the business strategy with key stakeholders, identifying priorities and teaming across multiple business units and with suppliers.

 Key Learning Points

• Learn how vision and strategy benefit the end result
• Recognize the value of asking, “What’s Possible?”
• Discover how optimizing resources will improve the success of the program

 Results

• Create vision and change
• Build the right teams with the right skills
• Think creatively and develop processes
• Manage and succeed in a matrix, hybrid environment
• Foster communications

 Details

• Teams of 2-5 participants; and up to approximately 200 for one session
• Full session – 4 hours
• Selected components – 1-3 hours
• Conference segments of 15-30 minutes
• Custom design available
• Suitable for cross-functional  teams, hybrid teams from in-sourced and outsourced organizations, and individual participants
• Ideal for both conference and training settings for corporations, meeting planning companies, meeting technology companies, travel management companies, hotels, destination management companies, other suppliers and associations

Download The SMM Challenge Placemat

Instruction

Debi Scholar earned her Certified Technical Trainer designation in 1996 when she owned her own training firm. She developed the “SMM Challenge” experiential learning course using her 22 years in the Training and Development industry and her numerous years in the hospitality industry. As a classroom, face-to-face trainer for over 15 years, and a frequent travel and meetings presenter at numerous conferences, she has a natural ability to convey complex knowledge in conversational methods.

Contact me to build this fun and challenging activity into your next meeting.

Thank you for visiting the T&E Plus Blog on expense management, travel management, business meetings, events, incentives, strategic meetings management, entertainment, virtual meetings, tickets, hotels, airlines, ground transportation, T&E policy, plus more...

Debi Scholar, GLP, CMM, CMP, CTE, CTT, Six Sigma Green Belt

• Meetings Management Mover and Shaker as selected by Corporate and Incentive Travel Magazine (2010)
• Top 20 Changemaker who influenced the meetings management industry by Corporate Meetings and Incentives (2008)
• Best Meeting Practitioner as selected by Business Travel News (2007)

The Scholar Consulting Group LLC
[email protected]
908-304-4954
Benchmark your Strategic Meetings Management Program:  http://www.smmbenchmark.com

Debi has the following designations:

• Wharton Aresty Executive Education/National Business Travel Association (NBTA) Global Leadership Professional (GLP)
• Meeting Professionals International Certificate in Meetings Management (CMM)
• Convention Industry Council Certified Meeting Professional (CMP)
• NBTA Corporate Travel Expert (CTE)
• Six Sigma Green Belt
• Chauncey Certified Technical Trainer (CTT)

How Long Does it Take to Plan a Meeting?

(T&E Blog – 16,000 views and climbing, I am shocked and humbled, thank you readers. And, thanks to StarCite’s Kevin Iwamoto, for the kind recognition).

On the heels of my last blog about Return on Investment (ROI), a methodology that I started using in my Training and Development “T&D” career in the 90s, let’s discuss another practice that I used in T&D to forecast resources.  One of my favorite T&D articles was, “How Long Does it Take to Develop Training?”  Even though the article presented benchmark numbers, T&D professionals knew that complexity factors could sway the estimated hours up or down.  I used an industry standard “40:1” as a training development benchmark; it could take 40 hours of content development to deliver one hour of instructor-led training.  Yet, there were some courses that only needed 20:1 and others that required 60:1 of development time.  Still, the 40:1 was a benchmark to forecast resources and set the project timeline expectations with training clients.  And, similar to the meetings environment, different types of training (e-learning, self-study, etc.) posed even different ratios because of the complexities.   Similarly, meeting professionals need flexible guidelines to estimate how long it takes to source and plan a meeting.

Many meeting management companies use “files opened” and “files closed” per month as an indicator as to when to add or reduce resources.  If a complex meeting requires 3 or 4 months to plan, then the meeting is categorized as an “open file” for the meeting planner throughout those planning months but it is rather difficult to calculate how many meetings will open and close within one month.  As a result, if you use the “open file” or “closed file” methodology to calculate resources, it is somewhat confusing to the end user or the client as to the quantity of resources needed and magnitude of hours required.  Yet, many use the “open/close file” methodology very successfully.  Below is an example of the quantity of “open files” that the resources can manage with consideration for numerous complexity factors, which explains the wide range of variability:

• Sourcing Manager:  15-25 open files per month*
• Planning Manager:   4-25 open files per month*
• Finance/Project Accountant:  25-35 open files per month*
  *Note that some use closed files per month and the numbers may vary

In contrast, some meeting management companies calculate the quantity of hours that it takes to source and plan meetings.  The reason that I like this model better is because I believe it is easier to forecast meetings and the resource requirements.  If you use meeting history, or estimated hours for all of your known incoming meetings, and add a percentage for the unknown, it is fairly simple to calculate the quantity of resources needed.  As an option, I offer a Meeting Complexity and Time Study Index that provides a guideline on How Long It Takes to Source and Plan a Meeting.  There is more detail on how to calculate the required resources in the attached document.

Download Meeting Complexity Level - Time Study Index 

Leaders can use this 5-Level Meeting Complexity and Time Study guideline to calculate the resources required for sourcing and planning meetings.  As always, there are outlier meetings/events that may need more or less hours than these estimates. Note that the hours presented below and in the attached Index do not include onsite implementation hours.

 
Of course, the quantity of resources needed for sourcing and planning meetings is influenced by numerous complexity factors such as the:

• Meeting/event complexity
• Volume
• Changes
• Skillsets
• Overtime
• Employment laws
• Automation
• Resource team size
• Maturity level of the strategic meetings management program
• Decision autonomy

 As a meeting leader, it is important to capture all of the time spent sourcing and planning meetings, in 15 minute increments, for each meeting/event if you are an “insourced” meeting planner within a company or work as an “outsourced” planner.  Even those planners who are paid as a Full Time Equivalent (“FTE”), it is wise to itemize your time by meeting.  This practice is used in meeting planning organizations, professional services firms, in legal firms, advertising firms, etc., to enable proper billing back to the client.  This is best managed by an automated system but if a tool does not exist, then identify the common meeting sourcing/planning tasks so that all meeting professionals can track their time as a standard operating procedure.

Use the Meeting Complexity Level and Time Study Index as a foundation to build your own forecast model.  Good luck and if you have any questions, please ask.

Thank you for visiting the T&E Plus Blog on expense management, travel management, business meetings, events, incentives, strategic meetings management, entertainment, virtual meetings, tickets, hotels, airlines, ground transportation, T&E policy, plus more...

Debi Scholar, GLP, CMM, CMP, CTE, CTT, Six Sigma Green Belt

• Meetings Management Mover and Shaker as selected by Corporate and Incentive Travel Magazine (2010)
• Top 20 Changemaker who influenced the meetings management industry by Corporate Meetings and Incentives (2008)
• Best Meeting Practitioner as selected by Business Travel News (2007)

The Scholar Consulting Group LLC
[email protected]
908-304-4954
Benchmark your Strategic Meetings Management Program:  http://www.smmbenchmark.com

Debi has the following designations:

• Wharton Aresty Executive Education/National Business Travel Association (NBTA) Global Leadership Professional (GLP)
• Meeting Professionals International Certificate in Meetings Management (CMM)
• Convention Industry Council Certified Meeting Professional (CMP)
• NBTA Corporate Travel Expert (CTE)
• Six Sigma Green Belt
• Chauncey Certified Technical Trainer (CTT)