marlabsdriving digital agility

Collaboration Platform for Hospitality in the Digital AgeAuthor: Rajendra MenonReviewer: Ravi Vijay

WHITEPAPER

The hospitality sector has taken on several changes in the past. However, nothing has been nearly as transformative as the digital movement.

Today customers are calling the shots like never before with numerous options for hotel stay. Information on properties, prices, and performance is just a click away. Digital technologies are constantly setting new expectations. Be it guest experiences or employee engagement or social presence or use of guest data, service delivery is in the throes of a transformation. Another huge change driver has been mobile, which has provided the impetus for additional value-added services that hotels can provide to guests.

Disruption in the Marketplace

Going from booking to on-property experience to checkout, the customer lifecycle is advancing to a different paradigm.

Disruption and disintermediation is the name of the game. New players with innovative approaches are competing for attention in an unprecedented and evolving landscape.

In this new world, we are seeing the entry of entirely new models with the advent of peer-to-peer platforms. Airbnb is a case in point. Every home with a spare room has become a virtual hotel. As a result, platforms like Airbnb are seeing unprecedented growth. In fact, they are creating new demand for this supply of extra bedrooms, empty apartments, and even the occasional treehouse.

Another big change is in the relationship that hotels have with online travel agencies (OTAs). Transitioning from adversarial to increasingly collaborative, both hotels and OTAs are realizing that ensuring a happy and great guest experience trumps all other considerations.

Advanced technology is seamlessly integrating inventory, rate, booking, and booking confirmation workflows. Real time is key so that rates, inventory,

and packages are made available to the OTAs. Thus OTAs can avoid booking guests in a scenario where there is no room available. At the same time, hotels can provide OTAs with visibility into inventory and customer booking status. Collaboration between hotels and OTAs makes possible truly connected processes. Bookings received at the OTA website automatically segue into the hotel reservation process with real-time booking confirmations sent back to consumers. The result is a win-win for all—hotel, OTA, and guest.

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But end of the day, it may not be an exaggeration to call this a digital war for customers that the hospitality industry is waging. Players include traditional hotel brands, new platforms like AirBnB, OTAs, and even players from outside the industry such as Amazon, Apple, and Google that could enter the space. Constantly raising the bar on digital experience across the customer lifecycle is the only answer to fighting this disruption.

Overcoming Disruption through Digital

Only by innovating and redefining products and services can hotels deal with the flux in the marketplace. Digital capabilities become tools to defend market positions while meeting customer expectations. These in turn translate to operational, organizational, and analytical capabilities that drive competitive advantage and grow revenue potential.

Winning the battle for the guest is all about guest experience. Nothing matters more. Traditional white-glove service has evolved into the digital age. But digital is not an end in itself. Instead it just provides the tools to boost guest experience and step up efficiency.

Guests are not the only ones to gain from digital tools. So can hotel associates. Several opportunities exist. For example, front desk associates can bring down peak-time congestion by leveraging tablets for guest check-in. Or housekeeping can transmit mobile alerts to staff when rooms are ready for new guests to move in.

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Analytics is another important item in the arsenal. Multiple stakeholder groups can use analytics engines in order to more effectively attract, acquire, engage, and serve guests. With access to a large trove of guest data, hotels can glean valuable insights and convert them into actionable results.

From transforming business models to driving guest engagement and employee enablement, digital capabilities are making it possible to deliver compelling experiences.

Collaboration Platform at the Center

Core to these digital capabilities is a platform for implementing collaborative business processes. Hospitality enterprises are increasingly recognizing the value of collaboration—both internal as well as external—toward raising efficiencies, empowering employees, and building competitive differentiators. They need to leverage internal knowledge assets, and can make use of currently-deployed IT solutions that incorporate collaborative capabilities in order to share that knowledge.

However, collaboration has been rather uncommon in the hotel industry. Especially when it comes to the different departments dealing with guests, sharing information has not always been a strong point.

By setting up a platform where members from various departments can come together and connect with each other, hotels can firmly place themselves on the collaboration track.

There are two parts to this collaboration platform:

• Transactional business process collaboration for system-to-system interaction based on business processes and structured content.

• Content collaboration for the human interaction, based on unstructured content and collaborative workspaces.

Several technology options exist for realizing this platform but Microsoft technologies certainly offer compelling choices based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft SharePoint.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables front office business process collaboration based on more structured data and repeatable business processes. Also it brings with it a singular focus on guest needs across all touch points in order to deliver a 360-degree view of guests.

First off, there is the standard CRM functionality that will drive value. Hotel sales teams can track leads, manage opportunities, and institute sales methodology via CRM. Likewise, CRM can be used by customer service centers that need to quickly look up customer information and act on problems or introduce new products and services to guests. Hospitality marketing teams can leverage CRM to put in place marketing campaigns such as emails, web tracking and analytics, and lead scoring to drive true marketing ROI. By collecting and integrating guest data, analytical CRM enables subsequent reporting and analysis on this data.

Then there are the specialized processes for which Microsoft CRM can become a powerful enabler. Through its xRM framework, the solution can be extended to align it with unique needs, both for customer relationships and other customer-like relationships. Relationships with OTAs, franchisees, property owners and so on are examples of customer-like relationships that can be served through new applications built using the xRM framework. Underlying CRM capabilities will provide a starting point as well as building blocks for these add-on systems. xRM thereby provides a launching pad for driving innovation and differentiation in the enterprise.

Digital Ecosystem

Business Process

Collaboration

Content Collaboration

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About MarLabsMarlabs is a USA based award winning provider of innovative Information Technology and Knowledge Process Outsourcing services. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Piscataway, New Jersey (USA), Marlabs has a culture of success balanced between consistent financial growth and excelling employees. Strong and dedicated human capital strength of over 2000, a network of delivery centers in USA, Canada, Mexico and India and a unique multi shore model utilizing our Global Technology Centers of excellence are at the core of Marlabs’ success over the years.© Copyright 2013 Marlabs Inc. All rights reserved.

© 2012 Marlabs Inc. Marlabs believes that the information contained in this publication is authentic and accurate as of its publication date. However, such information is subject to change without notice and Marlabs shall not be liable for any loss resulting from reliance upon such information.

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Complementing CRM in realizing enterprise collaboration is Microsoft SharePoint. Designed to organize information that is often unstructured yet needs to be shared and used for content collaboration, SharePoint can support all the web portals, document management, search, business intelligence, and workflow that support hotel operations.

As such, SharePoint can be deployed to support solutions such as websites and content management, project management, sales/marketing collateral management, product and pricing catalogues, and contract management—all typical use cases that you would encounter in a hospitality context. Like any other business, hotels have information repositories and information to be gathered, codified, and shared and therefore are great candidates for SharePoint.

Overall, SharePoint has evolved from a basic web publishing system and file system with a good looking interface to a software platform that can be leveraged to facilitate content collaboration across the enterprise and beyond. The name SharePoint signifies a software system where sharing content comes first, and finding and collaborating on that content comes second. SharePoint does provide ECM functionality, but sharing and collaboration are front and center.

SharePoint can co-exist with existing ECM systems in order to drive content-based business processes. Thus providing an end-to-end content collaboration and ECM system that includes these capabilities:

• Managing all content resulting from collaboration: That content will ultimately reside and be managed in ECM.

• Maintaining SharePoint user experience: Ensuring that SharePoint users can continue to create and contribute content for collaboration.

• Configurable content storage: Providing organizations with flexible rules for retaining content in SharePoint or moving it to ECM. Included are capabilities for managing or selecting content based on attributes like file size.

• Content lifecycle management: Enabling organizations to effectively manage content through its lifecycle and, in turn, cut down the incidence of orphaned content and sites with poor governance that could potentially cause security or accessibility risks.

SharePoint and CRM are often implemented in tandem with each other. For example, SharePoint can be integrated with CRM to provide project management, document level control, or pricing support. As an extension option for CRM, SharePoint supports customer and partner portals. For example, CRM can handle cases, contacts, as well as knowledge base through SharePoint’s web and contact management capabilities.

When deployed together, CRM and SharePoint build on each other’s strengths. SharePoint supports collaborative requirements for unstructured information, while CRM excels at driving defined business processes for more structured transactional flows.

Together CRM and SharePoint can thus establish seamless collaborative processes for transactional and content collaboration. Consequently, hotels are able to acquire the capabilities for becoming agile enterprises that can step up to meet the challenges of the digital age.

Things and social. With a dedicated team of over 2,100 associates, a network of delivery centers in USA, Canada, Mexico and India, and strong partnerships with industry leaders, Marlabs offers a wide range of IT services across industries. Through our emphasis on quality driven by CMMi, PCMM, ISO 9001-2000, ISO 27001

50 and Fast 500 programs. Marlabs is headquartered in New Jersey, United States.

© Copyright 2016 Marlabs Inc. All rights reserved.