The case study under discussion describes the approaches and strategies that Vail Ski Resorts implement in order to improve the clients’ experience, maintain their loyalty and create motivation for potential returns. Within less than a decade, the company has managed to employ various types of systems (transaction processing, management information, decision support, and executive support) in order to assure meeting the clients’ demands and foreseeing possible risks.
The majority of instruments that the company uses to achieve their goal employ high-technologies. Thus, for example, SAS Customer Intelligence Software platforms assist considerably in carrying out valid and consistent analytics that enable managers to perform successful decision-making. The company plans to develop their service, make it more personalized and customer-focused.
While information systems perform significant contribution to decision-making and current problem solving, the case study reports that the major challenge resides in strategic planning and predicting long-term trends. Thus, the company needs to implement a system that would allow managers to evaluate future tendencies, foresee potential customers’ demands, assess possible costs of the services, as well as develop products that will be in demand in the future perspective. The problem is currently addressed through business intelligence systems that the senior management relies on in decision-making.
Vail Ski Resorts also use various apps and online service in order to make to collect the maximal amount of data on a particular customer. In the meantime, it is reported that the level of personalized communication that the company provides is relatively low. Therefore, the management has to search for alternative solutions that will allow making the communication process more personalized and collecting more information necessary for predictive analysis.
According to the case study, the company has already worked out a strategy concerning the alternative course of action. Thus, the first measure to be implemented is to develop online platforms that allow customers to record their achievements in the resort and share their experience with their acquaintances. Another alternative solution is improving personal communication with every guest with the purpose of collecting the maximal amount of the relevant information. Finally, the company can upgrade their corporate software so that the new systems will provide secure and optimal storage of the data collected and perform a consistent analysis.
The solutions described above might be beneficial for reaching the finite goal that resides in improving the customers’ experience. Thus, online platforms are likely to assist in attracting the new clients significantly as well as maintaining the loyalty of the already existing ones. The second approach that implies making communication more personalized seems to be effective, yet problematic to realize. It will be rather challenging to assure that every guest is addressed personally on the expected level without the employment of computerized tools and systems.
The last solution that resides in upgrading the corporate software needs to be carefully analyzed from the standpoint of its cost-effectiveness. Thus, the process of the implementation of this measure will be the most complex as it will imply such stages as preliminary monitoring, risk assessing, system’s testing, to name but a few.
One assumes that the principal emphasis should be laid on the improvement of experience through online platforms like EpicMix. This course of action requires fewer expenses and is likely to perform the most significant contribution to the improvement of the clients’ experience and attraction of new guests.
The case study under discussion describes the data collection process carried out by different companies. The major part of the data collected by companies concerns those aspects of a client’s personality that might be useful for improving the level of service and increasing the demand. On the whole, the character of data collected depends on a company’s profile. Thus, book services try to find out the type of literature that is most popular; airline companies collect information on the previous experience and the special preferences of their clients. In the meantime, it seems that some companies are too persistent in their intention to be informed about the client’s needs; hence, some firms collect and analyze such kind of information as a client’s income, marital status, home value, and the type of the credit card.
Fine-grained data assists companies in generating effective selling strategies and targeting the necessary client groups. Thus, due to the access to the personal information of the clientele, airline companies are able to make favorable offers and increase the sales in this manner. Moreover, the mailout that any company performs is based on the preliminary data analysis. For examples, book subscription services track the character of literature that a client chooses which provide him or her with a selection of the new arrivals that are most likely to meet their demand. Some companies also report that fine-grained data helps them improve the engineering of the product they sell.
Thus, Ford keeps a track of all the critical aspects concerning their vehicles such as mechanical failures, fuel economy, and safety facilities in order to take the timely improvement measures. Meanwhile, despite the all the benefits described above, data mining might imply a critical disadvantage from the standpoint of morality and ethics. Therefore, clients are likely to express complaints as soon as they realize how far a particular company has moved in collecting data about them.
For, example, the clients of Ford might not want to use their services when they understand that the company tracks all their movements on the road. The clients of an airline company may, likewise, protest to its attempts to take advantage from their personal data. As a result, the major drawback of data mining resides in the fact that finding a balance between effective data collection and interfering privacy is rather problematic.
According to the relevant case study, the problem described above has only one alternative course of action. In order to perform efficient data collection that would not interfere with moral and ethical principles, a company has to be particularly careful in targeting the aspects they are interested in. Thus, it is important to distinguish between those facts that can be that a client is willing to share and that kind of information that the company accesses without his or her permission. Moreover, it is critical that the company that has access to the personal facts about its clientele assures the security of this data and prevents any cases of its spread beyond the company.
As a result, it is presumed the best alternative solution for any firm is to introduce strict limits and regulations for data collection and spread. Therefore, some kinds of facts that are too personal should not be used whatever the purpose is. The relevant problem requires a timely and effective solution because the cases of the data misuse become more frequent nowadays.