Blake, the Espresso!

First, regardless of how Jake did to the new information system made up by Blake, the Espresso! application looks not very capable to the Royal Hotel. After Blake returned the Royal Hotel, he found the machine was like abandoned for a long time sitting in a corner collecting dust (Piccoli 54). This showed his information system solution was failed. Blake simply gave a solution that looked very useful to the Royal Hotel itself, because he did not realize what the hotel truly needed and did not do enough research. Basically, Blake should have thought about whether the Espresso! application was really easy to use or not comparing with the old manual system. Also, Blake should have considered about training of staffs. The new technology has an information terminal to gather all the information of reported problems so people need to be familiar with it. Actually, the maintenance department of the Royal Hotel should be responsible to light bulb out problem, not the information technology manager. What Blake should do is to help the maintenance department change the light bulb easier, faster and more efficiency. The housekeeping and maintenance departments should be easily get into it and work efficiently using the new information technology system rather than calling to report the issue. Blake knew this, but he did not make it more efficiency. Maybe the maintenance department and housekeeping department can have the workers ready 24 hours a day, since troubleshooting problem can be anytime in a day. Note that the housekeeping labors can be the one who checks the amenities every room, and reports the issue to maintenance department. Before the next guest they have enough time to let trained workers deal with it.

Second, Blake did not communicate with the housekeeping and maintenance departments, who are the user of Espresso! application to know the first-hand user’s feedback. After Jake took the position, Blake just asked Jake about if everything was okay although he knew what kind of person Jake was. I think he should have contacted with the Royal Hotel itself to know how the Espresso! application worked. From John’s article as reference, ‘Most stakeholders are willing to tolerate downtime if you explain the actions being taken to restore service. Members of senior management need to show their commitment, presence and leadership of the incident.’ (Halamka, 2010) After Jake took the place, maybe Blake was tired, lazy or arrogant about the solution come up with by himself, so he did not ask too much about the situation. For basic ‘What to do’ list, it is hard to confess the mistakes by your own (Helamka, 2010). Thus, Blake should acknowlege about what he should fix.