E-Tourism Topic: Competing on Knowledge: How the Power of Information Can Enable Great Things Overview: Introduction Defining business intelligence Data versus Information The Balanced Scorecard

1. E-Tourism
Competing on Knowledge: How the
Power of Information Can Enable
Great Things

2. OVERVIEW
• Introduction
• Defining business intelligence
• Data versus Information
• The Balanced Scorecard

3. Introduction
FIGURE 10-1 A Quick Test of Your Firm’s Informational Savviness

4. Defining business intelligence
• Managing today’s complex hospitality business
requires effective use of information and a
sophisticated business intelligence system that
can gather, store, analyze, synthesize, share,
and communicate information throughout the
organization to those who need it, when and
where they need it so that they may apply it in
effective, value-creating ways.

5. Defining business intelligence
FIGURE 10-2 Key Goals for Business Intelligence Systems

6. Defining business intelligence
FIGURE 10-3 A Proposed Textbook Definition for Business Intelligence

7. Data versus information
• The terms data and information are often used
interchangeably, yet they are not the same.
– It is worth noting the distinction.
• There is actually a data hierarchy, which is
illustrated in Figure 10-4.
FIGURE 10-4 Data Hierarchy (Source:
Adapted from Professor Richard G. Moore
(Emeritus), Cornell University’s School of
Hotel Administration.)

8. Data versus information
FIGURE 10-5 The Process of Refining and Making Sense of Data

9. Information as a valued asset
• Information is one of a hospitality firm’s most
important, yet undervalued, assets due to its
intangible value.
– It is highly coveted as its role is critical in
every aspect of the hospitality industry, from
guest services to marketing, decision making,
administration, and control of the operation or
organization.

10. Information as a valued asset
• Information is a critical source of competitive
advantage, but it is not just the information that
contributes to one’s competitive advantage. It is
how quickly one can act on this information after
finding meaning in it through the discovery of
patterns, relationships, and insights—before the
competition—to do things that they cannot.

11. Information overload
• Some of the challenges associated with running
today’s operations are trying to wade through
reams of reports, e-mails, financial statements,
operating statistics, operational log books, and
so on to figure out what’s important versus
what’s not, to separate the important signals
from all the noise.

12. Working smart
• As managers’ time is spread across a wider array of
issues and business operations, managers are expected
to oversee multiple aspects of the business without
necessarily having all of the specific expertise—and
certainly not all of the time—required to focus on the
many important details to ensure smooth business
operations, the consistent delivery of exceptional guest
services, and the desired performance levels.
– Clearly, managers must figure out how to work smart
if they are to be effective and productive and how to
pay close attention to the numbers while maintaining
high visibility across departments.

13. Tools that can help
• There are two systems that run behind the
scenes whose specific purpose is to help
aggregate, analyze, interpret, and report data
from multiple systems.
– These are the executive information system
(EIS) and the decision support system (DSS).

14. The Balanced Scorecard
• Over time, EIS systems have evolved and now
focus on providing a balanced scorecard (an
organizational report card of key performance
measures or dashboard of sorts) to top
managers, a concept first popularized by Kaplan
and Norton (1996).

15. The Balanced Scorecard
• The balanced scorecard may vary from
organization to organization, but the underlying
premise is the same: ascertaining the health of
the business.

16. The Balanced Scorecard

17. The Balanced Scorecard
FIGURE 10-6 Sample Balanced Scorecard

18. The importance of infrastructure
• Like a building’s foundation, the technology
infrastructure is the base upon which all
technology applications are built.
– Simply put, the technology infrastructure is
everything (i.e., people, technology, business
processes, training programs, and
organizational culture) necessary to support
the flow and processing of data and
information

19. E-Tourism
Competing on Knowledge: How the
Power of Information Can Enable
Great Things