PHILADELPHIA -- McGettigan Partners, a meetings and incentives
management company based here, launched a meetings consolidation
division as part of a company-wide reorganization.
The reorganization includes the creation of two regional offices
in Chicago and San Francisco to cover the Midwest and West,
according to John Pino, president and chief executive officer of
McGettigan Partners. "We felt the time was right to open offices in
other parts of the country to service clients and gain new
business," Pino said. "We had to make these changes because of our
growth the last several years."
The reorganization also will serve to expand McGettigan's
consulting services, Pino said. Senior vice presidents Beth Truett
and Lori Martin will manage the offices in the Midwest and West,
respectively.
The new meetings consolidation division will be led by Mike
Lyons, who will assume the role of vice president and general
manager, according to Pino. Previously, Lyons was the vice
president of business development for Minneapolis-based Carlson
Wagonlit Travel.
"Major U.S. corporations are telling us that the future of
meeting management requires expertise beyond meeting planning,"
according to Christine Duffy, president of McGettigan Partners.
"Corporations are looking to reduce costs by managing their
meetings process."
More than half of the company's client calls relate to
consolidation as a means to cut costs, Lyons said. "Meetings
consolidation has become a very hot topic in the meetings
industry," Lyons said. "Corporations are recognizing the savings
that can be achieved through a consolidated effort and have begun
to explore those possibilities."
One of the major McGettigan's advantages, according to Lyons, is
its Consolidated Operating and Reporting Environment
(CORE)software, which operates and maintains a vast meetings
industry database. By the end of the year, the software will have
data on more than 5,000 meetings accounting for more than $1
billion. Those meetings consist of some 800,000 room nights and
300,000 attendees, according to Pino.
In addition, McGettigan offers CORE Discovery, client-specific
software that automates facets of the consolidation process.