Canyon Ranch Resorts Case Study

As CIO, how would you make the case for a customer relationship management CRM and business intelligence systems at Canyon Ranch?

Canyon Ranch could certainly improve upon their IT capabilities in the areas of customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence (BI) systems. CRM is the process of using business data and information to get a stronger understanding of your customers’ needs and behaviours. Use of this information allows a company to develop stronger and long lasting relationships with their customers creating a win/win situation for both parties. Business intelligence is a similar process that also gathers information in an attempt to provide solutions that can help companies become more efficient, spot areas for cost savings and identify new business opportunities.

BI and CRM systems have the possibility of helping Canyon Ranch face their challenges of staying true to core business strategy and maintaining their competitive advantage amongst a growing number of competitors. The implementation of both CRM and BI systems might be accompanied by a learning curve and extra costs; however this is a small price to pay for the potential benefits and advantages that these systems can produce which are outlined below:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

• Better Customer Service: With continuous growth in the industry and the threat of more competition a key for Canyon Ranch becomes customer loyalty. Averaging about 17,000 customers each year, Canyon Ranch wants to ensure that they achieve a considerable amount of repeat business meanwhile attracting new customers as well. As Canyon Ranch has a heavy emphasis on word of mouth marketing they must work to maintain and improve upon their high standard of customer service. Both CRM and BI can allow Canyon Ranch to narrow in on their target markets even further and cater to their specific needs. With large client lists it is important for Canyon Ranch to maintain a strong level of personalization and create unique relationships with customers regardless of which employee is dealing with them. CRM for example allows for the development “of customer profiles, giving employees the ability to treat each client individually. As a result, each employee is better informed about each customer's specific needs. CRM helps the organization easily and quickly modify its level of service in order to match each customer's profile. This improved customer service leads to increased customer loyalty and correspondingly decreases customer dissatisfaction. CRM systems also help the company receive feedback from customers regarding products they have purchased.” (Writing, Alexis)

• More Customers and Revenue: A goal of many businesses is to gain more customers and essentially generate more revenue which is the case for Canyon Ranch as well. The use of CRM systems can help