Successful pharma meeting management becomes a global brand standard

Faced with the challenge of managing hundreds of North American meetings and events, a global pharma brand set out to elevate its approach. ITA Group used the enterprise’s strategic objectives and desired attendee experience to create a scalable strategic meetings management program (SMMP). Today, the model powers annual clinical meetings. Plus, various internal events, dozens of congresses and impactful employee incentives.

Setting strategic objectives for corporate events

Our pharma and event strategy experts collaborated with brand leaders to define clear goals. These strategic objectives informed the event design process.

Connecting discovery and gap analysis findings

Attendee profile development reflected their experience and identified critical success factors for each using a gap analysis. These profiles guided meeting-specific choices, shaping sourcing directives and upleveling each experience.

Building a compliant but nimble meeting management solution

The SMMP allowed flexibility at the business-unit level while following an enterprise-wide framework.

• Leveraged spend across the enterprise by consolidating vendors and focusing on preferred hotel agreements with negotiated contracts
• Measured and analyzed data to provide business insight and strategy
• Enforced policy and compliance through sourcing, data collection and on-site experiences
• Developed ISO workflows and implemented project management tools to provide a consistent process across business units

Improving cost savings expands global medical meetings

The pharma brand received multimillion-dollar savings in the first year of implementation, due in part to budget management throughout the program and increased use of preferred hotels under newly negotiated MSAs.

KPI improvements from the primary North American business unit sparked expansion. In recent years, the planning model became the brand’s global standard. It’s now rolling out in additional regions to ensure consistency and impact worldwide.

Strategy assessment and refinement

Quarterly and annual business reviews provide an opportunity to evaluate what worked well and where opportunities to improve efficiency lie. We conducted external audits of the SMMP to ensure adherence and identify nonconformities, developing an escalation process to manage exceptions and refine workflows. ITA Group continues to leverage events expertise and pharma industry knowledge to enhance the attendee experience while adhering to compliance and regulatory requirements.