Mobile device use skyrocketing

Hilton CIO: Mobile device use in hotels is skyrocketing

At the Hilton Worldwide owner’s conference in Orlando last fall, each owner was given an iPad with some customized applications. “The devices were ripped out of our hands,” says Hilton Chief Information Officer Rob Webb. “But what was a bit overwhelming was they were asking for even more.”

So with owners and guests both wanting more—more apps, more speed, more ways to use mobile devices in the hotel industry—what is the corporate office doing to keep up? I recently talked with Webb about the role of these devices and Hilton’s new Innovation Collaborative, the company’s forward-thinking approach to technology.

At your hotel owners meeting in October, you handed iPads to each of your 2,500 owners. Why do you think mobile computing is so critical for the hotel industry?

Clearly the consumers, the guests we serve, are increasingly on the road and increasingly connecting to us through mobile devices, and there’s a tremendous pace of innovation on these devices. We don’t talk about smart phones now as much as we talk about super phones.

We’ve already launched applications for the iPhone across our brand, but we’re also building out applications for other mobile devices–a whole host of location-based services. You could imagine a time when a guest wants to find things around the hotel, or even within the hotel they’re at—if they need to find a coffee shop or a clothing store because they have forgotten something for their trip.

We rolled out 2,500 iPads—the largest one-day rollout of the iPad ever. We included on those iPads a couple interesting applications—a conference application, which put all the materials you typically get at a conference on the device, but also a directory of all the other people at the conference, with photos. We could push video and photos to the device during the meeting and update things real time as the conference was happening.

The other application we piloted was the beginning of a virtual concierge idea. It allows our guests to order room service from the device, find out more information about the hotel, see all the information that is typically in a booklet on the desk in the hotel room—with rich video and audio and linked right into the property management system at the hotel.

The owners must have been pretty happy with their iPads.

They loved it. The devices were ripped out of our hands. But what was a bit overwhelming was they were asking for even more. They want analytics on these devices. They want a sense of community among the owners. So on one hand they absolutely loved it, but on the other hand they want a lot more.

You probably have read that we were one of the first hotel companies to implement free WiFi in all of our hotels in all of our brands for our Hilton Honors Gold/Diamond customers. The use of these devices inside the hotel is skyrocketing. Guests are increasingly bringing a tablet or a super phone and expect high-speed access that is consistent. They want to be able to watch their Netflix movies in their rooms.

Which area of the industry—corporate, owners or guests—is driving the innovation?

It’s all three. But there’s a pull from the guests. We have to be ready for guests bringing mobile devices into our property. Bandwidth utilization has skyrocketed. And the traditional on-demand format—hotel movies—has decreased.

Does a reduction in fees from in-room movies and WiFi represent a significant loss in revenue?


It’s a very significant shift in guest expectations. It’s like when telephone calls used to be very expensive. There are some hotel organizations that are still enjoying those profits, but the vast majority of guests say they expect [WiFi] to be included in the room rate just like they expect clean sheets. It’s becoming a base expectation around the world.

What are you doing internally to keep up with the industry?

We have an online group that is really taking the lead to develop the next generation of website architecture and to develop a mobile strategy.

The other thing we’ve done over the last year is we’ve developed the Hilton Innovation Collaborative—a partnership between the best in class technology companies around the world.

The firms we’ve selected for our ten brands are IBM, which runs our data center core reservation system and email system; Accenture, which developed and runs our property management system; Tata Consultancy Service, which is assisting with back office areas such as property information management, quality assurance, business intelligence and financial systems; Microsoft, which will provide its collaboration and productivity tools to Hilton’s worldwide employees and business partners; and AT&T, for its suite of WiFi and Internet services.

This is a big shift in the way we deliver technology services across the company.

It seems pretty natural to have this kind of collaboration. Are you saying this is new or unique in the industry?

If you go across the major hotel companies, there’s a high level of fragmentation. Most hotels are dealing with a great deal of legacy complexity. It’s also a very complex ownership model. So most companies have some owned assets and some franchised assets, and it’s been a homegrown industry where a lot of the people who have been in the technology side have come from the hotel industry. We’re doing it differently–I came from the financial services industry, and we decided instead of doing a lot of these things internally, we’d do it with partners.

Tell me how, in a typical day, you use technology to keep in touch with people and to do business.


We’re a big Microsoft shop, so we’ve enabled an employee choice program, so we can choose between an HP laptop and an Apple laptop. I use the new Macbook Air, but I use Microsoft’s latest version of Outlook and Office on the Macbook.

I also use an HP product–their Project Management Center–to track all our major initiatives across the company.

We’re also a PeopleSoft shop, and we’re reinvesting in PeopleSoft financials to standardize our financial reporting platforms across the globe.

We’re investing pretty heavily in business intelligence. We want to really have more time to work on the business, versus assembling and aggregating data. That’s a big focus for us.


What mobile devices do you use?


We have the iPhone and Blackberry device and iPad device. I use an iPad and a Blackberry.


How do you personally keep up with the latest technology, news, innovations?


I read a lot of different things. Economist, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are the news services I use the most, and I’m increasingly using them from my iPad device. Then there are some online forums that I’m part of—especially CIOs sharing best practices. The good news in partnering with folks like IBM and Accenture and Microsoft is that all those companies have CIO forums, and there is so much to learn.

What have you learned recently?

There’s a couple areas where we have a strong focus on information security, so that’s one area where I’ve learned a lot from my peers. And then questions around innovation: How do you make room for innovation?

What’s else should we know about tech at Hilton?

Hilton Worldwide is a very fortunate company in that we have invested in technology. Tech innovation is not new to us. We have a single image of our inventory globally, unlike several of our competitors, and this has been a huge advantage for us. We can take a snapshot of what rooms are filled tonight globally.

The other thing is [yield management]. If there’s a secret sauce in the hotel business from the technology perspective, it’s the analytics to offer the right price for the guest so we can maximize yields on the room. The same kind of thing that other industries, like the airlines, are already doing.

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Five Up-and-Coming Mobile Shopping Sites

REI

Sure, you can shop the latest and greatest in gear and apparel at REI. It's easy to navigate, well organized and pretty to look at. Product detail pages include the option to purchase, add to a wish list or find in store. There's also an extensive description, along with product specs, images and customer reviews. And, like the e-commerce site, there's a handy section that tells you what people purchasing that item also bought. But what really makes this site special is a expert advice section. It's chock-full of informative, well-written articles on everything from kayaking and triathlons to snowshoeing and travel. So you can read up on the latest and greatest gear, budget travel and types of avalanches. There's even an article on how to teach a child to ride a bike.

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Five Up-and-Coming Mobile Shopping Sites

JCPenney

This department-store retailer's site stands out for its simple design and navigation, as well as easy access to current sales.

Shoppers can also find a store, sign up for mobile alerts, track orders and view weekly deals from the site. Select videos, including commercial spots, are also easily accessible.

Within categories, shoppers can further filter results. In the kitchen furniture section, for example, it's possible to filter results by subcategory (bar stools, chair cushions), decor style (modern, country) or color. At-a-glance results are packed with information, including an image, original price and sale price, number of reviews and stars indicating the product's customer rating. Oddly, the actual reviews aren't readily available.

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Patients from symptoms to treatment

Health app guides patients from symptoms to treatment

Described by its creators as “the largest mobile technology focused on connecting people to health care,” iTriage is a smart phone app that links patients with just about every step in the health care process — from a symptom checker to average treatment costs to hospital ER wait times.

I spoke recently with Dr. Peter Hudson, co-founder of iTriage developer Healthagen and an emergency room physician in Denver, about the health app that’s getting millions of views every month.

How is iTriage different from other health apps?

iTriage was developed by doctors to help consumers who we’d seen struggle with health care decisions over the years. It is designed to answer two questions in a mobile environment:

1. What could be causing my medical problem? ([The app has] all the clinical content that’s required to do a self assessment.)
2. Where should I go?

We married the two together in a GPS-based environment through the phone. It has every provider in the country. There’s nobody doing what we’re doing: the connection of taking somebody through from a raw symptom all the way to the right provider — and they can make that decision based on cost or location or accessibility.

What are some of the app’s other features?

In general, health care suffers from an extreme lack of transparency — transparency for the things that really matter to people. Who is open? How much does it cost? Do they take my insurance? We’ve integrated cost data with our partner Healthcare Blue Book. We’ve integrated quality data with our partner HealthGrades. We’ve integrated ER wait time and hospital-specific urgent care and physician-specific data with our featured listing product that allows providers to showcase what they do well. We obviously leveraged all the different mobile platforms and web-based platforms to identify where you are and help guide you to that place, help you make a phone call, help you map it and get directions. We’re taking some of that guesswork and the things you don’t want to be thinking about when you’re ill or hurt out of the equation.

Talk about what’s going on in Denver, where patients can use the app to actually pre-register for hospital visits.

It gives the ability to the consumer to share their data with the hospital, letting them know they’re on their way. In an extreme example, if you’re a hemophiliac who is bleeding, that matters to the ER doctor. If they think they broke their arm and the orthopedic surgeon is about to leave the ER and go to another hospital, that would be great data to have.

From a more mundane standpoint, people have to show up in the ER and fill out forms before a record is even created. Sometimes they have to wait for triage first and then be registered and it’s just a cumbersome entry process. We want to make it easier, so the mom who is worried about her vomiting child or the college student with abdominal pain after infirmary hours are up can ease their entry into emergency department or urgent care by sending their data.

Would the patient have to already have their health info connected to the app?

The health record we have available is Google Health and we’ll be coming out with a few others shortly. We’re a viewer into that data set. If the doctor’s office sends data to it or the hospital sends data to it, if the patient has updated their record in that service, they could view, access and share that information at the point of care.

That certainly could make a big difference to how that person is cared for. As an ER doctor, not having the right information accounted for all sorts of inefficiencies, delay of care, inappropriate care, because you didn’t know somebody was allergic to a medicine or had already been on a certain medication or had been treated for the same problem. Having that data accessible and coming from the patient is a real innovation.

Is the Denver pre-registration program going to expand to other cities?

There are another 50-plus locations signed up already.

The app is free to download. How is it funded?

Providers pay to share their data and information and be part of this premier listing product, which allows them to share more data than a basic listing. We never keep anybody out. We have an exhaustive database of medical providers around the country. That is something we will always have. But we feel consumers would benefit from knowing where a doctor went to school, what their hours of operation are, if a hospital is a stroke center, if they’re a trauma center. We provide that messaging ability for the facility or provider.

The product lets the consumer know there is data about the facility when they find it in our GPS navigation. They can also pipe live ER wait times or urgent care wait times into the system, so the consumer looking at different options will know what the wait might be in one place versus another.

What’s next for the app?

2011 is going to be about taking things to the next level with our hospital and provider customers for much more of an integrated solution for the consumer — taking some of that hassle and inefficiency out of how they engage with the hospital. It will be about improving the technology so it’s more personalized and offers more of a repository for the user, so they have one source with them at all times that could be used in an emergency, with a new doctor or to search more efficiently about issues that come up.

Could the patient data be used for studies or research?

There are a lot of options. It’s all de-identified. There’s no connection to any user. In a de-identified format, I think it’s interesting because there’s nothing like it out there yet.

http://www.smartplanet.com/people/blog/pure-genius/health-app-connects-patients-to-medical-care-from-symptoms-to-treatment/5288/?tag=content;col1

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Five Up-and-Coming Mobile Shopping Sites

Crate & Barrel

Not only does this site look good, but gift buying is made easy with a section dedicated to gift ideas. Within the section, shoppers can sort by price, occasion and recipient. Product detail pages include multiple, clear images, price and reviews. And options include buying the item, emailing the details or adding it to a favorites list.

Crate & Barrel is also a perennial favorite for bridal registries, and the mobile site doesn't disappoint on that front. Brides can add items to their registry or manage a registry, while guests can easily locate registries and make purchases

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Five Up-and-Coming Mobile Shopping Sites You'll Be Using

Amazon

It probably won't come as a surprise that the online giant has a pretty stellar mobile site. It consistently shows up on the list of best-performing mobile sites, with fast response times and consistent availability, according to Gomez, the web-performance division of Compuware. Category sections Bestsellers and Deals makes it easy to find products, while Today's Deals quickly directs shoppers to the site's Deal of the Day and Lightning Deals. When it comes to product detail, price, reviews, complementary products and numerous images (and resolution options) make it easy to zero in on specific items. However, there is some room for improvement. Zappos.com and Diapers.com, both owned by Amazon, have not yet been optimized for a variety of mobile devices.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=148227

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Five Up-and-Coming Mobile Shopping Sites You'll Be Using

Why M-commerce Offerings From:
Amazon, Crate & Barrel, JCPenney, REI and Target Stand Out

You may not have purchased any Christmas gifts from your phone this year, but next year it's likely you will.

The number of online shoppers making a purchase from their phones increased more than five-fold this season to 11%, according to ForeSee Results. But significantly more than that, 33% of respondents said they had used their phone to access a retailer's site, many for the purpose of comparing prices or products. Likewise, barcode scanning and check-ins continued to ramp up over the holidays. ScanBuy, mobile barcode solution provider, estimates that between 30% and 40% of all smartphone users have downloaded a barcode-scanning app. And CheckPoints, a shopping app, just reported it has accumulated 1 million check-ins since launching in mid-October.

"It looks like more than half of all shoppers will soon be using their mobile phones for retail purposes," said Kevin Ertell, VP-retail strategy at ForeSee Results, a company measuring customer satisfaction. "Any retailer not actively working to develop, measure and refine its mobile experience is leaving money on the table for competitors."

Indeed, eBay reported mobile sales of nearly $2 billion in 2010, more than tripling 2009 levels. The retailer, which sells through a variety of apps, cited clothing, accessories, cellphones, collectibles, jewelry and toys as leading mobile purchases.

Plenty of retailers, big and small, are just beginning to wrap their heads around "m-commerce." But smart retailers are already figuring out how to market their wares, build loyalty and deliver advertising, from coupons to circulars to commercials via mobile phones. Here five mobile sites we'll be shopping in the coming year.

Continued Tomorrow:

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