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Faculty & Research

Hospitality Leadership Through Learning
Faculty & Research

The Strategic Value of Information: A Manager's Guide to Profiting from Information Systems

Vol 6 No 7
By: Gabriele Piccoli Ph.D. and Paolo Torchio

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Executive Summary: The unprecedented volume of data captured by modern hospitality firms can be used to create economic value. This report provides a methodology to help hospitality managers identify and prioritize possible data-driven initiatives.

This process starts with identifying the transaction-processing systems in the organization and inventorying the data they capture and store. After envisioning possible initiatives that employ these data, the methodology suggests a way to prioritize projects to ensure that only those offering positive returns are implemented.

The methodology presented here allows managers to make such a cost-benefit assessment for any data-driven initiative. The analysis categorizes each initiative in one of the following four possibilities, depending on data availability and project potential:

  1. Imperatives: Initiatives that have considerable upside potential and rely on readily available information.
  2. Quick Wins: Initiatives that do not have vast upside potential but still can be readily implemented based on immediately available information.
  3. Trade-Offs: Initiatives that have great upside potential but rely on information that is not readily available.
  4. Losing Causes: Initiatives that show neither upside potential nor offer readily available information.

A case study from a real property illustrates how a hotel could use the methodology first to devise possible data-driven initiatives and then to determine which of those proposals are most worth pursuing.

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About Gabriele Piccoli Ph.D.

Gabriele Piccoli is assistant professor of Information Systems at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University. His primary research, teaching and consulting expertise is in the strategic application of information systems, customer service systems, and the use of IT to create and appropriate economic value in hospitality ventures. He also has expertise in the internal application of IT, such as in eLearning and computer based training, and the management of virtual teams.

Gabe writes extensively for practicing audiences and is the current editor of the Cutter Benchmark Review, a monthly publication addressing the hottest issues in IT management. His applied research has appeared in many of the leading hospitality and business publications, such as the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly and the Harvard Business Review. Through Harvard Business School Publishing and the Communications of the AIS Gabe has published several widely used case studies on information management and the use of IT in hospitality firms. His academic research has been published in the top Information Systems journals, including the MIS Quarterly, the Communications of the ACM, Decision Sciences Journal, and many others. He serves on the editorial board of the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly and Decision Sciences Journal.

For more information visit http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/industry/executive/pdp/about/faculty-desc.html?id=1133&event=PDP085HIM