Part of Smart Monday at IMEX America was the Global Meetings Management Study (GMMS) session. This was a discussion centered on global Strategic Meetings Management programs (SMMP) and the benefits, challenges and lessons learned, presented by Kevin Iwamoto, vice president of enterprise strategy for StarCite, a part of ACTIVE Network.

Iwamoto showcased IBM's Paul Wakelin's implementation of the SMM program on a global scale.

"It gave people the opportunity to see that it can work and it does work if you apply the principals and you design a program that fits within your corporate culture," he said. "It gave people the opportunity to realize it's more than a theory."

The goal of the sessions was for attendees to understand the benefits of taking an SMM program global; prepare for any pitfalls and nuances of operating an SMM across various cultures and markets; and learn the steps needed to get started with a global rollout.

"Paul was able to use [the SMMP] roadmap and kind of design each element of it with understanding the IBM culture on what worked and what doesn’t work," Iwamoto said. "The end result of that, using technology, is a successfully deployed global SMMP."