Advertisment

Wearing the IT Taj

author-image
DQI Bureau
New Update

With over 21 years experience in the Information Technology industry, Prakash

Shukla brings valuable expertise to the expanding network of the Taj Group of

Hotels. An American national, Prakash is currently responsible for total IT

deployments at the Taj Group.

Advertisment

An advantage to start on a clean slate, allowed Prakash

Shukla to have futuristic technologies in place and not grapple with legacy

systems. An ex-employee of IBM Research Labs, Shukla joined the Tata group in

India, in 2000, and was immediately designated as the Sr VP Technology for the

Taj Group Hotels.

In the year 2000, in India, the Hospitality Industry was

still primitive on the technology front, and other than basic applications like

Property Management Solutions and the other reservation systems of the hotel,

there was not much IT adoption at the Group's Hotels.

Prakash was involved in the CRS-CIS (Customer Reservation

Systems —Customer Information Systems) implementation at the Taj Group that

has around 70 properties across the globe.

Advertisment

According to Prakash, every hotel has a major chunk of its

revenue coming from its regular clientele. They too recognize this and have

deployed CIS to service the customer in a better way. The same CIS can be

accessed through any of the group's properties. A CIS enables the hotel to

keep a record of the exact profile of the customer and keep a tab on his

preferences during his subsequent visits. CIS creates guest-centric processes

that are essential for customer relationship management. And since it focuses on

preferences, requests, and problems of different customers, it is a boon to the

hotel management.

They also were amongst the early ones to get Wi-Fi network to

their hotels in India. To the extent that even the rooms of Taj Mahal Hotel,

Mumbai enables Wi-Fi access.

The Taj Group of Hotels has implemented a WAN called TajNet,

connecting the group's 55 properties in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. And the

international properties are connected through VPN. The centralized system has

tremendous benefits. One, there are greater economies of scale, especially when

the group wants to announce a special scheme for all its member hotels. Two, the

group can monitor the performance of each member hotel and summarize the sales

performance of the whole group.

Advertisment

Raking in Revenues



In the recent times the group hotel has announced the launch

of its Taj Reservations service, available 24x7-the toll free number offers

guests a one-point contact for reservations, packages, special offers,

itineraries, and information on any Taj hotel worldwide. Shukla opines that to

strive towards attaining unmatched customer satisfaction, you have to complement

innovative thinking with progressive technology.

The CIS database is also used to offer loyalty programs to

the customer. Most hotels today offer a customer different schemes based on his

profile. In the traditional method, this was done manually with no clear

understanding of a customer's preferences. But now, with knowledge of the

customer's history, a hotel can service a customer more efficiently.

Personal

Diary

Assignments

Worked with corporations like-Unisys/Sperry

and IBM-and has provided IT solutions for numerous clients: Morgan Stanley,

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Solomon Smith Barney

Also serve as President of Speech

& software Technologies, a TATA Group promoted company

Mantras

  • Offer the best of breed

    services to the guest

  • IT key enabler and

    innovator to differentiate

  • Delegate and involve the

    core team as much as possible

  • Leverage on the group

    dynamics

  • Value in volumes

Under evaluation

  • Dedicated printers for

    each floor of the hotel

  • More in-room

    technologies to offer value added services

  • More services to be made

    available on Wi-Fi

  • Add more travel channels

    on the in-room systems

  • RFID tags for loyalty

    and guest recogntion programs

Education

  • Advanced Management

    Program, Harvard Business School

  • Master's degree in

    Computer Science, New York Polytechnic University

  • Graduate in Electrical

    Engineering and English, Rutgers University

Hobbies: Rock, blues, and

Jazz, traveling, Yoga 

Favorite destination:

Prague, Czech Republic for its vibrant music scene, old and new look, and great

history.

Must be with:

  • iPod (currently uses a

    60 Gb capacity)

  • Palm top cum laptop

  • Blackberry for quick mail connectivity
Advertisment

He added, " In any industry, one has to realize that

though different technologies are available, all of them are not beneficial to

the end-customer. One has to realize that as customers change their preferences,

we too have to change with them. Going forward, a hotel, which understands a

customer's needs and fulfils it satisfactorily with the help of technology

would obviously be a preferred one."

For example, we have Plasma, LCDs in our rooms at the old

wing of Taj Mahal Palace (Mumbai). We offer video-on-demand service to our

guests. We also have radio streaming from over 150 countries. We have to keep in

mind that people who travel with their gadgets might find difficulty in plugging

them at a convenient spot in the rooms. Even I face a lot of problem to plug in

my iPod with the music systems in the room or any other gadgets because there is

never one platform with ports to do that. Keeping these requirements in mind we

try and incorporate these services at the earliest.

Another significant use of this technology is seen in

wireless-equipped handheld phones called digitally enhanced cordless phones,

which serve the purpose of tracking a person anywhere in the hotel premises.

This phone is especially useful for mobile staff, who can attend to a complaint

immediately.

Advertisment

Leveraging on the group's (Tata's) services, Taj Hotels

have been innovating on applications and have a number of home grown

applications to their name. Recently, they also started a dedicated call center

service in Mumbai, which houses 150 agents. It is one of the few groups of

hotels who have a DR site (Chennai) and all their services are catered through

this call center.

Shukla takes pride in mentioning about the revamped website

of the Taj Group, which was also awarded the best hospitality website. According

to him, they have a high number of Web-based bookings, which has also increased

over the year. The website offers various other facilities like the update on

loyalty programs and inner circle points. Discounts and various other services

in terms of bookings can be availed on the website. Here, he also reiterates the

downtime impact of the network, as all these applications run on the network and

any downtime would mean no reservations, no POS swipes and others, which are so

critical for the business. There is an immediate tangible impact on the

revenues.

Prakash does not hesitate to refer to the Tata group

dynamics, which does give The Taj group an advantage. This not only offers them

cost benefits, but a lot more room to innovate with their offerings.

Advertisment

A compelling factor in the hospitality industry is the kind of services you offer to the customers.

There is no immediate way to measure the returns, but nonetheless they are the

distinguishing factors. For example offering Wi-Fi in the rooms, video on demand

services, personal printers etc.

Typical Challenges



Prakash mentions that the true challenge is not in adopting
technology, but to see its optimum utilization and extending the benefits to the

customers. The attrition rate being high in this industry-it's a constant

challenge to keep training and retaining the trained employees to use mission

critical solutions effectively. The personalized services that are offered are

not leveraged on. Another challenge is deploying in-room entertainment and

technologies, which require lot of reengineering and renovation, if the old

equipments in the room need to be hauled. Hospitality being a service

oriented-industry, IT is an enabler to provide better service. The hospitality

industry by and large is little slower in adopting technology. It is primarily

used to differentiate as the services and applications are more or less standard

across the industry.

He also believes in learning from the experiences of the

larger chains across the globe rather then re-inventing the wheel.

The Way Ahead



Prakash opines that there is no end to the innovation around
the services that one can offer. They plan to make printers available on each

floor of the hotel, which will be made accessible to guests with a private pin

to provide security and privacy. As they have an advantage of having a complete



Wi-Fi network in place, new applications are being evaluated to go that extra
mile to make their guests stay pleasurable and prolific.

Minu Sirsalewala

Advertisment