Port Aventura Resort Analysis Essay Example

detail required for successful one-to-one customer marketing.

Evaluative Criteria

The desired solution must be able to present a concise snapshot of individual customers preferences based on past behaviours. Examples of required information include:

• Frequency, seasonality, and duration of a customer’s visit
• Did the customer stay in one of the hotels, and if so which one and what type of room
• Is the customer visiting for business or pleasure or a combination of the two
• Which park activities did the customer partake in; golf, amusement rides, beach club, shows, water park, corporate events
• How much does the customer spend and what are the funds being spent on

Port Aventura to intimately know each of its customers and provide the opportunity to understand consumer value preferences. Searchable and Scalable for Data Mining The solution must be conducive to analytical queries and provide the ability to turn raw data not only into customer information, but customer knowledge. This knowledge will then translate into business intelligence which will provide the basis for data mining.

Port Aventura needs the ability to extract the relevant information to identify opportunities, strategies, and predictive behaviours on its customers. Additionally, historical data must be stored and easily accessible while maintaining data integrity. Ease of Implementation and Ease of Use The optimal solution must be one that can be implemented quickly and without considerable disruption to the work flow within Port Aventura. Employees must be educated on the data collection processes to ensure the information management system is usable and accurate. Therefore, training must be thorough, concise, and cost

effective. System maintenance and sustainability must also be possible through the use of the Information Systems Department employees.  Total cost to implement, train employees, and maintain the infrastructure needs to be kept in mind when determining the optimal solution.

Alternatives Data Warehouse A date warehouse would allow Port Aventura to leverage the information management processes currently in place and provide a precise means of tracking individual customers.

Collect Individual Customer Preferences – The implementation of a loyalty rewards program and unique customer ID will allow the existing management systems to feed the required information into the data warehouse.

Searchable and Scalable for Data Mining – A data warehouse will provide a central storage from which customizable reporting tools can be made.

Ease of Implementation and Ease of Use – A data warehouse will require the hiring of a project manager and take approximately 3 months to implement. Training for end user staff in both data entry and reporting will be minimal as there is already familiarity with the existing systems. IT staff will be trained on the data warehouse in order to ensure ongoing support and maintenance.

Cost – Cost for the implementation of a data warehouse is estimated at $250,000. New Integrated Information System Port Aventura could retire all of the existing information management processes and implement a new fully integrated information system to tie all aspects of the business together and track individual customer behaviour.

Collect Individual Customer Preferences – A new integrated system will be designed for optimal information gathering and tracking.

Searchable and Scalable for Data Mining – Custom reporting will enable identification and

tracking of all individual customer behaviours.

Ease of Implementation and Ease of Use – A new integrated system will require the hiring of a project team to scope, tender, and organize the undertaking. Implementation will take approximately 1 year. Systems will be required to run in parallel for some time to ensure functionality of the new system. End user and IT staff will be required to undergo extensive training to familiarize themselves with the new system.

Cost – Cost for a new integrated information system is estimated at $1,000,000. See Exhibit 1 for the Decision Matrix for the above two alternatives.

Implementation

The optimal solution for Port Aventura is the implementation and integration of a data warehouse. Seeing as the existing infrastructure can be modified to provide the required data tracking elements, a data warehouse will be the timeliest, most cost effective, and efficient means of implementing one-to-one marketing to customers. Action Plan In securing the data warehouse for Port Aventura the following action items are recommended: * Hire an independent project manager.

The duration of the tender is mapped to require 1 month. Selection of the data warehouse vendor will be based on the above pre-determined criteria. Cost for the data warehouse is estimated at $250,000. The Marketing Department will design a loyalty rewards program whereby unique customer ID’s will be created as a means of tracking individual customers behaviour. The project manager will be responsible for implementing the unique customer ID entity into the existing information management systems.

The marketing department will be responsible for rolling out the loyalty rewards program in conjunction with the implementation

of the data warehouse. Total cost for implementation and marketing of the loyalty rewards program is estimated at $100,000. Implementation of the data warehouse is mapped to require 1. 5 months. During this time, IT staff will be trained on the functionality of the data warehouse and end users will be trained on the new data inputs as well as the data mining capabilities of the data warehouse.

The go-live date is mapped to be September 15, 2009. Ongoing support and maintenance will be provided by Port Aventura IT staff. Reporting functionalities are then to be used by the marketing department to implement one-to-one communication with customers. Summary The implementation of the data warehouse is expected to last 3 months and requires $375,000 in capital (including the implementation of the loyalty rewards program). Ongoing support and maintenance of the data warehouse is estimated at $25,000 per year. This cost is minimal compared to the expected revenue from one-to-one marketing to consumers.