IT Hilton Case Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

IT Hilton Case - Coursework Example Good brands foster customer loyalty and loyal customers are more willing to increase their frequency of purchase or number of purchases in addition to becoming marketers for the hotel through word of mouth. Brand is therefore an important asset to any company. 2. Evaluate the performance of the Customers Really Matter initiative to date. Calculate an ROI for the project as: (Total number of calls * increase conversion ratio * net revenue per call) / OnQ CRM investment. Support this analysis with qualitative rationale. Note the difference between OnQ (the entire infrastructure for running Hilton that cost $100m) and the OnQ CRM which is the focus here. From the chart above that has been derived from the ROI equation it is evident that the Customers Really Matter initiative has been having an increased positive impact to Hilton. The positive slope manifests an increasing return on investment. From the chart we can conclude that Hilton’s managers have been effectively using the i nvestment in OnQ CRM to produce more income. Another way of looking at this chart is that the numerator has been increasing more rapidly than the denominator. This implies that many calls were closed (as shown by conversion ratio increases), Hilton’s efficiency increased (as shown by net revenue per call increases) and increase in customers/potential customers (as shown by increase in total number of calls). In summary it means that Hilton is improving its ability to extract value from its investment in the OnQ CRM system. 3. What do you think Hilton leadership should do after the Blackstone acquisition? Should they further invest in CRM or simply maintain the status quo? What aspects of Hilton’s CRM should be strengthened, if any, and how? Hilton leadership should focus their efforts on using the resources obtained from the Blackstone acquisition to tackle their threats and weaknesses. For starters Hilton is aware that consistency and delivery in service is heavily de pendent on their front-end staff. Secondly, with the CRM Hilton is slowly losing the chance to interact with its customers i.e. human touch is slowly being replaced by IT systems. Hilton is in the hospitality industry and in as much as IT systems may be effective; they lack the capacity to create personal relationships with customers. Furthermore, too much investment in the CRM would create too much reliance on it, which implies that it could be a single point of failure. This only increases the risk associated with using the CRM. From the points raised above we believe that Hilton would be better off in maintaining the status quo than in over-investing on the CRM. The funds obtained from Blackstone could instead be used to improve the group’s management system, front-end staff skills acquisition and to support the expansion drive towards increasing its hotels to increase its market share. From Exhibit 1 (Applegate, Piccoli, and Dev 7) we can see that Hilton is the fifth la rgest hotel group. Blackstone’s funds should be used to continue the aggressive expansion program. 4. Briefly evaluate the potential value of CRM for one of the firm’s a team member works for. How significant could CRM be to the firm? Does CRM raise any potential customer data privacy concerns in this example? Dell is a leading PC manufacturer in the world and as such requires the services of a robust CRM that can handle over three