The I in IT is no longer just ‘Information’
A new year is always a good time to take stock of what came before, in particular in a fast-moving industry like IT. I started 2017 at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas seeing technologies that I thought would alter human-technology interaction if they took off, and most have evolved and gained momentum in the market. With CES having just concluded, it reminds me of how the ‘I’ in IT has evolved from ‘Information Technology’ to ‘Individualizing Technology.’ I use the term individualizing because we’re headed into an era where consumers expect tech to not just enable, but personalize. And, companies need to treat tech not just as a noun (asset), but as an active verb (service) — a function that continually responds and evolves for the end user.
And there’s good reason for hoteliers to re-think IT in this way. Generation Z, or iGeneration, are people that were born from about ~1995 to ~2010. The oldest Gen Z turns 23 in 2018, and though they share similarities with Gen Y/Millennials, Gen Z are different enough that the integration of technology, spaces, and services requires new thoughts. For one, whereas Gen Y drove the rise of social networks and social media, Gen Z have driven the rise of mobile messaging. Whereas Gen Y are market-savvy, Gen Z are currently making markets like esports and Youtuber-ing. Gen Y want to belong to a community; Gen Z want to participate and make an impact. They are creators, not passive observers.
As a result, technology needs to be re-imagined not as fait accompli and more as a platform with services for customers to springboard into their own creations.
A traditional IT organization, therefore, needs to re-examine the ways in which it deals with the following things that have been under its purview:
· Information — beyond transactional data, which by now should be a standard for any company, the types of information that could be critical are often outliers, unstructured, multi-dimensional, multi-format, and qualitative
· Infrastructure — beyond cables and wires in the physical building, infrastructure technology increasingly plays important roles in capturing data about users, environments, interactions, as well as in making physical design individualizable
· Innovation — now requiring even more of a multi-disciplined approach to integrate technology, spaces, and services together into a holistic user experience
The above three points are the minimum required to transform IT to Individualizing Technology — what we can do as an industry to leverage technology, spaces, and services to provide a basic individualized experience for every person that interacts with us offline and online.
In other words, the hotel experience is individualized for every guest in the same way the smartphone is individualized for every owner.
For IT to move to Individualized Technology, the people in a hotel organization will have to evolve from a technology-centric focus to a customer-centric focus. This will be challenging as previously IT was more about being a specialist. IT departments were often in their own silos, separated from the rest of the hotel organization, with their own culture, language, priorities, processes, and shielded from much of the day-to-day customer interactions.
If IT still only occupies the traditional role of information technology within a hotel group, then the hotel group must find other ways to innovate from the back of house through the customer experience to stay relevant and therefore, competitive. Some hotel groups have already realized this, and have employed options from crowdsourcing to forming partnerships to joint ventures to outright acquisitions to fill internal gaps.
Whatever the path, hopefully IT in your company won’t become the nightmare of that very scary summer blockbuster, “It.”
Nonetheless, buckle up, I think we’re in for a wild ride.
