The goal of revenue managers in the hospitality industry is maximizing revenue for their hotels. The goal of the Knowledge Management team at IDeaS is providing revenue managers with the necessary tools to maximize their knowledge and reach that goal. Simple, on-demand learning experiences have been created within the revenue management system (RMS), supported through a deep understanding of revenue management concepts, to help revenue managers achieve their goals.
According to the 2015 Deloitte Hospitality Report, 52% of turnover costs result from lost productivity. The time-to-productivity metric in the human performance area directly addresses this issue. IDeaS has a unique opportunity to reduce this metric for revenue managers by leveraging technologies that demonstrate human performance research and methodologies. A specific methodology called “Performance Support” is used to link industry revenue management expertise with learning technologies.
What is Performance Support?
According to the MASIE Center, an international think tank dedicated to exploring the intersection of learning and technology, “Performance support is any learning modality, resource or asset that is accessible and applicable at the moment of need.” While it can enhance more traditional means of training, performance support is not instructor-led training, e-learning, workshops or other formal instruction. Rather, it strives to fill immediate learning needs outside of formal training. For revenue managers within the hospitality industry, providing timely performance support can mean the difference between spending time profitably and losing productivity.
What is the Moment of Need?
The authors of “Innovative Performance Support”, Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher, identify five moments of need that occur when people are learning something new, expanding their knowledge, applying their learning, solving a problem and changing a process. Within the context of the IDeaS learning approach for revenue managers, the moment of need comes as clients are using the IDeaS RMS to perform their daily tasks. IDeaS provides support at these moments through a learning ecosystem that includes simulations, practice sessions, advanced deep-dives and procedural steps to perform specific system tasks.
How Do Revenue Managers Benefit?
IDeaS works to understand the system tasks that revenue managers must complete at regular intervals. An example of a performance support tool is integrated technology that is available from the top-level navigation in IDeaS RMS. When the user engages with this technology, features and specific tasks are automatically demonstrated. IDeaS also incorporates context-sensitive help, recommending related content to the specific module that users are at within the RMS interface. This is initiated when the user clicks the Help link from the top-level navigation or a help icon. These tools benefit revenue managers by providing on-demand support at the time of need within the RMS.
These performance support tools are one part of the learning ecosystem that IDeaS continues to develop and improve. The goal is developing a complete ecosystem that quickly on-boards revenue managers during their first moments of need while using IDeaS RMS, in addition to guiding them to a full understanding of revenue management concepts. This learning support helps IDeaS clients decrease the time-to-performance metric for their revenue managers, saving them the ever-increasing costs involved in turnover.
What’s Next?
The overall focus is providing RMS users with the right information for their unique revenue management strategies at the right moment. The IDeaS Knowledge Management team is continuing to evolve more on-demand performance support options that close the knowledge gap that may exist in training. This will continue to allow even more advanced RMS users the opportunity to improve the quality of their revenue management skills, while IDeaS continues to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of performance support interactions.