Pharmaceutical Meetings Tightens Up
According to information and intense discussions from the latest Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Summit held this past March 2007, it appears that the Feds are tightening up on the content of meetings and how they are produced. There will be more auditing of the legal and accounting departments when these pharmaceutical companies plan and implement their meetings. Budgets will be tighter as well. Gone are the days of leisure focused conferences and corporate gifts to the attendees. It has to be more information and education focused and "business" as usual. No doubt this is from the backlash from the "Sarbines Oxley" movement where corporate ethics is paramount.
Another consequence from this movement is the consolidation of many different departments within the pharmaceutical companies to one entity that controls all these functions. We find just the opposite is true in the financial industry. That will be another article for another time.
The final thrust of this movement is in ROI. Exactly how these companies will measure this accurately will still be uncertain. What we will realize as a meeting planner; there will be more scutinizing of expenses and questions of justifying of theme decor, large bands for entertainment, costs of printed materials, pricing of keynote speakers, selection of off site venues, and lastly, costs related to location of the hotels (i.e. overseas vs. domestic).
On the upside, it would certainly level the playing field of the pharmaceutical companies courting the doctors and other medical customers. If these companies would put emphasis on the research and quality of their products as opposed to how expensive a perk will be given to the attendee, it would "weed" out the great products from the "also rans."
This issue of News Articles written by Bruce K. Inouye of www.P2 Events.com
(Please contact this author for permission to reprint in any other publication.)