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Introduction
Blue Mountain Resort is a successful ski resort in Canada. The company has shown considerable increase in its activities due to its lucrative business plan. In 1991, the company hired a new human resource manager. The new manager noted that despite the fact that the company was profitable, its reputation was beginning to suffer.
The services offered by the company were poor and the employees had morale problems. After noting the problems, the new manager decided on a plan that began with an executive retreat. During the retreat, the senior managers of Blue Mountain Resort formulated a comprehensive plan that the company would use to improve its services.
The company initiated a service quality program in 1991-1992 ski season (Sheppard 6). This program forced the management act on data collected from customers. In 1993, the company changed the strategy they used in hiring. The purpose of this was to improve the staff quality. The results obtained from the service program encouraged management. However, management felt that they needed to do more.
While focusing on quality, the company had ignored process management. Therefore, in 1994-1995 season, the company organized a process team to cater for problems of signage and call center. By 1998-1999 season, the company’s reputation improved considerably while the customer base also increased (Sheppard 11).
In 1999, the human resource manager organized a team to do a SWOT analysis. The team compiled the report and presented to the human resource manager, he chose three proposals that required careful consideration. Proposals on customer flow, speed of service, and information system were to be addressed in order to improve the quality service quality.
Can Blue Mountain Resort be sure of Delivering Good Service to each Segment?
Blue Mountain Resort is very capable of delivering good services to its customers. This is very evident from their activities in the previous years. Previously, the company had poor services and the staff did not serve customers properly. However, after hiring the new human resource manager the company had improved its service quality considerably.
In fact, the customers’ ratings to the staff improved. In 1991-1992 season, 19.6 percent of the customers classified the resort as better than previously. During the same period, the rating of other resorts in Canada fell from 16.5 percent to three percent (Sheppard 6). In addition to the fact, the company managers showed composure when they realized that, their plan had not encompassed the element of process management.
They created a process team to assist in eliminating the challenges that were arising due to their negligence. The process team helped the company to improve its rating further and increase its market share by increasing the number of customers.
The ability portrayed by the company throughout its development period clearly shows that the company is able to deliver goods and services to the different segments despite the challenges. If history serves to predict the future, then, the ability and composure shown by the company through the challenges they faced is evidence enough to prove that the company has the ability to deliver goods and services to each segment.
What is the most Appropriate Course of Action for Dave Sinclair?
Blue Mountain Resort has three major challenges that the human resource manager, Dave Sinclair, has to address in order to improve the services. From the report, it is clear that the customer influx in the resort increased. However, the new guests have a problem of familiarizing with the resort.
The new customers are sometimes misdirected and usually fail to find some basic services. In addition to this, the problem of parking is also affecting the guests who park in restricted areas. The SWOP team identified that the best method of solving this problem is by collecting feedback from customers and acting on the propositions provided by the customers.
However, the resort can do more than just identifying the problem and solving it. For a long-term solution, the use of a strategic plan is recommendable. A strategy is a plan of action adopted by management of organizations for achieving goals and objectives (Kaplan and David 56).
This strategy plan will ensure that company can achieve its long-term marketing goals and cater for the increase in customer numbers without losing a considerable market share to the competitors (Lancaster and Frank 15). Sanchez encourages managers to measure what matters in order to improve the customer relationships (31).
The resort also faces the challenge of delivering services at a commendable speed. The guests are complaining that the speed of service delivery is decreasing. The SWOP team proposed six ways that the human resource manager may use to solve the problem of speed.
Included in the proposals are; better forecasting, improved communications, provision of accurate information, training staff, use of self-service technology, and using scientific methods to schedule staff levels. All these proposals are highly viable and can be adopted by the human resource director in order to improve the services.
However, some of these proposals are short term and may only provide temporary solution. For the resort to work properly they should incorporate all these elements in their strategic plan. The proposal on staff training is extremely important and may improve the speed of service delivery considerably.
However, to ensure that the element of training staff is not a waste of time, the manager should also encourage the idea of using scientific methods to determine the staffing levels. This will ensure that the company maintains staff cost effectively and provides services at the required speed (Friedman 23).
The company also has a challenge in maintaining a proper information system. The swop team found out that the cost of a new information system was extremely high. Moreover, the cost of hiring a profession would escalate the costs further.
To cut on the cost the SWOP team proposed hiring a co-op student. This idea is brilliant, however for a resort like Blue Mountain the room for error is extremely small, and hiring a co-op student may lead to some errors that may be costly later.
Therefore, the human resource director should hire a professional and experienced ICT technician to assist in implementing and monitoring the system. The costs incurred may be high initially but in the long run, these costs may be negligible if the project is well implemented.
Professionalism and experience are handy when a business is installing and implementing a new system (Gruen et al. 42). Anticipating risks that may arise due to lack of professionalism should be part of managerial decisions (Gruca and Lopo 117).
Therefore, in the case of Dave, he should ensure that no risks that may arise if they employ the co-op student. In case the human resource manager sees any risks that may be costly, he should abort the idea and employ a professional ICT technician to monitor and implement the new system.
Works Cited
Friedman, Lawrence. Go to Market Strategy: Advanced Techniques and Tools for Selling More Products, to More Customers, More Profitably. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann 2002. Print.
Gruca, Thomas S., and Lopo L. Rego. “Customer Satisfaction, Cash Flow, and Shareholder Value.” Journal of Marketing. 69.3 (2005): 115-130. Print.
Gruen, Thomas, John Summers, and Frank Acito. “Relationship Marketing Activities, Commitment, and Membership Behaviors in Professional Associations.” Journal of Marketing, 64.3(2000), 34–49. Print.
Kaplan, Robert and David, Norton. The Strategy Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard companies thrive in the new business environment, Boston mass: Harvard Business School Press, 2000. Print.
Lancaster, Geoff. and Frank, Withey. Marketing Fundamentals. London: Macmillan, 2007. Print.
Sanchez, John. “Building Customer Relationship For Enduring Profit in a Wired Economy.” Customer Relationship Marketing. 10.2 (2009): 1-38. JSTOR. Web.
Sheppard, Mark. “Blue Mountains Resorts: The Service Quality Journey.” Ivey Management Services. 22.2 (2002): 1-19
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