Lincoln Financial Success Story
Communication is key to running any successful financial institution, and Lincoln Financial Group is no exception, which is why the organization invests significant resources into their meetings program. With the expertise of Strategic Meetings Management (SMM) leaders like Steve Shultz and the support of the Cvent platform, Lincoln Financial Group provides advice and solutions that empower people to take charge of their financial lives with confidence and optimism.
Problem
Like many organizations, Lincoln Financial Group implemented Strategic Meetings Management seeking to gain more control and visibility into the budgets, reports and sourcing associated with their meetings program.
With so many providers of SMM technology on the market, it can be difficult to find the one that fits your needs. Most providers only offer “point solutions” which address only a segment of the complex SMM process. That means that, in order to get the complete picture of your meetings program, your SMM team needs to pull data from many disparate systems, which can be time-consuming and keeps your SMM team from more critically strategic activities.
“We were concerned about the time savings piece,” says Steve Shultz, Head of Strategic Meetings Management for Lincoln Financial Group, “our team spent crazy amounts of time with isolated platforms and not really focusing in on the things that they really should.”
Solution
When it comes to costs, most organizations have no idea how much they are spending on meetings and events or where they are spending it. By using Cvent, Lincoln Financial Group was able to increase visibility, drive compliance, and lower costs while improving engagement and the overall attendee experience all in one end-to-end platform.
Better Data Means Better Decisions
With unprecedented visibility into their SMM spend, Lincoln Financial Group was able to direct their meetings spend where it mattered most. “We are really focused in on tracking net event spend from estimate through actual expenses,” says Shultz. “Once that’s all said and done, [we’re] able to really interpret that data to make better business decisions.”
Steve Shultz and his team have seen further success by capturing spend data across their meetings and transient travel programs, and leveraging that combined intelligence for even greater savings. “Our biggest power play is being able to take that budget spend, bring procurement to the table and marrying our business and meeting spend to our transient business to have one RFP...and really leverage the buying power of our brand across the enterprise.”
Making Meetings more Eventful
Getting control over meetings budgets is the beginning of the benefits that a comprehensive management platform can being. After implementing Cvent’s time- and cost-saving tools, Lincoln Financial Group, began to expand their use of meetings technology to better engage with their meetings attendees. “When we rolled out the mobile app for instance,” says Shultz, “we originally rolled it out as an idea to save time, to save paper; to go digital, and to help easily navigate our attendees, but then that has grown into more of a meeting engagement tool. [We’re] using the polling, live Q&A, and gamification to really mimic the personal experiences and really tie then into more of the meeting experience, so that the two are similar and not so isolated experiences.”
A Community of Success
Whether an organization has initiated a full program or is just starting out, Cvent backs up its solutions with an award-winning support team and a global user community focused on sharing and supporting meetings and event excellence. “Everyone can relate to the mountain that it is – the climb to implement an SMM program,” says Shultz. “Having things like the Cvent community, it really brings everyone together and shows that they're not alone in this. Everyone wants to start and it seems with technology it's a race to keep up, to be innovative, to be – remain best in class and as much as we can help jump the curve.”
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