Cornell Roundtable Recap: Driving Operational Excellence Through Analytics
The analytics function in hotels is still relatively new. While some hospitality companies began to build out an analytics function earlier, it has only been in the last ten to fifteen years that the majority of industry players have made investments in people and technology to support broader and deeper use of analytics in their organizations. Through the years, industry functions like sales, marketing and revenue management have come together to drive awareness and education across their disciplines, but there has yet to be a similar forum for hospitality industry analytics leaders
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On May 17, 2022, Cornell’s Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) hosted a roundtable called “Driving Operational Excellence Through Analytics” in Washington D.C. that aimed to fill this gap, bringing together analytics leaders from brands, management companies, ownership groups, vendors, OTAs, academia and consulting to address a question facing their companies:
How do we advance the supplier’s analytical expertise, such that those who are closest to the guest experience (the suppliers), can manage it more efficiently and effectively?
Three major discussion topics were covered:
- What is the right organizational structure for an analytics organization?
- How do we evaluate the “big bets,” those areas of investment that are designed to dramatically improve the use of data and analytics, but can be multi-year, large dollar projects?
- What is the right balance between business analytics, answering the burning “what happened” questions from business leaders, and advanced analytics, which are more proactive and forward-looking analyses?
Several themes emerged from the discussions:
- Most organizations struggle to maintain the balance of being responsive to the insights required by the business with ensuring centralized data integrity and efficient use of analytical talent.
- Attracting and retaining analytical talent remains a huge challenge.
- Most hospitality organizations have recognized the value of analytics, but, particularly given the hospitality ownership structure, it will continue to be challenging to encourage investment in skills and resources.
WHAT IS THE RIGHT ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE TO BALANCES RESPONSIVENESS WITH EFFICIENT USE OF RESOURCES?
There has been an ongoing debate across all industries about whether analytics organizations should be centralized or distributed. In a centralized organization, the analytics function reports up to a single leader, and acts as a “shared service” to the business. While the analytics teams collaborate closely with their business counterparts, ultimately the priorities are set by the analytics leader. In a distributed model, the analytics resources are all within the business, and the business leader ultimately controls the priorities for their team members.
