Case Study: A Major Food Processing Company

Client achieves significant savings by outsourcing meeting planning. Client achieves significant savings by outsourcing meeting planning.

Situation

A major food processing company was experiencing difficulties with their incentive travel program both in cost overruns and inaccurate goal setting for their customers. The programs were running over budget due to poor cost estimates and supplier penalties. This resulted in a $100,000 over budget expense for their trip to Hawaii. In addition, they were concerned about the rates they were paying hotels and destination management companies. The food processing company concluded that it might be in their best interest to explore outsourcing their meeting planning activity. After an internal ROI analysis, the food processing company decided to look at the possibility of outsourcing their business to a third party.

Solution

The food processing company asked Maritz to review their incentive planning activity. After an in-depth analysis, Maritz was able to demonstrate that by outsourcing their business, the food processing company could save close to $125,000 on their annual incentive program. Maritz was able to quantify these savings in our proposal. The Maritz analysis outlined the potential savings that could be gained through proper negotiations with the hotel, accurate budgeting of line item costs, and improved payment and attrition terms with hotels. In addition, this freed up the food processor’s meeting planner to handle other meetings thereby providing additional savings to their organization.

Results

Maritz was awarded the business. The food processing company was able to improve their objective setting for the incentive program for their customers. This year’s program came in under budget and below the cost of past programs. The client’s meeting planner was freed up to handle other duties. Maritz has been awarded the program for the second year and a great relationship has been established.