Gaylord Entertainment Gives Guests More Face Time with Auto-Labor Scheduling
Gaylord Entertainment (Gaylord), headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, is a corporate family consisting of Gaylord Hotels [resort hotels in Nashville, Orlando, Grapevine, TX , and Washington, DC], the Grand Ole Opry and the Ryman Auditorium. Gaylord is approaching the $1 billion mark in revenues, with its core business focused on resort hotels that target the large group meetings and convention segment, primarily with groups consisting of 200 to 600+ attendees on their peak night of stay. More than 2 million guests visit Gaylord properties each year, served by more than 9,000 Gaylord non-exempt employees called STARS.
Labor is Gaylord's largest expense, and with that in mind, management sought after a workforce
management system to better optimize the scheduling of STARS to match the peaks and valleys of demand. This is seen as a customer service improvement opportunity, where the right number of STARS would align to serve the appropriate number of guests at the right time.
Ditching manual methods
The incumbent system was not fully deployed across the Gaylord properties due to difficulty in the acceptance, ease of use and the inability to automate interfaces with key systems. Also, while the previous system had good reporting capabilities, it lacked a robust auto-scheduling option, so leaders were forced to use manual methods to create schedules each week in Excel.
Consulting with the property operators, Gaylord selected RedPrairie's Workforce Management (WFM) solution because of RedPrairie's knowledge of the hospitality space, the ease of use and workflows and the potential difference the solution could make on day to day hotel operations. WFM is now used to manage 75% of the STARS workforce and ultimately will be used by virtually all hotel departments.
The rollout of RedPrairie WFM drastically reduced the amount of time leaders spend off the floor producing work schedules, while maintaining or improving the effectiveness of the schedule against guest needs. Departments which formerly took a full business day to complete schedules for 300 or more STARS can now complete schedule edits in just one or two hours.
In addition, the RedPrairie Performance Management (RPM) analytic tool significantly improves labor reporting. RPM, while still being refined, demonstrates a strong potential to enable reporting on actual performance against standards in a matter of seconds, instead of the hours previously needed at the close of each week.
Increased guest service
Most important, the ability to create an optimized schedule in such a short time enables STARS' leaders to react to guest issues and focus more time on critical operational areas. Gaylord is just now beginning to reap financial savings, which are currently ahead of expectations. However, those savings are just an ancillary benefit of the WFM and RPM tools. Gaylord is most excited about having the right STARS in the right place at the right time for the 100-plus touch points and interactions the STARS have with guests during their stay at Gaylord's resort properties.
In the next wave, Gaylord plans to identify better ways to optimize the solution through tighter standards; develop more robust and actionable reporting out of RPM; and use other converging technologies, such as text analytics, to ensure operators are not under-or over-staffed in certain areas from a guest standpoint.
Greg Ashley currently serves as the vice president of finance & operations analysis for the resort hotel division of Gaylord Entertainment.
Labor is Gaylord's largest expense, and with that in mind, management sought after a workforce
management system to better optimize the scheduling of STARS to match the peaks and valleys of demand. This is seen as a customer service improvement opportunity, where the right number of STARS would align to serve the appropriate number of guests at the right time. Ditching manual methods
The incumbent system was not fully deployed across the Gaylord properties due to difficulty in the acceptance, ease of use and the inability to automate interfaces with key systems. Also, while the previous system had good reporting capabilities, it lacked a robust auto-scheduling option, so leaders were forced to use manual methods to create schedules each week in Excel.
Consulting with the property operators, Gaylord selected RedPrairie's Workforce Management (WFM) solution because of RedPrairie's knowledge of the hospitality space, the ease of use and workflows and the potential difference the solution could make on day to day hotel operations. WFM is now used to manage 75% of the STARS workforce and ultimately will be used by virtually all hotel departments.
The rollout of RedPrairie WFM drastically reduced the amount of time leaders spend off the floor producing work schedules, while maintaining or improving the effectiveness of the schedule against guest needs. Departments which formerly took a full business day to complete schedules for 300 or more STARS can now complete schedule edits in just one or two hours.
In addition, the RedPrairie Performance Management (RPM) analytic tool significantly improves labor reporting. RPM, while still being refined, demonstrates a strong potential to enable reporting on actual performance against standards in a matter of seconds, instead of the hours previously needed at the close of each week.
Increased guest service
Most important, the ability to create an optimized schedule in such a short time enables STARS' leaders to react to guest issues and focus more time on critical operational areas. Gaylord is just now beginning to reap financial savings, which are currently ahead of expectations. However, those savings are just an ancillary benefit of the WFM and RPM tools. Gaylord is most excited about having the right STARS in the right place at the right time for the 100-plus touch points and interactions the STARS have with guests during their stay at Gaylord's resort properties.
In the next wave, Gaylord plans to identify better ways to optimize the solution through tighter standards; develop more robust and actionable reporting out of RPM; and use other converging technologies, such as text analytics, to ensure operators are not under-or over-staffed in certain areas from a guest standpoint.
Greg Ashley currently serves as the vice president of finance & operations analysis for the resort hotel division of Gaylord Entertainment.