ST. PAUL DE VENCE- At the Unisys Conference being held here March 13-15, Barry Shuler, functional CTO/Marriott International, reiterated the importance of information technology and its effect on business. Specifically, Shuler noted in order for a hotel company to prosper during this “challenging era,” it must focus on its enterprise architecture, and develop new long-lasting, enterprise-class application systems that improve business processes in cost effective ways by consolidating out-dated, overlapping, and too plentiful legacy applications. Shuler said that currently Marriott’s 2,400 worldwide properties are operating off of 220 legacy systems, which include everything from its five Property Management Systems to Sales and Catering to Marriott Rewards. As Marriott’s application portfolio evolves, these 220 existing systems are slated for replacement by approximately 50 target applications, which will improve the company’s technology functionality, flexibility and scalability. Ultimately, Marriott is looking for off-the-shelf application software that will provide the functionality of one or more of these target applications, especially the 15 or so systems in its Lodging Front Office operations, which include F&B, reservations, and check-in/out. “Our research has shown that its sometimes more economical to buy and/or build a cluster of target applications than to do them one at a time,” he stated. Primarily, this is because the cost of building a “wooden bridge” from a new system to an old system, which makes the two compatible and allows the hotel to function without the expense of replacing all of its systems simultaneously, is almost always very high. “This is simply because the bridging cost and ongoing legacy system and technology maintenance costs outweigh the target development, deployment and operating cost for the future,” said Shuler. Marriott’s ultimate information technology goal is to create an integrated portfolio of application systems- including guest profile information, consolidated inventory and rate management, guest management, yield management, marketing program support, etc.- that would span all of its brands. However, a program of that magnitude would be extremely costly for a company of Marriott’s scale and would ultimately have to live up to strict criteria. Before a new application could be selected, said Shuler, Marriott would have to analyze the following questions: Do we know its cost maintenance? Procurement costs? How much network it would use/cost? What’s the cost to build, buy, and rollout the system? Which target applications will replace which legacy applications? And, importantly, which target applications require bridges to legacy applications if everything can’t be done at the same time? Since the cost is still too high for replacing its five PMSs with a single system, and currently there is not a commercial application available that meets its needs, Marriott was forced to develop its Rewarding Welcome program on its existing PMSs. “I hate it when we have to apply significant funding to upgrade existing application systems that I know we are trying to retire. But it was quicker than waiting to develop a whole new system, so it was a good business decision,” he said. However, Marriott is still looking for an ‘off the shelf’ application solution, he said, adding that the hotel company is exerting as much influence as possible “to ensure that needed functionality eventually shows up in the marketplace at a reasonable cost.”
Barry Shuler