By Katie Joll
The hospitality industry was one of the worst impacted by Covid-19, and is still battling to make a comeback. Almost 8 million hospitality jobs were lost in the US alone, as businesses were forced to shut down, or change how they operated.
Smartening up business practices and maximizing revenue can help to fuel that resurgence and is a high priority for the hospitality sector, although often easier said than done. Every hospitality business knows that customer satisfaction is a key to success, but many are still figuring out the best ways to improve the customer experience.
There’s one thing that most hospitality businesses have at their disposal yet are not using optimally – large volumes of data. Your data is more than just a snapshot (although it can show that, too!). Data can help hospitality businesses to understand trends and predict their next best-move. It can inform key business decisions and importantly, delivery of the customer experience.
It all comes down to managing that data well. One of the challenges is that important data can be spread across different sources and systems, making it difficult for business leaders to get a clear overall picture. This is where Master Data Management comes in…
What is Master Data Management?
Master Data Management (MDM) is a methodology for pulling together data from disparate sources into a “single source of truth.” Important pillars of MDM include scrubbing the data for accuracy, ensuring uniformity, and having robust data stewardship practices.
MDM is technology enabled. Organizations that use MDM need the right software to handle processing large volumes of data with accuracy. They also need the right human capabilities, with a focus on good data management practices and collaboration between business units and IT.
MDM is important for hospitality organizations because it can help you to make sense of your data. You can discover opportunities within your data for business improvements and use data insights to inform better decisions.
MDM: A Revenue Maximizer in Hospitality
Maximizing revenue and building back up from the devastation of the pandemic is important to almost every hospitality business. You might be wondering how MDM will help you to maximize revenue – one way is by helping to quantify the “intangible” aspects of service, as explained by Taylor’s University School of Hospitality, Tourism and Events lecturer Dr Shantini Thuraiselvam.
“One of the key challenges that service providers face is that service is intangible. Service is something that needs to be experienced and felt. Unlike products, it cannot be seen,” she says.
With an MDM program able to pull in all kinds of data, hospitality businesses can find the patterns or trends in the less tangible things. For example, there may be patterns in guest reviews that point to strategies for improving customer satisfaction, and therefore driving more revenue.
MDM is great for analyzing large volumes of data and getting a better picture of the tangible aspects of hospitality, too. For example, a hotel can see trends in when customers want to book rooms and at what pricing. This can help them to better determine the right price at the right time.
Data analysis can also help you to target your marketing more accurately. If you have a comprehensive picture of who your customers are and what their preferences include, you can speak more directly to those people and drive more business.
MDM opens the door for hospitality businesses to do more with their data. For example, AI or predictive analytics can be leveraged to improve what businesses offer. Customers could be presented with highly personalized offers and customized recommendations that have been tailored with the help of an algorithm.
How to Implement MDM for Your Hospitality Business
It’s important to note that implementing MDM requires ongoing commitment to improving how you manage data. It’s not a program to set up once and forget, as things change within your business, you may need to make changes to how data is handled in order to get optimal results.
The following are some basic steps for implementing MDM:
- Establish the business case for MDM. You’ll need stakeholder buy-in and the easiest way to gain it is to show how MDM will help to solve real problems in the business and drive performance toward achieving key goals.
- Determine your goals. What will MDM specifically help your company to achieve?
- Analyze the current state. Evaluate your current data sources and quality. Where are the gaps that you need MDM to fill? Where are the bottlenecks in processes?
- Establish clear metrics and governance policies. How will you measure success? You need to document metrics and policies of governance. Data governance is a key dimension of MDM and will help your organization to maintain compliance with internal policies and any legislative requirements.
- Establish data stewardship practices. These lay out who will have overall responsibility for ensuring data quality and effective data management.
- Choose the right MDM technology. You’ll need software that can process large volumes of data from different channels. The best options support scalability and flexibility over time, so that they’re able to grow with your needs.
Common MDM challenges
MDM can be highly beneficial for helping hospitality businesses to drive revenue and compete in a challenging landscape. However, it’s not without challenges. Some common issues include:
- Data complexity. Organizations often have a lack of consistency across data, especially if legacy systems are involved. If this sounds like your organization, you’ll need a plan for how to treat data so that it maintains integrity, while coming across in a uniform way.
- Overlap. This can add to data complexity – where organizations have different data on the same subject (such as the customer) across different systems. You’ll need to cut out duplicates as part of the data transfer process.
- Data governance. If your data governance policies weren’t the best before, this can add complexity across the organization. Clear data governance and data stewardship policies can help.
Conclusion
Master Data Management can be a game changer for hospitality businesses wanting to maximize their revenue. Your data holds a lot of potential for discovering new opportunities and helping your organization to make better decisions.
MDM can help you to discover the patterns in the less tangible parts of your business. Aspects such as customer sentiment and suggestions can point to opportunities to improve services and drive more revenue.
Tangible data such as pricing, timing, and types of services can also help you to optimize operations and reduce any missed revenue opportunities. In fact, many hospitality businesses are relying on data to help them recover from the pandemic, it’s just that most haven’t yet optimized how they manage and interpret data.
In a competitive post-Covid world, Master Data Management can help to drive hospitality recovery. Get started by contacting Semarchy today.