Addressing Reservations

The five key reports of the initial phase include two indicators provided by Smith Data Research -- a travel industry number-cruncher -- that compare the performance of Choice’s various brands against its competitors. The third report involves channel distribution and will measure the volume of room reservations arriving through the hotelier’s various outlets (phone calls placed to the company’s main line, Web site reservations, reservations made through airline partners, or people just showing up at the front desk). The fourth also involves reservations, but it's not static, offering employees customized information on an ad hoc basis. The fifth and final is a brand scorecard, which itself consists of five key metrics: supply, new construction conversions, financial data, quality assurance (details arrived at via an army of decidedly un-technological secret shoppers) and operations. This last one includes the ubiquitous revenue per available room, occupancy rates and average daily rates.

Once the decision had been made to purchase the BI software, other challenges awaited DeCorrevont and her team. Namely, working with employees to find out what, exactly, they wanted in their reports. This was especially time-consuming when they were trying to discern the sort of information Choice's marketing department required from Smith Data Research.

"They weren't really sure which numbers would be most beneficial to them," DeCorrevont said. Calls to Smith were made over and over, and finally they got it fine-tuned. "That was a time-consuming process. But now we're looking at something that meets everyone's needs with only one report."

And, she said, that report's level of detail will be much improved. Company executives, for example, will be able to drill down so deep inside those industry numbers that they'll be able to compare the performance of a single motel vs. the performance of a competitor on the other side of the interstate.

As for phase two of the rollout, company executives do currently have dashboards, but they lack the detail and personalization that employees want BI to provide. Now encoded in Java script, the dashboards will require re-writing, DeCorrevont said. Once complete, high-level managers will be able to log onto their personalized dashboard -- "a bunch of speedometers on the page," explained Business Objects' Pat Morrissey -- and receive alerts if their chosen metrics are tanking, or taking off. If occupancy is down at a certain brand in a certain region, for example, red flags will go up on that executive's dashboard.

Eventually, Choice hopes to expand its new BI system throughout the company, touching not just the PCs on executive's desks, but also those at its individual franchisees. As for the immediate future, the company has no formal method for evaluating the success of the BI installation, other than simply to see if business improves.

"We're taking the smaller steps right now," DeCorrevont said. "We're focusing on the next few releases to see how things go."