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    ExpenSightPhilipp FahrenkrogCorporate Travel & Meeting Governance

    Event spend diagnosis

    What meetings and events cost each year, and who commissions them

    The question usually comes from management and sounds harmless. What do we spend each year on meetings and events? In most companies nobody can answer it.

    Why the total is missing

    Events are ordered where they are needed. The business unit books its customer event, marketing the trade fair, sales the roadshow. Each invoice lands on a different cost centre, and none of them is called events.

    Part of the cost does not appear as an event at all. Participants' travel runs through the travel programme, and often the overnight stays do too. Anyone who does not know how many hotel nights are booked for meetings each year does not negotiate them either.

    Who this is for

    Companies that commission agencies and notice in doing so that they know neither their volume nor their own rules. The counterparts are the commercial management and procurement, together with travel management because of the interface with travel.

    What I need in advance

    Reports from accounts payable, the cost centre structure, the reporting from your travel agency and the corporate card transactions, all in aggregated form. In addition, the units that commissioned events in the past year, as far as this is known. Whatever you cannot provide is already a finding.

    How it runs

    1. Introductory call

      Thirty minutes by phone, free of charge. We clarify whether the diagnosis fits your situation and which data you have.

    2. Reconstruction

      I analyse the documents in advance and assemble the order of magnitude. This part is included in the fixed fee.

    3. Diagnosis day

      Mostly remote. Conversations with business units, procurement, marketing and travel management. The figures from the reconstruction are checked and corrected in the process.

    4. Report

      You receive it within one week.

    What you receive

    • A reliable order of magnitude for the annual volume, broken down by business unit and type of event
    • Who in the organisation commissions today, and above which amount nobody else has a say
    • The points at which travel and hotel allotments are bought outside the travel programme
    • The contracts and commitments that depend on event volume
    • An assessment of where the order of magnitude is reliable and where it remains an estimate

    What the diagnosis does not deliver

    An exact figure rarely comes out of it. The diagnosis delivers an order of magnitude and states how reliable it is. Nor does it assess whether an individual event was worth the money. ExpenSight does not plan or produce events; agencies do that, and they do it better.

    Independent

    I receive no commission or other remuneration from any agency, hotel or venue. The report also states what speaks against a measure.

    Terms

    Terms for the fixed daily fee are available on request. It includes the reconstruction of the figures and the report. Travel costs are charged separately. Your documents are covered by the confidentiality commitment.

    The travel cost diagnosis answers what travel costs. The event spend diagnosis answers the same question for meetings and events. Event governance then sets out who decides what in future.

    If someone is asking for the annual total right now and the answer differs depending on whom you ask, write me a line about it.

    The first step is a thirty-minute introductory call, free of charge and without obligation.

    Arrange an introductory call