Aon plc is a leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement and health solutions.
It provides clients in over 120 countries with advice and solutions that give them the clarity and confidence to make better decisions to protect and grow their businesses.
Aon has expanded through organic growth as well as a number of acquisitions in the insurance and consulting industries.
Due to the pattern of Aon’s growth, the business had a diverse structure. Business activities as well as the approach to corporate hospitality differed between businesses and regions. This meant Aon used a variety of premium assets including hospitality boxes, season tickets and debentures. It also took part in hundreds of small event sponsorships and conferences.
Aon’s distributed approach to hospitality management had several implications. Firstly, the same guest could be entertained by multiple contacts within Aon for different events without any audit trail or method to identify the duplication.
In addition, staff were unable to see which tickets were available because Aon lacked a central inventory of sponsorship and hospitality assets. This led to people contacting third party hospitality agents to buy ad hoc tickets, for example for Premier League matches, incurring extra costs to the business. Additionally, existing inventory was not being fully utilised by teams when it could have been redistributed to other departments for use.
Aon’s agency, Generate Sponsorship, analysed the spend across a wide variety of suppliers. This financial analysis showed that over £1.5m was being spent every year on a mixture of hospitality orientated sponsorship, corporate hospitality at major events and ad hoc tickets.
Without a central purchasing, distribution or evaluation process, the business was experiencing a significant amount of duplication and wastage. Aon also needed a better way to see which events had the best outcomes for the business.
Faced with these challenges the agency recommended that Aon introduce central control for its hospitality management.
The agency identified the Sponsorworks Enterprise Platform as a solution that met Aon’s requirements because it could provide a single view of ticketing and hospitality management across the whole business. Aon agreed to roll out the Sponsorworks platform as it could start using the off-the-shelf software straight away. As a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product, this also meant Aon automatically benefitted from regular updates and enhancements from Sponsorworks.
Over 200 staff within Aon were given access to the software platform to request sponsorship and hospitality tickets. After training by the Sponsorworks team, Aon managed and ran the platform on a self-service basis. The platforms built-in reporting suite enabled Aon to instantly track spending and identify any duplications.
The new platform also allowed Aon to carry out automated cross charging and tax auditing. This simplified these processes for the finance department as all ticketing and hospitality management was controlled through one system.
Aon could now track all corporate hospitality spending in one place. With an audit trail of ticket requests, the business could prevent duplication and improve the efficiency of its sponsorships.
When staff requested tickets, they had to capture the business objectives and guest names with each request. This helped Aon to assess the impact of its corporate hospitality and ensure compliance across the business.
With a single view of spending, Aon had better insights into the effectiveness of its sponsorship and hospitality assets. This allowed Aon to reduce costs by making more use of strategic events.
By consolidating its spending to create bigger and better entertainment, Aon delivered excellent guest experiences as well as clearer results for the business.
