Developing an I.T. Strategy

The client

An hotel owner-operator intending to expand through management contracts

Background

Over the years the client had created a technology infrastructure with elements of best and worst practice. In particular the IT organisation lacked leadership and included weak personnel with limited hospitality experience. In an owner/operator environment such a situation remains an internal matter to be managed as best judged by the management team. By challenging itself to grow through management contracts, the business threw down the gauntlet to I.T. - reform and reposition yourself or you will limit our overall strategic ambitions.

For some time, Hotel Solutions Partnership associate Mike Wrigley has been mentoring the management of the IT team. The scope of this work included assessing the current state of back and front office systems, developing meaningful plans for upgrades, replacements and additions to technology infrastructure, assess what to prioritise to support brand positioning and assess what to leave on home country / parent company infrastructure and what to create as a platform for international growth.

The mentoring was so successful that business leadership asked Hotel Solutions to propose an over-arching strategy for I.T. for the future management company.

Consultant/s

Mike Wrigley led the assignment supported by Ian Graham and Peter Fitzgerald

Project objective

To suggest an I.T. strategy for the "to be"ť hotel management company where growth is to be through managed hotels in the home country and neighbouring countries.

Project scope

All elements of the IT offer for a hotel management company - the organisation, leadership, people, IT governance, hosted environments, wide area networks, key business applications.

Methodology

The team first established some educated assumptions in respect of each of the competitors, customers and owners. In particular the expectations of owners from a management company were explored in detail. A competitive landscape was researched and described. This identified the key applications adopted to address the key processes and compared the client's position to its future competitors. The technology landscape embraced operations, distribution, guest facing, accounting and control as well as administrative applications and processes. A SWOT analysis was prepared on the client's IT functions. This suggested that the client had a core of the right elements in place already albeit on old versions and poorly utilised. However and as suggested above it was clear that the client fell short of expectations in its IT leadership and team as well as in implementing a consistent strategy.

The consultants developed a set of critical success factors and from this work a list of mandatory systems was developed which the management company would expect to find at a future managed hotel. Another list of highly recommended systems was prepared as was a catch all list of non-strategic IT assets.

This led to the development of implementation recommendations which started with organisation, people and brand issues, IT governance issues, and then addressed each of the mandatory systems. There were also a number of recommendations in respect of the future hosted environment, wide area network provider and the requirement to provide IT technical services to developers and owners prior to opening of a new hotel.

Results

Key members of the Board attended a meeting at which the IT strategy recommendations were presented. The two hour meeting was first extended by half an hour then by another hour as the attendees asked more and more highly relevant questions exploring the team's conclusions! The CEO closed the meeting by asking Mike to sit with him one-on-one for another two hours the next day and this meeting was then followed by yet another with the CEO. The client's leadership had been highly motivated and engaged by the team's openness as well as the obvious comprehensiveness of the recommendations tabled.

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Associated Experts

Ian Graham: leads and contributes to complex advisory assignments for hotel owners and operators around the world, leveraging his deep understanding of the goals of the guest, the hotelier, the investor, the lender and the brand owner - and all this from a unique base of experience that has seen him working on hotel issues in more than 60 countries

Developing an I.T. Strategy

Associated Experts

Associated Areas of Expertise

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