Unlike traditional company assets that will deteriorate or be depleted over time, data can be reused and recombined freely without degradation. Increasing the liquidity the ease of data asset reuse and recombination of strategic data is the first step to data monetization. The authors describe how the efforts of a financial services firm and three other organizations to facilitate the recurring reuse and recombination of strategic data assets are paying off.
There is no escaping the Big Data hype. Vendors are peddling Big Data solutions; consulting firms employ Big Data specialists; Big Data conferences are aplenty. There is a rush to extract golden nuggets (of insight) from mountains (of data). By focusing merely on the mountain (of Big Data), these adventurers are overlooking the source of the revolution-namely, the many digital data streams (DDSs) that create Big Data-and the opportunity to improve real-time decision making. This article discusses the characteristics of DDSs, describes their common structure, and offers guidelines to enable firms to profit from their untapped potential.
The leadership team of Atlantis Paradise Island, under new ownership, decided that better alignment of the core values with the vision and mission statement would create a more compelling and consistent organizational narrative that would redouble employee commitment to Atlantis' ultimate success. They hoped that rethinking the core values would help them unleash the full transformative potential of their vision and mission.
In 2010, Experience! The Finger Lakes (ExperienceFLX), a tour operator offering guided tours and concierge services in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, was at a crossroads. The business was poised for growth, and its owners, Laura and Alan Falk, were considering signing a deal with Groupon, the online coupon firm, to see if a Groupon deal would help the ExperienceFLX bring in new customers. While the prospect of marketing ExperienceFLX's business to a new customer base through Groupon was very appealing, the Falks found that designing a deal that met Groupon's requirements while still allowing ExperienceFLX to make money and without endangering their relationships with area winery partners was a real challenge. The Falks had to decide whether a Groupon deal worked well for them, and if so, how to manage Groupon redemptions by their customers in a way that made financial sense.
The case centers on the dilemma faced by Carlo Fontana, the owner-operator of a small chain of two four star urban hotels located in Lugano, Switzerland and the other in Milan, Italy. Having developed an extensive customer service and operations information system, called Happy Guests Relationship Management, Fontana is entertaining the possibility of commercializing his innovation. Doing so may provide a welcome new source of income during the greatest economic slowdown in recent history and it would help in keeping the HGRM design and development team motivated to refine and improve the solution. However, commercializing the innovation may also stretch his organization too thin, and bring his team into a business, the software industry, completely foreign to them.
Atlantis Paradise Island adopted a new vision and mission to provide its guests and employees an enhanced brand experience. The dilemma Atlantis faced was how to integrate the new vision and mission into all the brand touch points in order to improve customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
Increasingly, customers are expecting more and better service. As such, enterprises need guidelines and frameworks for addressing these expanding requirements. The concept of process completeness helps us to consider service from the customer's viewpoint; arguably, the only perspective to take. Process completeness is achieved when a firm's service delivery system matches the typical customer's breadth of expectations. While customers think in sets of services (e.g., I need a flight, a hotel, airport parking, wireless Internet), firms think in terms of single services (e.g., we can provide a flight). There are four basic service systems: (1) transaction-execute a basic request and nothing else, (2) process-handling all firm related service requests through one touch point, (3) alliance-handling service requests through a single touch point via stitching together a static firm-selected alliance of service partners, and (4) agility-handling service requests through a single touch point via stitching together a dynamic customer-selected alliance of service partners. In addition to exploring the four service systems, this article guides executives regarding the selection and implementation of the appropriate service strategy that meets their typical customer's process completeness expectations.
In July 2008, the co-founders of TripIt, a free online travel organizer that aggregated travelers' bookings from many top travel Websites, had recently secured $5.1 million in new financing. While the co-founders believed that their company offered travelers a unique service, they felt growing pressure from investors to show that the company could grow revenues and achieve profitability. To be profitable, TripIt needed not only to grow its user base but also generate more traveler itineraries, which was critical to obtaining advertising revenue from travel suppliers and intermediaries. The online travel industry was a hyper-active industry and while TripIt was breaking new ground, the threat of competitors was very real.
This case analyzes the Hilton Hotels Corporation's CRM strategy at a key juncture in its history, immediately after the firm has been taken private by Blackstone. The case provides students with a comprehensive history of the evolution and IT enablers of Hilton's CRM Initiative, as well as the proprietary OnQ enterprise system. The case thus offers a rare opportunity to engage in a longitudinal evaluation of the firm's CRM initiative, and to enable students to propose the future evolution of the initiative based on their analysis.
Highlights the potential value of customer data and the choices and challenges the firm faces when attempting to capture this value. Carnival collects a significant amount of individual-level behavioral and demographic customer data. Senior management must now decide how to leverage such a wealth of data to improve firm performance through customer targeting and acquisition, customer retention, and customer profitability strategies.
How should Canyon Ranch leverage its uniqueness in the face of increasing competition and an entrenched customer definition of the firm? The firm is attempting to create demand for return visits and foster the customization and personalization of the Canyon Ranch experience.
Examines a hotel chain's attempt to use information technology to achieve market dominance and build customer loyalty during a period of global industry decline.