The Harvard Business Review case study on Wyndham International discusses the inception of the hotel company, its initial exponential growth followed by a rapid decline in 1999 due to various external and internal factors. The organization restructuring and changes in management introduced several guest loyalty programs, ByRequest in particular, to allow Wyndham International to reestablish its brand. This paper discusses the strategies followed by Wyndham International and identifies role of Information Resources (IR) in implementing the ByRequest program.
In the final analysis, the paper identifies issues with customer signup and integration the various IR systems for the ByRequest program, limiting Wyndham in achieving its business goal in a more robust nature. Wyndham’s Business Wyndham International, a company in lodging industry, enjoyed significant tax benefits in the initial years under the REIT status and expanded continuously. Wyndham managed and owned most of its hotel properties, while in lodging industry hotel management and ownership were normally separated.
But policy changes in 1999 resulted in a drop of 80% of Wyndham’s stock price, forcing the company to sell most of its low-end properties and focus on business and leisure travellers in the upscale segment of the market. Opportunities and Threats With changes in government policies, Wyndham faced serious threats of financial debt. Low customer recognition was also hurting its market share. Fierce competition and commoditized service made it difficult to bring in profit. Nevertheless, there was an opportunity as well, that if the company could successfully differentiate itself from competitors, it would harness more profit.
Galvor Company Business Plan
Case 10-3: Galvor Company Background Galvor Company was founded in 1946 by owner, and president M. Georges Latour. The company had acted as a fabricator, buying parts and assembling them into high quality, moderate-cost electric and electronic measuring and test equipment. Latour had always been personally involved in every detail of the firm's operations as in most family businesses. Fiscal ...
Business Strategies and Objectives In order to navigate through the competition, Wyndham changed its management team and came up with new customer loyalty program, ByRequest, and started to focus on upscale market. The objective was to establish Wyndham brand. ByRequest program has also differentiated Wyndham from its competitors as opposed to point based loyalty program. Since, it provided a unique service to every customer as per the request, this in turn increased the customer satisfaction and loyalty towards Wyndham’s service. Organizational Capabilities: Strengths and Weaknesses
As mentioned previously, Wyndham both owns and runs its hotel properties. These business operations give Wyndham the ability to deploy new assets faster than competitors, where its business strategy can be easily integrated with its investment model. Wyndham had also started moving towards centralized IT infrastructure and integrated IT systems. If this succeeded, the move would have given Wyndham more power to adopt its business strategies. Wyndham also had some weaknesses. During 1999, Wyndham’s management team was going through major organizational changes..
So, around that time there was an unstable internal environment for Wyndham to execute its operations. From 2000 to 2002, still outsourced IT infrastructure and segmented IT system also pose difficulties for Wyndham to adopt an integrated business solution. Organizational Strategies and Objectives Wyndham changed its management team after the 1999 shake up. New management was appointed to develop and implement new strategies for the company, which in deed came out with a set of plans including the ByRequest program. Down the management chain, Wyndham had direct control over its hotel management teams.
So, Human Resource operations could be easily executed at the property level. At the operation level, positions of hotel general manager and ByRequest manager were separated. ByRequest manager had some power over spending money on customers. General manager was responsible for the profit regarding the property. Employees’ incentive plan was also based on the profitability from the property. Wyndham’s organizational strategy was to try and align with its business strategy. By giving ByRequest manager the power of budget so that the Manager has the opportunity to serve the customer better, improved the overall customer satisfaction.
The Essay on Customer Relationship Management Strategy
1)Introduction Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become a main focus for businesses with today’s markets becoming more saturated and competitive. ‘Customer Relationship Management is the ultimate challenge for marketing experts in any business. A successful company will use customer information wisely to build relationships with their customers, on the level that together they will work ...
This way, the organization was able to reach their objectives [Rajasekaran, 2011] Role of IR and Existing IR Set-up The role of Wyndham’s internal resources (IR) is in the strategic quadrant. Because Wyndham relies on its IR not only for running its business on a daily basis, but also for differentiating itself from its competitors. If IR had failed, ByRequest managers would not be able to match reservations with the customers’ profile, thus Wyndham would have failed to deliver their services. Without ByRequest program, Wyndham would have been providing just the same service as its competitors.
The time when the ByRequest program was introduced formally (2000), Wyndham just started to centralize its IR infrastructure. The . ASP model was adopted to provide faster deployment of IT infrastructure. Until 2002, Wyndham was still in the process of centralizing its PMS and callaccounting system. Centralization of revenue management and POS had to be put into the agenda, but had not ben actually started. Prior to 2000, a subsidiary of Wyndham was serving its IT infrastructure. Wyndham’s IR Strategy (ByRequest Program) ByRequest program was an IT backed system to provide customizable services for its customers.
Customers had to sign up, either by themselves or with the help of the hotel staff. A profile of customer was saved in the ByRequest System. Once entered, all profiles awere available throughout all properties of Wyndham, to be used by hotel managers. Thus, the managers could provide customized services to their guests based on the guests’ profiles. Wyndham planned to use this IR strategy to save customer preferences in a central location and sync the data with every hotel branch. This innovative idea brought two advantages to Wyndham. First customers were able to request special services when booking rooms with Wyndham.
The Business plan on Internship Report on Customer Satisfaction on the Services of Al-Arafah Islami Bank Limited
Part-1 Introduction 1.1 Background of the report: The internship is a dynamic approach for practical knowledge gathered at this study. My effort was for practical job experience through internship for business communication skills as well as banking sectors. As a student of BBA for the requirement of the internship program, I was assigned to The MBL for my practical orientation. This report is ...
Second, the customers’ preferences were available for the future stays at Wyndham. Thus, customizations could be made by hotel managers to ensure complete customer satisfaction. Other IR strategies were adopted by Wyndham to ensure the implementation of ByRequest program. First, Wyndham was bringing its IT operation in-house, so Wyndham could exercise more control. Second, Wyndham was starting to centralizing its IT system, e. g. PMS and CRS. Centralization plays an important role in standardizing business process and ensuring availability of customer data.
Third, Wyndham adopted the . ASP model while implementing new systems, which ensured fast deployment time and standardized implementation process. These IT strategies played critical roles in delivering ByRequest program. Analysis Wyndham’s current IR set-up helped the IR strategy as mentioned in the previous section. Because an integrated, standardized and centralized IT infrastructure was very important for the execution of ByRequest program. But effort had to be made continuously, as Wyndham was still in the middle of improving its IT infrastructure.
However, ByRequest program was not enough to help Wyndham to achieve its business strategy for three main reasons: First, customer signup process was essentially long and complicated. In lodging industry, service is very important because of the fierce competition and low customer switching cost. An extended signup process doesn’t fit the business environment and the primary goal to serve customers better. But, without the signup process, Wyndham’s ByRequest service could not be delivered at all. Second, Wyndham’s organization strategy did not completely fit into its ByRequest program.
The General Manager was majorly responsible for the overall profitability of hotel, but the ByRequest Manager could spend more money on customer in order to keep them satisfied. We know, customer satisfaction is a vague measure, and conflicts with general manager’s responsibility. Also employees’ incentive is based on profitability, which further conflicts with the long term vision of customer satisfaction. Third, ByRequest system wasn’t integrated with the PMS system. Customer had to give her/his member id upon arrival for ByRequest manager to know what she or he needed. Thus the manager could not prepare in advance.
The Essay on Starbucks Global Strategy
De Wit and Meyer (1998) refer to market tendency towards homogeneous variety and tighter international linkages as globalization. The need for global strategy is outlined by the fact that companies are subject to global forces and consumer demands. As a consequence, firms are faced with a challenge of modifying their existent strategies to gain and sustain their competitive advantage in a rapidly ...
And in the case of customer forgetting her or his id (which would happen almost all the time), service could not be delivered, which resulted in bad customer experiences. In order for ByRequest to succeed, a streamlined customer signup process was very essential to be established. Wyndham also had to improve its organization strategy so that employee incentive was aligned with its business goal, and nothing got between ByRequest manager and customer. Last, deep integration of various information systems of Wyndham was supposed to be deeply integrated, for ByRequest Manager to respond to customer’s needs before they arrive.
