(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.
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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)
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