Lincoln Financial Success Story

Communication is key to running any successful financial institution, and Lincoln Financial Group is no exception.That's why the organization invests significant resources into their Strategic Meetings Management Program (SMMP). With the expertise of industry leaders and the support of the Cvent platform, Lincoln Financial Group provides advice and solutions that empower people to take charge of their financial lives with confidence and optimism.

Strategizing a Strategic Meetings Management Solution with Cvent

Like many organizations, Lincoln Financial Group implemented a Strategic Meetings Management Program (SMMP) seeking to gain more control and visibility into the budgets, reports and sourcing associated with their meetings program.

With so many providers of SMM technology on the market, one of the initial challenges faced was identifying the right provider to support Lincoln Financial Group's business goals. Most providers only offer “point solutions” which address only a segment of the complex SMM process. This means that, in order to get the complete picture of the meetings program, the SMM team needs to pull data from many disparate systems; this can be a time-consuming process that keeps your SMM team from more critically strategic activities.

“We were concerned about the time savings piece,” says Steve Shultz, Head of Strategic Meetings Management for Lincoln Financial Group. His team needed to reallocate their strategic resources to focus on increased productivity and driving business objectives. He says, “Our team spent crazy amounts of time with isolated platforms and not really focusing in on the things that they really should.” 

“Every time I had a problem, a real, everyday problem, Cvent always had that solution.”

Steve Shultz. Head of Strategic Meetings Management, Lincoln Financial Group

Leveraging Data for Better Decision-Making

When it comes to costs, most organizations have no idea how much they are spending on meetings and events or where they are spending it. By using Cvent's Strategic Meetings Management solution, Lincoln Financial Group was able to increase visibility, drive compliance, and lower costs while improving engagement and the overall attendee experience all in one end-to-end platform.

With unprecedented visibility into their SMM spend, Lincoln Financial Group was able to direct their meetings spend where it mattered most. “We are really focused in on tracking net event spend from estimate through actual expenses,” says Steve. “Once that’s all said and done, we're able to really interpret that data to make better business decisions.”

Steve's team have seen further success by capturing spend data across their meetings and transient travel programs, and leveraging that combined intelligence for even greater savings. “Our biggest power play is being able to take that budget spend, bring procurement to the table and marrying our business and meeting spend to our transient business to have one RFP...and really leverage the buying power of our brand across the enterprise," he insists.