Amadeus recently released an interesting whitepaper aimed at hospitality industry executives. Entitled “Transform your growth strategy now”, the paper focuses on the barriers between marketing, operations and technology that hinder frictionless commerce in the hospitality industry. Amadeus does its best to quantify the continuing and emerging tectonic shifts happening within the travel industry: continued cost pressures, cloud computing, mobile distribution, meta-search and social networking.
The whitepaper does a good job of describing what most hotel companies (indeed, any company that wishes to remain in business today!) should already be doing to address change in the market and to foster forward momentum — namely aligning business and IT goals. Naturally, these goals then drive business strategy and key priorities. Then, and only then, should a company define its underlying IT objectives. All this is comes from the standard IT / business consulting playbook. However, the key is in execution strategy.
At this point the whitepaper fudges somewhat by declaring the solution to be an “IT Pathfinder”, or as Tom Conophy, Executive Vice President & CIO – InterContinental Hotels Group says, “A strong technician with business knowledge”. Indeed, savvy companies, from start-ups to Fortune 500 conglomerates, have been doing their best to find and retain such “IT Pathfinders” for decades. It’s painfully clear that high-value professionals with multi-dimensional skills that transverse IT and business will be in ever increasing demand in the future. But, Amadeus misses the point to some extent. Companies will increasingly need true pathfinders not only with business and IT skills but with the more important qualities of creativity, insight and leadership (not attributes found in many cookie-cutter business schools).
Sign-up to receive a copy of the whitepaper, here.