CUSTOMER PROFILEwww.bplogix.com

PROCESS DIRECTOR ENABLES STARWOOD HOTELS & RESORTS TO KEEP PACE WITH ITS GROWTH

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with nearly 1,300 properties in some 100 countries and employing approximately 188,000 people at its owned and managed properties. Starwood is a fully integrated owner, operator and franchisor of hotels, resorts and residences under the renowned brands: St. Regis®, The Luxury Collection®, W®, Westin®, Le Méridien®, Sheraton®, Tribute Portfolio™, Four Points® by Sheraton, Aloft®, Element®, along with an expanded partnership with Design Hotels™. The Company also boasts one of the industry’s leading loyalty programs, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG®).

As the leading hotel company in high growth markets around the world, Starwood properties are distinguished by lifestyle concepts, design

leadership, and innovation. Its renowned global brands lie at the heart of the company’s competitive advantage. The Starwood network is poised to grow, expanding its base of top tier hotels with management and franchise contracts. The collective strength of the unmatched global platform – Starwood Preferred Guest, sales, revenue management, and web teams – has positioned Starwood for extraordinary cash generation.

Matt GuglielmettiDirector of Revenue Management

Systems Strategy and Support

Process Timeline is a vital part of how we run our processes. Our team couldn’t

imagine running without Process

Director.

OPTIMIZING REVENUE MANAGEMENT

Matt Guglielmetti is the Director of Revenue

Management Systems Strategy and Support

within the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Hotel

Operations Group. He is responsible for

overseeing Starwood’s automated Revenue

Management Systems, which provide state of

the art forecasting and optimization capabilities.

Through this optimization, rates and availability is

determined for hotels globally.

The Revenue Management system involves a

lengthy installation process, as it is conducted

across properties globally. At each location,

multiple users must be trained on the system,

and work with the associated process. The

process itself involves constituents across many

departments, as well as multiple pass-offs from

the business users to the IT organization.

In addition to the pass-offs, the process itself

changes frequently. Optimizing the system,

streamlining it and ensuring accountability is key

to successfully managing and maximizing revenue

across the properties.

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We knew we needed to automate our processes

to have a better customer experience.

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MANAGING GROWTH THROUGH AUTOMATION

Guglielmetti heads a global team of 15 people

that are part of Revenue Management Systems.

His staff are located from Singapore and China to

Stamford, Connecticut to Seattle, Washington.

Given the pace of acquisitions by Starwood

Corporate and the need to implement its

revenue management system to match that

pace, Guglielmetti knew a change was required.

He recognized the need to change how

implementations were being handled. At that time

the revenue management implementation lasted

for 25 weeks and had 33 steps initially. Soon

thereafter his team was being asked to deploy

the system to nearly 100 properties (from an initial

request of 20) and to do so without increasing

headcount for project management, training

and/or support. To Guglielmetti, that sounded

like an opportunity to automate the revenue

management process.

“Manual tracking, excel spreadsheets and email

pass offs were what we had — and they were

not scalable. Excel and email was the extent of

our ‘automation,’” stated Guglielmetti. “We knew

we needed to automate our processes to have

a better customer experience and it had to be

one that could be used by business users and be

quickly implemented,” he added.

A ZERO PROGRAMMING SOLUTION

Recognizing that Starwood wanted to streamline

and automate its process, and that Management

did not want to engage IT or an outside

company each time an adjustment was needed,

Guglielmetti’s group had a mandate: find a

software solution that could accommodate a

process that consisted of many tasks and many

dependencies.

Despite trying an in-house workflow solution that

did not fulfil its needs Guglielmetti pressed on.

“We continued to believe that the only way to

address Management’s request was by automating

our process—and we were determined to address

this challenge,” he remarked.

As he began to explore third party solutions,

Guglielmetti concluded that what he needed was

a product that would address workflow but also

include a framework for managing processes.

Ultimately that led him to conclude that he needed

a true BPM solution.

Excel and email was the extent of our ‘automation.’

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Because its processes vary based on hotel

ownership whatever tool was selected had to

be dynamic. Guglielmetti began his research,

ultimately looking at five products. They ranged

from cloud-based solutions to SharePoint—and

ran the gamut of functionality. He knew that

Management would not want a tool that relied on

technical resources to program. And the clock

was ticking.

CLOUD AND WEB-BASED REQUIREMENTS

Guglielmetti’s team determined its primary

criteria. Among those were:

• Routedocumentswithoutuserintervention

• Beeasyforenduserstonavigate

• Accommodateenduserdecisionsasto next steps

• Manageparallelnon-linearprocesses running concurrently

• Interactwithhotelusersoutsidetheir own group

• Providesecuritybasedonsystemroles and responsibilities

• Cloud-basedandWeb-based– no infrastructure on site

• Beabletodevelopthesolutionwithout IT involvement

• Bedynamicandcost-effective

Guglielmetti confirmed that the product selected

also had to be flexible enough to allow business

users to update the process and properties

already in process.

Over the course of three months, three products

were short-listed. The team drilled down,

confirming that it had a number of processes

whose workflow, activities and routing needed

to take different paths based on pre-defined

criteria. Upon meeting every one of Starwood’s

criteria, Process Director was recommended,

then selected.

“We immediately had a good feeling about BP

Logix. We felt that the team took the time to

learn about our processes and demoed to us in

a way that reflected that knowledge, which was

important to us. Other vendors did not do that,”

he declared.

DEVELOPING THE SYSTEM

As a business group, Guglielmetti and his

colleagues had determined that whatever solution

they selected would not require writing code. Yet

one of the biggest challenges they subsequently

faced was developing this automated system

had to be added to their current workload. They

did not have either dedicated time or additional

resources.

With new properties and users being added

all the time, Starwood’s process had to be

implemented quickly. “We really liked the

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Microsoft Word plug-in, felt it was something a

business user could digest and use and believed

it would enable us to develop eForms quickly.

Once we understood how the Process Timeline™

worked, we believed we could develop our

system without needing IT to assist,” remarked

Guglielmetti.

Starting with 33 steps in its Timeline and

at an average of 27 weeks of elapsed time,

Guglielmetti’s team developed the implementation

of Starwood’s automated revenue management

system. As it has been used across more

properties and staff, there are now closer to 100

steps and the steps have become smaller. In

addition, the elapsed time to implement has been

reduced to approximately 15 weeks. “Control is

more finite, with smaller tasks and assignments.

I don’t understand why anyone would do it any

other way,” Guglielmetti observed.

SUSTAINABILITY, PROFITABILITY AND

SUCCESS

Sustainability that increases profitability is a

key metric within Starwood. Automation that

optimizes its systems and processes is critical to

the company’s growth and control.

Increasing velocity, streamlining property-

facing communication and facilitating faster

turn-over to teams (task pass-offs) are three

of the major business problems that Process

Director is addressing for Starwood. In addition

to the next generation revenue management

system, Guglielmetti’s group has run seven other

processes including onboarding one of its newest

brands, Design Hotels. Improving efficiency and

ensuring that things don’t fall through the cracks

are two of the immediate benefits Starwood has

achieved.

According to Guglielmetti, “I love the Word

plug-in and preach Process Timeline. It’s a vital

part of how we run our processes. Our team is

at the point where they couldn’t imagine running

without Process Director. Our IT colleagues are

using it as well for the pass-offs that involve them.

We are very pleased with our results.”

Our IT colleagues are using it as well for the pass-offs that

involve them. We are very pleased with our results.

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