STATESIDE ORACLE
about 12 years doing that. I focused on many different technologies that are used by different lines of business. In addition to property management, sales and catering and reservations, my scope also included ERP’s, HCM, anything that anybody from the business side of hotels worked on. My role is in IT, but I’m not a technologist. However, I do
say I’m the champion of the business within IT as I make sure that we focus on the right things and deliver the right technologies. Three years ago, I got a call from Oracle to say we’re trying to bring a product to life and we want someone who understands how the customer thinks and behaves, so can you join us and help us bring this product to market? I’ve been in this role for the last three years.
CI: What is that role? TP: The role consists of focusing on all parts of the go to market for the product. What does the market need? What are the customers asking for? What do they need to achieve from a business perspective? We manage and maintain the product roadmap, so we work with different engineering teams who actually do the development. We focus a lot on both internal and external enablements. We work with the internal teams within work or hospitality to ensure they have the right tools and knowledge about the product to be able to speak to the customer about it with confidence and conviction. Then we engage with different customers and the market as a whole. It’s really important for us from a product perspective that we talk to the end users on a constant basis and understand the pain points they have. We need to identify how we can solve their problems and where the industry is going as a whole. We need to examine if the industry is pivoting towards a completely digital way of thinking and how we can adapt the product accordingly in order to be able to support those strategies.
CI: How long has OPERA Cloud been in the market? TP: Our first install was in March 2019. OPERA legacy, our legacy product, has been around for 25 years. We have almost 40,000 installations of our legacy product, but our new Cloud version has been in the market for almost three years.
CI: Is OPERA Cloud replacing OPERA legacy? TP: Yes absolutely, the industry as a whole has been talking about moving to Cloud since I was there. The conversation probably started seven or eight years ago but it was always one of those things that seemed elusive and unknown. There were also always other things in the industry to focus on and spend money on. Managing change within user groups can be difficult, there was always an understanding that Cloud technology was where the industry needed to go, but there was never really an incentive to go do it. What the last 18 to 20 months have done is made that choice a slam dunk. We absolutely need to go to Cloud because A) we can no longer afford to have these servers in the basement and B) we no longer have the people to maintain it. Also, the fact that you can achieve more with less. Having Cloud technology allows you to work from anywhere on any device, when previously you needed to be in front of a computer sitting somewhere with the right connectivity. What we saw and heard from the customers in the last 18 months was that when a lot of them were forced outside the hotel, they struggled with continuing to work when the technology they needed to work with was still on the premise. That itself created an incentive for everyone to start accelerating their path to the Cloud. In
addition to obviously new customers that we’re reigning business from, there is a big push from the existing legacy customer users to try to get their properties there sooner. Some of them do take a little bit longer than others because there’s processes that need to be changed or an opportunity to change a process as a result of new technology being implemented.
CI: Presumably there is a level of bandwidth required by a property in order to employ a Cloud-based solution. Is that an impediment for any customers? TP: The bandwidth required is not extensive. There are some customers living in the middle of an island, working off a generator where only one cell phone can be connected at a time. For those, Cloud solutions as a whole are not quite there yet. But as long as they have some sort of internet connectivity and they can successfully use a cell phone, they can operate OPERA Cloud.
CI: How do you ensure the Oracle team know how to communicate with the customer and end users to get what they want? TP: The most inefficient thing we can do is ask somebody what they want because what they say they want and what they truly want are often two different things. They may say they want a faster application, but fast could mean bandwidth, fewer clicks, or using voice activation instead of having to type. If we take it at face value, we can often come up with a solution that is very different to one that could actually help solve their problem. What we do instead is we define the problem, then we take it to the next level to zoom into it a little bit more. It’s really through conversations with the end user that the majority of insights come. For example, for someone who’s day job is to make a reservation, they may say I have to write down what the guest says on a piece of paper because the technology doesn’t let them enter it until step five of the process. For us, that’s super insightful, what is happening is technology is restricting the process vs technology being customisable enough to follow whatever process the user needs to take. That is difficult to get from an email. So that conversation delves into how somebody works, and the pain points they encounter as a result, and then we can adapt our technology accordingly. Every conversation I have with somebody that works on the front desk is worth 10 times the conversation I would have with somebody five levels above because the pain points get diluted.
You can read the second part of this interview in the February edition of Casino International.
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Drazen/Adobe Stock
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