Information management at homestyle hotels

1. 1. Synopsis/Problem Identification

Homestyle Hotels was formed by a merger of Lifestyle Resorts and Home-Away Hotels and is now a very large hotel chain in North America. While it is very evident that the merger survived as a business entity, the business processes and IT services supporting them are disparate and fragmented. Branding and marketing efforts were difficult as each hotel had its own unique IT solutions with unique customer experience. The situation had been worsened by each hotel making independent IT investment decisions and running IT operations that is distinct and unlinked.

An IT Director has been appointed to re-engineer, streamline, and consolidate IT operations. Under the guidance of the IT Director, a new ERP implementation was undertaken which helped to streamline certain business processes around finance functions. The ERP implementation forced through a good technical standard for the organization. However, the information standard is not as good except for the financial data. The quest for the IT Director to reform the IT services delivery had now focused on implementation of a reservation system. The reservation system is the main operational, non-financial solution that drives efficiencies and improves customer value management. It is very clear that synergies were not exploited to drive up business value and this had to be corrected.

1. 2. Key Issues in the Case

Homestyle Hotels is a hotbed of IT issues. The implementation of the reservation system is throwing up all the fractures that were hidden in the merger process. As alluded to earlier, the merger process did not succeed in aligning the separate business processes of the two companies. Even within each of the companies, business processes are not aligned except the financial related ones. The issues seem compounded. Finance automation through ERP implementation is usually the first area to get attention because it speaks to the bottom line. But finance automation, depending on the level of integration, sometimes hide the underlying issues that can only be uncovered during the automation of key business processes that touch customer, supplier and other important business entities. It is not a surprise then, that after the finance ERP implementation, arguments are still raised about who is a client or a customer.

Very worrisome is that the two groups still see themselves as a separate entity, wanting their own reservation system because of apparent lack of organizational alignment. There are numerous IT issues uncovered, but the more critical underlying issues are business re-alignment related, and until the business re-alignment issues are solved, the IT issues will remain as symptoms. It does not seem there is a strategic goal that binds all senior players in the company together that then cascades to the lower levels. The COO and Head of Home-Away group should not be having open disagreement in the choice of a reservation system, especially on matters concerning management visibility and monitoring. Some of other issues are listed below:

· Lack of a comprehensive information management policy. Company information requirements are not comprehensive and all-encompassing.

· Lack of end-user involvement in the information requirements analysis process as depicted by the desire to include them, deep into the project, unfortunately.

· IT infrastructure and software are not standardized across the hotels.

· Lack of Information requirements standard in that there is no common ground in terms of information requirements which should cascade from corporate level down to individual hotels.

· Business models which ought to be unified are diverse. The business models should have been standardized on merger.

· Data is not processed timely to make information readily available, hence the long turnaround time for producing reports.

· Lack of a comprehensive technology roadmap.

· There was no strong business leadership to engender consensus building. There was a potential for conflict in choices of solutions.

· Disintegrated systems with silos of information fraught with lack of data integrity and standardization and lack of a single customer view.

Section 3: Conclusion and Recommendations

The recommendations are grouped into 3 areas, namely: business, business-IT alignment and IT.

3.1 Business

What is classified as business are things around business operating model, strategy and governance.

A Business Operating Model is the “combination of roles, skills, structures, processes, assets and technologies that allow any organization to deliver on its service or product promises. In effect, it is the way the business is set up to deliver” - (Perry 2012). The company operating model should be well crafted and communicated to all members of staff. There should be deliberate attempts to unify customer understanding across the organization and align product offerings of the two groups, individually and collectively, in a way that make cross-sell easier and profitable. It is also important to relook the organization structure with a view of making it more aligned, smart and responsive – the company should have a single organizational culture. The business strategy should focus on the re-alignment of the two groups and how synergies can be exploited especially through data sharing between the two groups. Governance as it relates to the larger corporate governance and ensuring IT governance is its subset (Brisebois, n.d.). Business performance measurement framework should be adopted and should cover IT.

3.2 Business-IT alignment

3.1.1 3.2.1 Technology Roadmap/MDM

Having sorted business-only issues, forging an IT and business alignment is now imperative. IT together with business can then embark on the development of a solid technology roadmap. ERP has been implemented first, that was a right move. Reservation system being implemented now is encouraging. But most of the key technical issues that have dogged its implementation has been largely master data management (MDM) related. Should the company have adopted an MDM practice before embarking on a reservation system? I will say yes. A good MDM practice would easily resolve issues around definition of customer and what standard attributes define a customer or client. The common issue of data quality would be tackled as well. Overall, information standards will be greatly improved. Master data management is an “application-independent process that describes, owns, and manages core business data entities. It ensures the consistency and accuracy of these data by providing a single set of guidelines for their management and thereby creates a common view of key company data, which may or may not be held in a common data source” (McKeen 2011). According to James (2011), the diagram below in Fig. 1 depicts what an ideal technology roadmap would entail.

3.1.1 3.2.2 I.C.T. Governance Framework

While there is talk of an I.T. steering committee, there is need for development and implementation of comprehensive I.C.T. governance framework for guiding the acquisition of I.C.T, standards and project management, and general I.C.T. operations and service delivery. The framework will give guidance on conflict management during projects implementation. This is premised on the fact that there is already a lack of consensus on the way forward in implementation of a key system and that creates fertile ground for potential conflict in choices of solutions going forward.

Other initiatives that can strengthen business-IT alignment will include effective communication and stakeholder management. Forming a project implementation steering committee with active participation of key senior staff would have helped in resolving the reservation system business requirements issues. IT and business should push for IT and business practices standardization across all the hotels. A case where the Chicago-based will have the latest standards and others do not have does not augur well.

3.1.1

3.2.3 Development of a comprehensive information management policy.

Company information requirements are not comprehensive and are not all-encompassing hence the need for an inclusive information management policy that speaks to the information requirements of the company and to its management, including definitions, collection, preservation and dissemination. The policy will speak to the need for online real-time processing since information is not readily available hence the long turnaround time for producing reports. It will also speak to the data/information architecture relative to systems integration and to the elimination of information silos and data standardization as well as integrity.

Failure to meet Information Management (IM) standards, will have perceivable, measurable negative impact on the business (McKnight, 2014). Information management, and subsequently data modeling standards observed by data stewards, will be necessary if Homestyle Hotels is to mold the new system around operations. Beyond simply agreeing upon which data should be entered into which fields in the new reservation system Homestyle Hotels should ponder over value of the data, and how it might be used in support of business intelligence in future. Ben should take the initiative to garner support for and launch a formal IM program. (McKeen & Smith, 2014).

3.1.1

3.2.4 Lack of a single customer view

A single customer view, explained by (Experian.co.uk, 2011), is the ultimate goal that provides businesses with the ability to trace customer communications across various channels. By realizing a solitary view, you can collate all customer information accurately in one place, gaining a 360-degree view of their past and present behavior. This intelligence is vital in being able to predict your customers’ future behavior, so you can adapt your sales, marketing and operations to match.

With the use of CRM software, an organization can make more informed decisions, provide better customer service and personalize future marketing communications based on one’s customers’ behavior (Experian.co.uk, 2011). Investing in an ERP with an integrated CRM flavor would be an added advantage for Home Styles Hotel.

3.3 IT

IT has its own roles to play independent of the business. IT should have taken leadership in coming up with a software selection evaluation criterion, business inputs are essential though, for the selection the reservation system. Technically, there is no clear advantage of Hotel Confidential (HC) solution over Clear Reservations (CR) solution. The reverse is very defensible. IT should make this clear to the business so that all can be carried along to break for CR. Additional customization requirements can be ordered to get CR to improve their system security and incorporate other operational functionalities which might be lacking. We also think IT should make a business case for hiring a CIO. We believe this will give the necessary clout and authority needed by IT to pursue its agenda. In the alternative, IT can make a case to hire a very experienced external consultant to help drive IT agenda, but in the immediate term, help the IT Director to turn around the implementation of the reservation system.

References

1. Brisebois R. (n. d.) ‘What is IT Governance’ [Online] Available: http://www.intosaiitaudit.org/intoit_articles/25_p30top35.pdf (Accessed: April 25, 2017).

2. Experian.co.uk (2011) ‘Exploiting the Single Customer View to Maximize the Value of Customer Relationships’, [Online] Accessed from: http://www.experian.co.uk/assets/about-us/white-papers/single-customer-view-whitepaper.pdf (Accessed 27/04/2017)

3. James Parnitzke (2011) ‘How to build a roadmap’ [Online] Available from https://pragmaticarchitect.wordpress.com/2011/03/05/how-to-build-a-roadmap/ (Accessed: 26/04/2017)

4. McKeen, James D., Heather Smith. (2012) IT Strategy: Issues and Practices, 2nd Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions

5. McKnight, W. (2014). Information management. [electronic book] : strategies for gaining a competitive advantage with data.

6. Perry R. (2012) ‘CEO The Business-Operating Model’ [Online] Available: http://www.bevingtongroup.com/ceo-the-business-operating-model (Accessed: April 25, 2017).

EXTRACT FROM ESSAY:

“The strategic nature of the decision around information sharing and ownership (that should form the MDM standard), and the decision between CR and HC products, are strategic decisions that cannot be made with the short-term, siloed view that the business heads seems to be stuck in.”

TUTOR COMMENTS:

Christopher makes a good point in red above about the decision that needs to be made regarding the software. Different vendors are presenting different packages which have different “standards” and different capabilities. HC is a more “hands-off” approach to information delivery, sending executives a once a week update using standard metrics; CR provides more in-depth content which can be drilled into, giving executives a more real time feel for what is going on in the different hotels.

TASK (300 words, 1 reference/citation):

What selection criteria would you use to decide between the two software options (i.e., HC and CR)? Who should make the decision?