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After stints at Procter & Gamble, HPE, and DHL, Jaime Gonzalez Peralta joined Radisson Hotel Group four years ago as CIO for EMEA and became global CIO in April 2020. It has been a particularly complicated time due to the paralysis the pandemic has had on businesses. The world of travel.
During this period, thanks to the period of reflection afforded by the health crisis and the opportunity to devote time to innovation, González Peralta is using technology and digitization to better realize the transformation plans that the multinational company started shortly before taking over. began a stronger transition to So now, he says, more than 90% of the company’s business initiatives are possible through technology born from the IT sector, which he leads.
After more than three years of leading IT for Radisson Hotel Group globally, what milestones have you achieved?
When I joined the group in June 2019, our decision-making centers were twofold: the Americas and the rest of the world. They were working with each other, but in the first quarter of 2020, before the pandemic hit, I became global CIO and brought both organizations together. Then, in March, the pandemic hit and the hotel’s activities came to a halt, but this gave him the opportunity to accelerate the company’s transformation and digitalization process, which he started in 2018 with a five-year plan. Ta. Radisson’s IT department, previously considered a cost center, became a central pillar of the group’s strategy thanks to this plan.
We also completely rebuilt and created all the IT elements the company needed during the pandemic, including a new ERP, purchasing system, hotel management system, and human resources system. We closed three of our own data centers and moved completely to the cloud with several providers. We also assembled a new data strategy to completely reimagine the company, from security and finance to hospitality and a new website. I made everything new from scratch.
Our owner, Kinjiang International, has set a very clear goal for us: to move from a difficult-to-maintain system created in the 80’s to a modern system. And in just 8 months, he was able to bring his 80% of the platform to current technology.
From an organizational perspective, we evolved to a nearshore model to attract the talent we needed for new technologies. And we did this not only to get closer to operations, but also to take advantage of the possibilities that Spain offers in human capital in the tourism sector. With more than half of the IT organization joining his 2020 year, he basically had to build a flyable plane.
How did you restructure your IT workforce?
So we adopted a land-based model and established a center of excellence in Madrid, where we managed all operations and led all implementation projects around the world. In this center he has 350 experts of more than 40 nationalities. However, it is made up of people from fields such as purchasing, human resources, finance, architecture, and revenue management, as well as IT professionals.
So how many people does Radisson’s IT department consist of around the world?
Approximately 90. The question that arises is, when he can manage over 1,000 hotels worldwide, why only 90? Because we have also been able to take advantage of all this change to introduce a higher level of outsourcing, which we have been working on with the EY team. This was the key to this process.
I think it would have been difficult to eliminate legacy systems to achieve such a major transformation.
It was a courageous and confident decision. It was clear that IT (both from an application and infrastructure perspective) security and data were built into the company’s DNA. Of course, our CEO was very clear about this vision.
The plan covers the period from 2018 to 2023. What is your overall investment in IT? What are the next steps?
Although I cannot disclose the details of the investment, it amounted to a significant amount. We have already begun our next plans to evolve our revenue management system and reach the level of sophistication we are seeking through the application of machine learning.
Traditionally, companies in the hotel industry have focused on implementing a variety of interconnected, modular solutions. However, the decision Radisson made was that he would use only one system with a customer database. This has significantly reduced the level of integration and change management required and increased agility in the face of challenges. Additionally, company-wide support is essential for this technology transformation, as making such a major change impacts people, systems, and procedures.
You mentioned putting together a new data strategy to restructure the company. Why is data so important to your IT vision?
I like to call the IT department “Information Decision Systems.” Our differentiation comes not from managing functional solutions, but from systems that allow us to capture information in a way that allows us to adapt. Explaining the past is complex, but predicting the future and knowing exactly what actions to take to influence it is even more complex. We have 900 employees and use fully certified, data-based decision-making tools. For us, this is fundamental. Additionally, we have moved to data-driven execution. For example, all hotel directors and department heads have dashboards that provide the information they need to manage, predict, and make decisions in the future.
One of the IT departments’ missions is to make the most of technology so that users, both in hotels and central offices, can save time and focus on more valuable tasks.
Already working on generative AI?
The challenge for CIOs and businesses is to stay focused. Radisson remains focused on a set strategic plan, which makes us unique. However, a small group within the company is focused on innovation. We have an innovation committee comprised of operations, finance, and IT that looks at new technologies. Don’t be afraid to experiment. In fact, we act quickly to fail quickly or succeed quickly. This is what happened with RPA. We tested this three years ago, confirmed its usefulness, and now have RPA factories throughout our company.
However, we are cautious when it comes to AI. We are analyzing the maturity level and have a private test environment with Microsoft to see what benefits we can see in the short term, especially in terms of user interaction. As we look to the future, we believe that the way users search for hotels will change dramatically. This is because not only will search volumes increase, but the searches themselves will be different than before. And this is what we are currently investigating.
From a company goal perspective, we’re going to continue with these five years, but from an IT perspective, we’re looking at a maximum of three years, ideally two years. Only then can you make decisions that you will not regret in the near future.
With these technological changes, what do you think the future holds for the world of hotels and tourism?
It’s very exciting. We have impressive growth plans enabled by technology. This allows you to work faster, be more efficient, and reduce the cost of change and transformation. We focus on systems by and for people, which creates a continuous dialogue between the IT and business domains.
Technology will influence the future of hotels. Not only will our relationships with users be smarter, but we will also be more efficient in terms of infrastructure, water consumption, and energy.
In our field, we manage emotions, and that is the trust that customers have in a brand. If a user visits her website and does not find the information they need, in the way they need it and in a reasonable amount of time, they are entering the competition. Therefore, a key investment we are making is in how we present ourselves to our customers, including creating immersive experiences and improving our websites and apps. We want to customize it to your needs as much as possible.
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