Description
Its relatively easy to get an overarching definition of the term business intelligence.
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE:
How Information Integration
Can Boost Hospitality Growth
A HOSPITALITY TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE WHITE PAPER
BROUGHT TO YOU BY
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:44 PM Page 1
I
t’s relatively easy to get an
overarching definition of
the term “business intelli-
gence.” One hospitality
industry expert puts it in
terms of knowledge man-
agement: “Business intelligence is
related to how a company manages
anything that it knows as a compa-
ny.” Another expert, noting that hos-
pitality companies routinely gather
significant amounts of data about
their customers, their operations and
their competitors, defines BI in
relation to what the analysis of that
data can provide: “Business intelli-
gence answers the question of ‘why’
instead of ‘what’.”
In an industry as diverse as hos-
pitality, however, the challenge is
less about defining BI than about
determining what information is
most vital to running the business—
and then figuring out how to get
that crucial knowledge to those who
can act on it. For a restaurant chain,
their most important bit of BI is
likely to show the relationship of
food sales to labor costs. A cruise
line dependent on repeat business
and good word of mouth will be
interested in gauging the customer
loyalty of both actual travelers and
the agents who book trips. Airlines
and car rental companies will want
to closely monitor their affinity
relationships and the role various
websites play in steering travelers in
their direction.
BI’S BENEFITS
In the lodging segment, the chal-
lenges of improving business intelli-
gence capabilities are big—but so
are the potential rewards. When
business intelligence is done right—
when companies devote sufficient
resources to BI solutions and stress
its value throughout the organiza-
tion—hospitality companies “can
calculate, based on previous guest
behaviors, whether a particular
guest will be profitable to the hotel
or not—even if it’s that guest’s first
time at the hotel,” says Cihan
Cobanoglu, Ph.D., Assistant
Professor of Hospitality Information
Technology at the University of
Delaware College of Human
Services, Education, Public Policy,
Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional
Management. Armed with this
information, the hotel can offer the
potentially profitable guest incen-
tives in order to “maximize the
guest’s lifetime value to the hotel.”
Today’s sophisticated BI solu-
tions also allow hospitality compa-
nies to focus on addressing the most
crucial issues they face, and to do
so more quickly than they ever
could before. Top executives armed
with dashboard-style BI tools that
provide them with a snapshot of the
company’s key performance indica-
tors, along with exception-based
alerts when those indicators fall
outside pre-determined parameters,
can “see where the needs are and
focus on intervening there,” says
Daniel J. Connolly, Ph.D., Assistant
Professor of Information
Technology and Electronic
Commerce at the University of
Denver’s Daniels College of
Business.
If these BI tools also provide
executives with the ability to “drill
down” to deeper reports and analy-
sis about a particular issue, “they
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
“Business intelligence gives a hospitality company the
ability to respond more quickly to correct things that
may be problematic. Not only can companies meet prob-
lems in a more timely manner, they can take advantage
of new market opportunities by seeing things faster
than their competitors and being able to act on them.”
— Daniel J. Connolly, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Denver
2
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:44 PM Page 2
could proactively change outcomes
as opposed to just looking at them
in retrospect,” says Connolly.
“Business intelligence gives a
hospitality company the ability to
respond more quickly to correct
things that may be problematic,”
adds Connolly. “Not only can com-
panies meet problems in a more
timely manner, they can take
advantage of new market opportu-
nities by seeing things faster than
their competitors and being able to
act on them.”
He adds that BI can help hospi-
tality companies overcome “infor-
mation asymmetry”—the situation,
similar to the pre-Internet days of
buying a car from a dealer, when
the customer had little idea of the
car’s actual price. “When hospitali-
ty companies can overcome infor-
mation asymmetry and even the
playing field with their vendors,
they can improve their negotiating
position,” says Connolly. “In addi-
tion, by improving their cost struc-
tures, they can offer rate premiums
that turn into profits; they can also
boost cross-selling and upselling
capabilities to improve incremental
revenues.”
OVERCOMING BI
CHALLENGES
With this range of benefits, why
isn’t business intelligence more of
a priority in the hospitality indus-
try? For many, it is. But a number
of challenges must be overcome
for companies to reap the benefits
of BI:
• Hospitality industry struc-
ture: “There’s a distinct separation
between ownership and manage-
ment in the hospitality industry,”
notes Mark Haley, Partner at The
Prism Partnership consulting firm.
“More centralized hospitality
industry segments, such as airlines,
car rentals and cruise ships, tend to
make more of the investments
needed for BI to work effectively.”
• Dispersed data: “The hospi-
tality industry remains character-
ized by islands of information,”
notes Haley. For BI to be effec-
tive, companies “need a reposito-
ry of data to bring those ‘islands’
together in one place, which
requires investments of time,
money and technology.”
• Systems integration chal-
lenges: “Hotels can collect data
down to the color of underwear a
customer purchases at the gift
shop, but without an integrated
3
Key Steps to
Achieving BI Benefits
Hospitality companies seeking to take advantage of the
benefits of business intelligence need to align both their busi-
ness and information technology resources. After determining
which areas of BI will be most helpful to the company in
meeting its business goals, the company needs to take these
steps in order to make the best use of BI, according to Daniel
J. Connolly, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Information
Technology and Electronic Commerce at the University of
Denver’s Daniels College of Business.
• DATA GATHERING: Most hospitality companies gather enor-
mous amounts of data already—from their reservation sys-
tems, their points of sale, property restaurants, etc. To be
most effective, this data must not only be collected but
placed in a central repository, where it can be made available
to others within the organization.
• DATA CLEANSING, ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS: “This
involves turning the raw data into useful information,” says
Connolly. “This is accomplished by looking for patterns and
seeing outliers from the norm.”
• SHARING/COMMUNICATING DATA: “Some people within an
organization are ‘protectionist’ with information,” says
Connolly. “They take the old saying ‘knowledge is power’ to
mean that if they know something and they tell someone,
their own value is diminished. Companies need to open this
up and let people know it’s O.K. to share information.”
• USING THE DATA TO MAKE FACT-BASED, INFORMED DECI-
SIONS: In addition to addressing corporate culture issues about
sharing information, hospitality companies also need to stress
the value of BI once it’s available. “This way people know that
they’re making decisions with a certain degree of confidence,”
notes Connolly. “They’re not shooting from the hip, but acting
on things because this is what the data tells us.”
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:44 PM Page 3
system or a common language
between systems, most data just
sits where it is,” says the
University of Delaware’s
Cobanoglu. Indeed, respondents to
Hospitality Technology’s 2005
Lodging Industry Technology
Study identified “integrating sys-
tems” as by far their number-one
information technology manage-
ment challenge. The challenge has
grown as hotel technologists have
seen the number of systems under
their control proliferate dramatical-
ly and expand to cover every
aspect of hotel operations.
• Need for user-defined tools:
“Any BI solution needs flexibility,
so that each user can track what’s
important to them,” notes the
University of Denver’s Connolly.
“It also needs to be in a format
that works for them, whether it’s
text-based or graphical. The tools
also require drill-down capabilities,
so if the CEO turns on his comput-
er and sees that sales are down in a
particular region or a property, he
can find out why—is it food, room
rates, meeting rentals? BI needs to
offer these types of ‘slice-and-
dice’ capabilities.”
When hospitality companies can
overcome these challenges, they can
make use of BI tools to integrate
information that, in many cases,
they already routinely gather. Some
examples of the information integra-
tion that’s possible with sophisticat-
ed BI solutions include:
• Creating alerts that help match
property staffing levels to events
and expected busy (and slow) times.
• Improving yield management
based on the most current booking
data and rate comparisons.
• Improving marketing to members
of loyalty and affinity programs,
based on guests’ stated preferences
about how and when they want to
be contacted.
• Giving reservations and group
sales managers real-time access to
guest and group histories, allowing
a better match of guest needs with
available properties and services
(e.g. meeting space, area attrac-
tions and recreation,
catering/restaurants, etc.).
TECHNOLOGY’S
ROLE
While it’s the business requirements
and goals of each hospitality com-
pany—along with its corporate cul-
ture—that should determine the spe-
cific direction of a particular BI
project, information technology
undoubtedly plays an important
role. Technology can change peo-
ple’s perceptions about what’s
important, according to Connolly:
“Years ago, hotels might run a
month-end report, and by the time it
actually got back to the property, the
information in it might be as much
as 70 to 80 days old. By then, it’s
too late to do anything about what-
ever happened. Now, if everyone has
current, real-time access to the data,
the manager may need to answer
questions about his property’s num-
bers, and be able to think on his feet
to do it.”
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
4
IT DRIVERS
MOST SIGNIFICANT IT
MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES
50%
10%
19%
20%
Hiring/keeping
good IT staff
Integrating
systems
Systems
maintenance
and support
Implementing
new systems
33%
33%
22%
12%
Productivity/
efficiency
Driving more
revenue
Cost savings
Enhanced
guest services
HT Lodging Study 2005
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:45 PM Page 4
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Business intelligence thrives on data—or to be
more accurate, BI relies on clean data. Data
accuracy is crucial for giving BI’s end users
confidence that the information they’re using
to make key decisions is accurate. Therefore,
one of the first rules of establishing a data
warehouse to support BI is the old rule of com-
puter programming: “garbage in, garbage out.”
Organizations must devote resources to ensur-
ing the data they warehouse and distribute is
clean, by removing as many duplications and
inaccuracies as possible.
A leading hotel franchise organization recog-
nizes the importance of data cleansing, but faces
a related challenge in implementing its cleaning
regimen: the sheer volume of data it must gather,
house and “scrub.” The company’s data services
group evaluates nearly two million data records
each night that must be loaded into the compa-
ny’s data warehouse, so simply ensuring that
those records are correct and usable is among
the group’s most daunting tasks.
Cognizant, which provides this hotel company
with a wide range of IT services, manpower and
expertise, was instrumental in developing the de-
duplication processes that are a crucial part of
data cleansing. This hospitality company discov-
ered that it needed better ways to determine if
its data warehouse contained multiple records
for the same guest. The proliferation of phone
numbers used by any one individual (home,
office, cell, etc.), for example, made it easy for a
hotel to unwittingly set up multiple accounts for
the same individual. Ensuring that the property,
and the larger hospitality company, matches
individuals to their information requires multiple
comparisons of identifiers such as phone num-
bers, e-mail and conventional addresses and
credit card numbers.
Other challenges to ensuring data “cleanli-
ness” arise because the hotel company gathers
data from multiple sources: the hotel properties
themselves, third-party information suppliers
and other business units within the organization.
Once the data is cleaned, it’s used by internal
departments as diverse as marketing, market
research and database marketing, and the
company’s upper management.
Even though the company operates mostly as
a master franchisor, it needs clean, current data
in order to understand more about operations at
its franchised properties. The company handles a
large amount of booking information, and needs
to maintain operational and quality assurance
oversight. In addition, in order to help franchisees
and to market more effectively to consumers, the
company needs to gain a greater understanding
of guest activity and to develop accurate con-
sumer profiles.
Cognizant has played multiple roles for the
hotel company during the past five years, and
the relationship is ongoing. For various IT proj-
ects, Cognizant has analyzed architectural and
development requirements and helped the hotel
company determine whether it should do the
project in-house or outsource it. Cognizant’s peo-
ple work alongside the hotel company’s IT staff,
developing subject matter expertise as well as
providing development work. In addition, the
hotel company has outsourced maintenance and
production support work to Cognizant.
“We help the hotel company with a variety
of services, ranging from infrastructure services,
application support, custom development and
packaged implementations, to business
consulting and technology strategy,” says
Thomas Rump, Client Partner for Hospitality
at Cognizant. “It’s been a very successful
partnership, and I am glad that we are part of
their success.”
“Cognizant has been an excellent partner,”
says a hotel company IT executive. “They’ve pro-
vided thought leadership as well as the manpow-
er we needed to get things done.” ?
Cognizant Helps Hotel Company
with Cleaning Regimen for Data
6
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:46 PM Page 6
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Business intelligence thrives on data—or to be
more accurate, BI relies on clean data. Data
accuracy is crucial for giving BI’s end users
confidence that the information they’re using
to make key decisions is accurate. Therefore,
one of the first rules of establishing a data
warehouse to support BI is the old rule of com-
puter programming: “garbage in, garbage out.”
Organizations must devote resources to ensur-
ing the data they warehouse and distribute is
clean, by removing as many duplications and
inaccuracies as possible.
A leading hotel franchise organization recog-
nizes the importance of data cleansing, but faces
a related challenge in implementing its cleaning
regimen: the sheer volume of data it must gather,
house and “scrub.” The company’s data services
group evaluates nearly two million data records
each night that must be loaded into the compa-
ny’s data warehouse, so simply ensuring that
those records are correct and usable is among
the group’s most daunting tasks.
Cognizant, which provides this hotel company
with a wide range of IT services, manpower and
expertise, was instrumental in developing the de-
duplication processes that are a crucial part of
data cleansing. This hospitality company discov-
ered that it needed better ways to determine if
its data warehouse contained multiple records
for the same guest. The proliferation of phone
numbers used by any one individual (home,
office, cell, etc.), for example, made it easy for a
hotel to unwittingly set up multiple accounts for
the same individual. Ensuring that the property,
and the larger hospitality company, matches
individuals to their information requires multiple
comparisons of identifiers such as phone num-
bers, e-mail and conventional addresses and
credit card numbers.
Other challenges to ensuring data “cleanli-
ness” arise because the hotel company gathers
data from multiple sources: the hotel properties
themselves, third-party information suppliers
and other business units within the organization.
Once the data is cleaned, it’s used by internal
departments as diverse as marketing, market
research and database marketing, and the
company’s upper management.
Even though the company operates mostly as
a master franchisor, it needs clean, current data
in order to understand more about operations at
its franchised properties. The company handles a
large amount of booking information, and needs
to maintain operational and quality assurance
oversight. In addition, in order to help franchisees
and to market more effectively to consumers, the
company needs to gain a greater understanding
of guest activity and to develop accurate con-
sumer profiles.
Cognizant has played multiple roles for the
hotel company during the past five years, and
the relationship is ongoing. For various IT proj-
ects, Cognizant has analyzed architectural and
development requirements and helped the hotel
company determine whether it should do the
project in-house or outsource it. Cognizant’s peo-
ple work alongside the hotel company’s IT staff,
developing subject matter expertise as well as
providing development work. In addition, the
hotel company has outsourced maintenance and
production support work to Cognizant.
“We help the hotel company with a variety
of services, ranging from infrastructure services,
application support, custom development and
packaged implementations, to business
consulting and technology strategy,” says
Thomas Rump, Client Partner for Hospitality
at Cognizant. “It’s been a very successful
partnership, and I am glad that we are part of
their success.”
“Cognizant has been an excellent partner,”
says a hotel company IT executive. “They’ve pro-
vided thought leadership as well as the manpow-
er we needed to get things done.” ?
Cognizant Helps Hotel Company
with Cleaning Regimen for Data
6
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:46 PM Page 6
7
note that it matches 16 of 20
requirements that the hospitality
company has. Then we determine
what’s needed to close the gap. It
could be systems integration, cus-
tomization, or an additional package
or module that needs to be added.”
Cognizant’s customized
approach is crucial in the hospitali-
ty industry’s lodging segment, with
its sharp division of ownership and
property management. “It’s gener-
ally not a top-down technology
organization at a lodging compa-
ny,” says Rump. “For example, in
the area of front-end systems, there
tends to be a lot of custom, ‘home-
grown’ applications that have
evolved through time. Many com-
panies have also written their own
reservation systems. And there are
a variety of property management
systems in use throughout the hos-
pitality market.”
This type of IT fragmentation
can also apply within a company, he
adds. “A chain may have some 400-
to-500 room hotels but also some
40-to-50 room highway properties,
so the property management needs
for these two types of hotels are
markedly different,” says Rump.
“The question we have to answer is,
what’s the consistent data needed to
help both ends of the spectrum be
successful?”
These are actually business ques-
tions, even though they are placed in
the context of technology issues.
“Frequently, what we deal with are
business issues that are seeking a
technology solution,” says Rump.
This plays to Cognizant’s combina-
tion of a deep understanding of the
hospitality industry, along with sig-
nificant information technology
expertise and resources.
“The Cognizant business model
is industry focused, with horizontal
competencies such as business
intelligence and data warehous-
ing,” says Francisco D’Souza,
Cognizant’s COO. “When there’s a
Cognizant team with hotel industry
experience working with, for
example, a hotel franchisor, we
team up to create a strong relation-
ship that provides outstanding
business results for the hospitality
industry client.”
“We believe that by investing in
the hospitality skill set that under-
stands both business and technolo-
gy, it gives Cognizant the ability to
be the most effective at solving the
customer’s issues,” says Rump
CONCLUSION
Cognizant’s approach—combining a
thorough understanding of a compa-
ny’s business issues as well as its
technology needs—can help address
many of the challenges hospitality
companies face in today’s competi-
tive marketplace. That requires a
long-term view of business strategy,
according to Ron Glickman,
Cognizant’s VP for Retail and
Hospitality. “Companies need to
view their business strategy over a
three to five year time horizon,”
says Glickman. “They need to ask
themselves how they intend to
grow, and what their current barri-
ers to success are from a business
perspective. Both business and IT
leaders in the company must take a
360-degree view of their business
requirements, as well as their cur-
rent state of people, process and
technology. They also need to
determine the future state that they
desire, and then put together a
transition plan that goes at the pace
of change that the business can
absorb.” ?
“The hospitality industry remains characterized
by islands of information. For BI to be effective,
companies need a repository of data to
bring those ‘islands’ together in one place,
which requires investments of time, money and
technology.” — Mark Haley, Partner, The Prism Partnership
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:46 PM Page 7
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Cognizant World Headquarters
500 Glenpointe Centre West
Teaneck, NJ 07666
toll free: 1-888-937-3277
A Passion for Building
Stronger Businesses
HOSPITALITY BUSINESS PRACTICE
Travel/Travel
Distribution
Airlines Hotels Restaurants Car Rentals Cruise
ABOUT COGNIZANT
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a
leading provider of IT services. Our
more than 25,000 employees share one
single-minded passion: Dedicating our
systems expertise, industry intelli-
gence and global resources to working
closely with clients to make their busi-
nesses stronger. We combine a global
delivery model with deep knowledge
of how IT can improve productivity,
lower costs and provide better prod-
ucts and customer service. Cognizant
provides applications management,
development, integration, infrastruc-
ture management, business process re-
engineering and outsourcing, and a
number of related services such as
enterprise consulting, technology
architecture, program management,
and change management. We are
pleased to be a member of the
NASDAQ-100 Index and to be
recognized by Business Week as one
of the world’s premier information
technology companies. Our greatest
satisfaction, however, comes from
collaborating with clients to leverage
technology to make their businesses
run better, compete harder, and win
the race for the future.
START TODAY
For more information on how
to drive your business results with
Cognizant, contact us at
[email protected]
or visit our website at:
www.cognizant.com.
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:46 PM Page 8
doc_290701288.pdf
Its relatively easy to get an overarching definition of the term business intelligence.
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE:
How Information Integration
Can Boost Hospitality Growth
A HOSPITALITY TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE WHITE PAPER
BROUGHT TO YOU BY
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:44 PM Page 1
I
t’s relatively easy to get an
overarching definition of
the term “business intelli-
gence.” One hospitality
industry expert puts it in
terms of knowledge man-
agement: “Business intelligence is
related to how a company manages
anything that it knows as a compa-
ny.” Another expert, noting that hos-
pitality companies routinely gather
significant amounts of data about
their customers, their operations and
their competitors, defines BI in
relation to what the analysis of that
data can provide: “Business intelli-
gence answers the question of ‘why’
instead of ‘what’.”
In an industry as diverse as hos-
pitality, however, the challenge is
less about defining BI than about
determining what information is
most vital to running the business—
and then figuring out how to get
that crucial knowledge to those who
can act on it. For a restaurant chain,
their most important bit of BI is
likely to show the relationship of
food sales to labor costs. A cruise
line dependent on repeat business
and good word of mouth will be
interested in gauging the customer
loyalty of both actual travelers and
the agents who book trips. Airlines
and car rental companies will want
to closely monitor their affinity
relationships and the role various
websites play in steering travelers in
their direction.
BI’S BENEFITS
In the lodging segment, the chal-
lenges of improving business intelli-
gence capabilities are big—but so
are the potential rewards. When
business intelligence is done right—
when companies devote sufficient
resources to BI solutions and stress
its value throughout the organiza-
tion—hospitality companies “can
calculate, based on previous guest
behaviors, whether a particular
guest will be profitable to the hotel
or not—even if it’s that guest’s first
time at the hotel,” says Cihan
Cobanoglu, Ph.D., Assistant
Professor of Hospitality Information
Technology at the University of
Delaware College of Human
Services, Education, Public Policy,
Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional
Management. Armed with this
information, the hotel can offer the
potentially profitable guest incen-
tives in order to “maximize the
guest’s lifetime value to the hotel.”
Today’s sophisticated BI solu-
tions also allow hospitality compa-
nies to focus on addressing the most
crucial issues they face, and to do
so more quickly than they ever
could before. Top executives armed
with dashboard-style BI tools that
provide them with a snapshot of the
company’s key performance indica-
tors, along with exception-based
alerts when those indicators fall
outside pre-determined parameters,
can “see where the needs are and
focus on intervening there,” says
Daniel J. Connolly, Ph.D., Assistant
Professor of Information
Technology and Electronic
Commerce at the University of
Denver’s Daniels College of
Business.
If these BI tools also provide
executives with the ability to “drill
down” to deeper reports and analy-
sis about a particular issue, “they
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
“Business intelligence gives a hospitality company the
ability to respond more quickly to correct things that
may be problematic. Not only can companies meet prob-
lems in a more timely manner, they can take advantage
of new market opportunities by seeing things faster
than their competitors and being able to act on them.”
— Daniel J. Connolly, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Denver
2
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:44 PM Page 2
could proactively change outcomes
as opposed to just looking at them
in retrospect,” says Connolly.
“Business intelligence gives a
hospitality company the ability to
respond more quickly to correct
things that may be problematic,”
adds Connolly. “Not only can com-
panies meet problems in a more
timely manner, they can take
advantage of new market opportu-
nities by seeing things faster than
their competitors and being able to
act on them.”
He adds that BI can help hospi-
tality companies overcome “infor-
mation asymmetry”—the situation,
similar to the pre-Internet days of
buying a car from a dealer, when
the customer had little idea of the
car’s actual price. “When hospitali-
ty companies can overcome infor-
mation asymmetry and even the
playing field with their vendors,
they can improve their negotiating
position,” says Connolly. “In addi-
tion, by improving their cost struc-
tures, they can offer rate premiums
that turn into profits; they can also
boost cross-selling and upselling
capabilities to improve incremental
revenues.”
OVERCOMING BI
CHALLENGES
With this range of benefits, why
isn’t business intelligence more of
a priority in the hospitality indus-
try? For many, it is. But a number
of challenges must be overcome
for companies to reap the benefits
of BI:
• Hospitality industry struc-
ture: “There’s a distinct separation
between ownership and manage-
ment in the hospitality industry,”
notes Mark Haley, Partner at The
Prism Partnership consulting firm.
“More centralized hospitality
industry segments, such as airlines,
car rentals and cruise ships, tend to
make more of the investments
needed for BI to work effectively.”
• Dispersed data: “The hospi-
tality industry remains character-
ized by islands of information,”
notes Haley. For BI to be effec-
tive, companies “need a reposito-
ry of data to bring those ‘islands’
together in one place, which
requires investments of time,
money and technology.”
• Systems integration chal-
lenges: “Hotels can collect data
down to the color of underwear a
customer purchases at the gift
shop, but without an integrated
3
Key Steps to
Achieving BI Benefits
Hospitality companies seeking to take advantage of the
benefits of business intelligence need to align both their busi-
ness and information technology resources. After determining
which areas of BI will be most helpful to the company in
meeting its business goals, the company needs to take these
steps in order to make the best use of BI, according to Daniel
J. Connolly, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Information
Technology and Electronic Commerce at the University of
Denver’s Daniels College of Business.
• DATA GATHERING: Most hospitality companies gather enor-
mous amounts of data already—from their reservation sys-
tems, their points of sale, property restaurants, etc. To be
most effective, this data must not only be collected but
placed in a central repository, where it can be made available
to others within the organization.
• DATA CLEANSING, ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS: “This
involves turning the raw data into useful information,” says
Connolly. “This is accomplished by looking for patterns and
seeing outliers from the norm.”
• SHARING/COMMUNICATING DATA: “Some people within an
organization are ‘protectionist’ with information,” says
Connolly. “They take the old saying ‘knowledge is power’ to
mean that if they know something and they tell someone,
their own value is diminished. Companies need to open this
up and let people know it’s O.K. to share information.”
• USING THE DATA TO MAKE FACT-BASED, INFORMED DECI-
SIONS: In addition to addressing corporate culture issues about
sharing information, hospitality companies also need to stress
the value of BI once it’s available. “This way people know that
they’re making decisions with a certain degree of confidence,”
notes Connolly. “They’re not shooting from the hip, but acting
on things because this is what the data tells us.”
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:44 PM Page 3
system or a common language
between systems, most data just
sits where it is,” says the
University of Delaware’s
Cobanoglu. Indeed, respondents to
Hospitality Technology’s 2005
Lodging Industry Technology
Study identified “integrating sys-
tems” as by far their number-one
information technology manage-
ment challenge. The challenge has
grown as hotel technologists have
seen the number of systems under
their control proliferate dramatical-
ly and expand to cover every
aspect of hotel operations.
• Need for user-defined tools:
“Any BI solution needs flexibility,
so that each user can track what’s
important to them,” notes the
University of Denver’s Connolly.
“It also needs to be in a format
that works for them, whether it’s
text-based or graphical. The tools
also require drill-down capabilities,
so if the CEO turns on his comput-
er and sees that sales are down in a
particular region or a property, he
can find out why—is it food, room
rates, meeting rentals? BI needs to
offer these types of ‘slice-and-
dice’ capabilities.”
When hospitality companies can
overcome these challenges, they can
make use of BI tools to integrate
information that, in many cases,
they already routinely gather. Some
examples of the information integra-
tion that’s possible with sophisticat-
ed BI solutions include:
• Creating alerts that help match
property staffing levels to events
and expected busy (and slow) times.
• Improving yield management
based on the most current booking
data and rate comparisons.
• Improving marketing to members
of loyalty and affinity programs,
based on guests’ stated preferences
about how and when they want to
be contacted.
• Giving reservations and group
sales managers real-time access to
guest and group histories, allowing
a better match of guest needs with
available properties and services
(e.g. meeting space, area attrac-
tions and recreation,
catering/restaurants, etc.).
TECHNOLOGY’S
ROLE
While it’s the business requirements
and goals of each hospitality com-
pany—along with its corporate cul-
ture—that should determine the spe-
cific direction of a particular BI
project, information technology
undoubtedly plays an important
role. Technology can change peo-
ple’s perceptions about what’s
important, according to Connolly:
“Years ago, hotels might run a
month-end report, and by the time it
actually got back to the property, the
information in it might be as much
as 70 to 80 days old. By then, it’s
too late to do anything about what-
ever happened. Now, if everyone has
current, real-time access to the data,
the manager may need to answer
questions about his property’s num-
bers, and be able to think on his feet
to do it.”
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
4
IT DRIVERS
MOST SIGNIFICANT IT
MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES
50%
10%
19%
20%
Hiring/keeping
good IT staff
Integrating
systems
Systems
maintenance
and support
Implementing
new systems
33%
33%
22%
12%
Productivity/
efficiency
Driving more
revenue
Cost savings
Enhanced
guest services
HT Lodging Study 2005
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:45 PM Page 4
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Business intelligence thrives on data—or to be
more accurate, BI relies on clean data. Data
accuracy is crucial for giving BI’s end users
confidence that the information they’re using
to make key decisions is accurate. Therefore,
one of the first rules of establishing a data
warehouse to support BI is the old rule of com-
puter programming: “garbage in, garbage out.”
Organizations must devote resources to ensur-
ing the data they warehouse and distribute is
clean, by removing as many duplications and
inaccuracies as possible.
A leading hotel franchise organization recog-
nizes the importance of data cleansing, but faces
a related challenge in implementing its cleaning
regimen: the sheer volume of data it must gather,
house and “scrub.” The company’s data services
group evaluates nearly two million data records
each night that must be loaded into the compa-
ny’s data warehouse, so simply ensuring that
those records are correct and usable is among
the group’s most daunting tasks.
Cognizant, which provides this hotel company
with a wide range of IT services, manpower and
expertise, was instrumental in developing the de-
duplication processes that are a crucial part of
data cleansing. This hospitality company discov-
ered that it needed better ways to determine if
its data warehouse contained multiple records
for the same guest. The proliferation of phone
numbers used by any one individual (home,
office, cell, etc.), for example, made it easy for a
hotel to unwittingly set up multiple accounts for
the same individual. Ensuring that the property,
and the larger hospitality company, matches
individuals to their information requires multiple
comparisons of identifiers such as phone num-
bers, e-mail and conventional addresses and
credit card numbers.
Other challenges to ensuring data “cleanli-
ness” arise because the hotel company gathers
data from multiple sources: the hotel properties
themselves, third-party information suppliers
and other business units within the organization.
Once the data is cleaned, it’s used by internal
departments as diverse as marketing, market
research and database marketing, and the
company’s upper management.
Even though the company operates mostly as
a master franchisor, it needs clean, current data
in order to understand more about operations at
its franchised properties. The company handles a
large amount of booking information, and needs
to maintain operational and quality assurance
oversight. In addition, in order to help franchisees
and to market more effectively to consumers, the
company needs to gain a greater understanding
of guest activity and to develop accurate con-
sumer profiles.
Cognizant has played multiple roles for the
hotel company during the past five years, and
the relationship is ongoing. For various IT proj-
ects, Cognizant has analyzed architectural and
development requirements and helped the hotel
company determine whether it should do the
project in-house or outsource it. Cognizant’s peo-
ple work alongside the hotel company’s IT staff,
developing subject matter expertise as well as
providing development work. In addition, the
hotel company has outsourced maintenance and
production support work to Cognizant.
“We help the hotel company with a variety
of services, ranging from infrastructure services,
application support, custom development and
packaged implementations, to business
consulting and technology strategy,” says
Thomas Rump, Client Partner for Hospitality
at Cognizant. “It’s been a very successful
partnership, and I am glad that we are part of
their success.”
“Cognizant has been an excellent partner,”
says a hotel company IT executive. “They’ve pro-
vided thought leadership as well as the manpow-
er we needed to get things done.” ?
Cognizant Helps Hotel Company
with Cleaning Regimen for Data
6
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:46 PM Page 6
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Business intelligence thrives on data—or to be
more accurate, BI relies on clean data. Data
accuracy is crucial for giving BI’s end users
confidence that the information they’re using
to make key decisions is accurate. Therefore,
one of the first rules of establishing a data
warehouse to support BI is the old rule of com-
puter programming: “garbage in, garbage out.”
Organizations must devote resources to ensur-
ing the data they warehouse and distribute is
clean, by removing as many duplications and
inaccuracies as possible.
A leading hotel franchise organization recog-
nizes the importance of data cleansing, but faces
a related challenge in implementing its cleaning
regimen: the sheer volume of data it must gather,
house and “scrub.” The company’s data services
group evaluates nearly two million data records
each night that must be loaded into the compa-
ny’s data warehouse, so simply ensuring that
those records are correct and usable is among
the group’s most daunting tasks.
Cognizant, which provides this hotel company
with a wide range of IT services, manpower and
expertise, was instrumental in developing the de-
duplication processes that are a crucial part of
data cleansing. This hospitality company discov-
ered that it needed better ways to determine if
its data warehouse contained multiple records
for the same guest. The proliferation of phone
numbers used by any one individual (home,
office, cell, etc.), for example, made it easy for a
hotel to unwittingly set up multiple accounts for
the same individual. Ensuring that the property,
and the larger hospitality company, matches
individuals to their information requires multiple
comparisons of identifiers such as phone num-
bers, e-mail and conventional addresses and
credit card numbers.
Other challenges to ensuring data “cleanli-
ness” arise because the hotel company gathers
data from multiple sources: the hotel properties
themselves, third-party information suppliers
and other business units within the organization.
Once the data is cleaned, it’s used by internal
departments as diverse as marketing, market
research and database marketing, and the
company’s upper management.
Even though the company operates mostly as
a master franchisor, it needs clean, current data
in order to understand more about operations at
its franchised properties. The company handles a
large amount of booking information, and needs
to maintain operational and quality assurance
oversight. In addition, in order to help franchisees
and to market more effectively to consumers, the
company needs to gain a greater understanding
of guest activity and to develop accurate con-
sumer profiles.
Cognizant has played multiple roles for the
hotel company during the past five years, and
the relationship is ongoing. For various IT proj-
ects, Cognizant has analyzed architectural and
development requirements and helped the hotel
company determine whether it should do the
project in-house or outsource it. Cognizant’s peo-
ple work alongside the hotel company’s IT staff,
developing subject matter expertise as well as
providing development work. In addition, the
hotel company has outsourced maintenance and
production support work to Cognizant.
“We help the hotel company with a variety
of services, ranging from infrastructure services,
application support, custom development and
packaged implementations, to business
consulting and technology strategy,” says
Thomas Rump, Client Partner for Hospitality
at Cognizant. “It’s been a very successful
partnership, and I am glad that we are part of
their success.”
“Cognizant has been an excellent partner,”
says a hotel company IT executive. “They’ve pro-
vided thought leadership as well as the manpow-
er we needed to get things done.” ?
Cognizant Helps Hotel Company
with Cleaning Regimen for Data
6
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:46 PM Page 6
7
note that it matches 16 of 20
requirements that the hospitality
company has. Then we determine
what’s needed to close the gap. It
could be systems integration, cus-
tomization, or an additional package
or module that needs to be added.”
Cognizant’s customized
approach is crucial in the hospitali-
ty industry’s lodging segment, with
its sharp division of ownership and
property management. “It’s gener-
ally not a top-down technology
organization at a lodging compa-
ny,” says Rump. “For example, in
the area of front-end systems, there
tends to be a lot of custom, ‘home-
grown’ applications that have
evolved through time. Many com-
panies have also written their own
reservation systems. And there are
a variety of property management
systems in use throughout the hos-
pitality market.”
This type of IT fragmentation
can also apply within a company, he
adds. “A chain may have some 400-
to-500 room hotels but also some
40-to-50 room highway properties,
so the property management needs
for these two types of hotels are
markedly different,” says Rump.
“The question we have to answer is,
what’s the consistent data needed to
help both ends of the spectrum be
successful?”
These are actually business ques-
tions, even though they are placed in
the context of technology issues.
“Frequently, what we deal with are
business issues that are seeking a
technology solution,” says Rump.
This plays to Cognizant’s combina-
tion of a deep understanding of the
hospitality industry, along with sig-
nificant information technology
expertise and resources.
“The Cognizant business model
is industry focused, with horizontal
competencies such as business
intelligence and data warehous-
ing,” says Francisco D’Souza,
Cognizant’s COO. “When there’s a
Cognizant team with hotel industry
experience working with, for
example, a hotel franchisor, we
team up to create a strong relation-
ship that provides outstanding
business results for the hospitality
industry client.”
“We believe that by investing in
the hospitality skill set that under-
stands both business and technolo-
gy, it gives Cognizant the ability to
be the most effective at solving the
customer’s issues,” says Rump
CONCLUSION
Cognizant’s approach—combining a
thorough understanding of a compa-
ny’s business issues as well as its
technology needs—can help address
many of the challenges hospitality
companies face in today’s competi-
tive marketplace. That requires a
long-term view of business strategy,
according to Ron Glickman,
Cognizant’s VP for Retail and
Hospitality. “Companies need to
view their business strategy over a
three to five year time horizon,”
says Glickman. “They need to ask
themselves how they intend to
grow, and what their current barri-
ers to success are from a business
perspective. Both business and IT
leaders in the company must take a
360-degree view of their business
requirements, as well as their cur-
rent state of people, process and
technology. They also need to
determine the future state that they
desire, and then put together a
transition plan that goes at the pace
of change that the business can
absorb.” ?
“The hospitality industry remains characterized
by islands of information. For BI to be effective,
companies need a repository of data to
bring those ‘islands’ together in one place,
which requires investments of time, money and
technology.” — Mark Haley, Partner, The Prism Partnership
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:46 PM Page 7
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Cognizant World Headquarters
500 Glenpointe Centre West
Teaneck, NJ 07666
toll free: 1-888-937-3277
A Passion for Building
Stronger Businesses
HOSPITALITY BUSINESS PRACTICE
Travel/Travel
Distribution
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ABOUT COGNIZANT
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a
leading provider of IT services. Our
more than 25,000 employees share one
single-minded passion: Dedicating our
systems expertise, industry intelli-
gence and global resources to working
closely with clients to make their busi-
nesses stronger. We combine a global
delivery model with deep knowledge
of how IT can improve productivity,
lower costs and provide better prod-
ucts and customer service. Cognizant
provides applications management,
development, integration, infrastruc-
ture management, business process re-
engineering and outsourcing, and a
number of related services such as
enterprise consulting, technology
architecture, program management,
and change management. We are
pleased to be a member of the
NASDAQ-100 Index and to be
recognized by Business Week as one
of the world’s premier information
technology companies. Our greatest
satisfaction, however, comes from
collaborating with clients to leverage
technology to make their businesses
run better, compete harder, and win
the race for the future.
START TODAY
For more information on how
to drive your business results with
Cognizant, contact us at
[email protected]
or visit our website at:
www.cognizant.com.
Cognizant_HT April 3/28/06 2:46 PM Page 8
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