Troubleshooting Information Systems at the Royal Hotel

Stacie Lorentz

Case Study #1

Troubleshooting Information Systems at the Royal Hotel

September 23, 2015

Case Overview

In 2006, after finishing his first year in the master’s program, Blake Cantera started a very exciting summer internship at Fancy Consultants & Company.  Excited to start working, Blake received his first assignment at the Royal Hotel.  The Royal Hotel in New York City was a luxury all-suite hotel primarily serving an executive clientele visiting Manhattan on business (53).

Blake quickly met with the general manager, who was an old school hotelier that got straight to business.  Being a luxury hotel, the quality of service was the main goal.  Light bulbs out in a room, a stain on the carpet, or a clogged toilet are all examples of unacceptable standards that cannot be tolerated.  After examining the property and speaking with the general manager, the directors of housekeeping, maintenance, and IT, Blake recommended that the Royal Hotel purchase and install M-Tech’s Espresso Rapid Response Solution (53).

The main advantages of the Espresso Rapid Response Solution are rapid response, quality control, preventive maintenance, and reporting.  The new system would enable the use of a phone interface, allowing workers to report problems with the room as soon as the problem is noticed and identified.   With the old system, the housekeeper had to communicate to the maintenance department at the end of the shift when a problem was identified.  Communication was sometimes lost and the period of time it took to relay the message could be up to several hours since the problem was first noticed.  The new system made it possible to report the problem immediately and get the solution started fast.  With immediate reporting of problems, housekeepers and maintenance could no longer “forget” about problems or claim they never received notice of the problem.  This would in return increase quality control and boost the service quality rating.  The new system allowed for preventive maintenance since the maintenance department would be able to identify recurrent problems and stop them before they happened again.  The new system also allowed for extracting valuable reports.  The managers could use these reports to reward best performers and create incentives to motivate employees (53).  

Blake negotiated with the vendor for the application license, configuration and start-up costs, ongoing maintenance and support, and a week of onsite training.  Just as Blake was preparing for the roll-out and implementation phases of the project, the consulting firm called him away for another assignment.  Blake handed over the Royal Hotel account to a classmate from VMU, Jack Scarso.  Although he was not confident in Jack, Blake handed over all the paperwork and his draft information system design.  Blake also warned Jack about the impatient and aggressive general manager and to not let him rush the design because it was such a complex operation.  After about a month at his new assignment, Blake received a very unhappy phone call from his boss at the consulting firm. The general manager from the Royal Hotel called the consulting firm complaining about a failed system that no one is using, and a wasted investment.  Blake was on the first flight back to the Royal Hotel to assess the damages caused by his firm and classmate (54).