Hotel chain takes new tack on call center IT

17.01.2006
William Peters, vice president of reservation services at Outrigger Hotels & Resorts in Honolulu, is at the apex of two big IT trends.

First, his company last year outsourced IT services for a small part of its operations -- some call center applications. Now Peters is testing a program that could allow all of his 55 call center employees to work from home.

Peters said last week that if both initiatives go as planned, he thinks he can reduce the cost of booking and processing a reservation by about 35 percent for Outrigger Hotels. The chain is a division of Outrigger Enterprises Inc., which operates 51 hospitality properties throughout the Pacific Rim. Not an Easy Choice

Outsourcing wasn't an easy step for Outrigger, Peters said. He spent more than 18 months researching his options before hiring Echopass Corp., a Pleasanton, Calif.-based application service provider (ASP) that hosts call center technologies for the hotel chain's reservation systems.

Peters said the outsourcing move has allowed the company to eliminate some in-house functions, such as live-chat administration duties that are now handled by Echopass. "The ASP models have really come into their own," he said.

Outrigger's use of an outsourcing vendor for a single IT process mirrors a broader shift away from large, comprehensive IT services deals, according to a report issued last week by Technology Partners International Inc. Increasingly, users are opting to outsource limited operations, such as their help desks, said Peter Allen, managing director at Houston-based TPI.