A Single Transition, 751 Locations, and One Full-Service Vendor:
The Benefits Found by a Multinational Hospitality Corporation

 

One of the world’s largest hospitality companies was faced with a major challenge: Transition the accounting systems at 751 individual property locations to one centralized PeopleSoft solution.  A hurdle to overcome was the implementation of the network infrastructure (cabling/connectivity) needed to accomplish this transition.  Moreover, this customer desired to outsource the network infrastructure needs to a single (accountable) solution provider.

The structured cabling rollout project consisted of multiple phases, each with a unique “go live” date.  Sufficient lead time, well in advance of the “go live” dates, was required to accommodate infrastructure upgrades, installing new PCs (including a new credit card processing system), loading software, upgrading time clocks, and balancing the project with the day-to-day operations of the hotel property.

The customer realizes that the most efficient way to manage cabling infrastructure needs is to handle everything at the same time. Not only does this diminish disruption within the hotel property but also keeps the cost of labor to a minimum.  Thus, the company sought a solution provider that was up to the task, choosing Datatrend Technologies as the company that fit the bill.  One of the primary reasons Datatrend was selected was due to their written assurance that the infrastructure services at each property were provided in the most cost-effective way and a pricing structure with an easy-to-understand “per cable run” basis.  In addition, all scheduling was to be coordinated between the customer and Datatrend via geographic "clusters," with all of the properties within each cluster completed at the same time.   This allowed Datatrend to price each cluster individually, thus securing optimum pricing for each cable run.  

The End Result
The customer realized these key benefits:

• Working with a single vendor allowed the customer to turn over the infrastructure portion of the rollout to a single point of contact for project management
• Optimum costs due to volume and "clustering"
• Reduced the customer’s project management overhead
• Billing of each site directly
• Consistency of service delivery at each site
• A project hotline, including voice mail, and a dedicated email address for communication with the sites through Datatrend’s Service Level Agreement (SLA)
• Weekly project status updates from Datatrend
• Project completed on time and on budget

Datatrend’s certified Project Management staff completed the 751 transitions, covering 1026 cable runs, within the projected timeline.  The hotel properties were able to easily reassess their infrastructure to meet their individual and corporate goals with minimal risk.  Between Datatrend’s 20-year infrastructure warranty and continued hotline and consulting support, each property enjoyed peace of mind from the assurance of improved security and performance within their network infrastructure investment.

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