A high-tech transformation for a high-touch business

BACK IN 2020, “business as usual” for Marriott Vacations Worldwide (MVW) simply wasn't an option anymore.

Two circumstances just a few years apart had catalyzed a moment that demanded a new organizational vision. The first was rapid expansion: By the end of 2018, the vacation company had nearly doubled its size from just a few years prior via mergers and acquisitions, the biggest of them a purchase of ILG, Inc., a vacation experience provider across vacation ownership, membership, and exchange networks. Such expansion had turned MVW’s technological backend into a patchwork of disjointed platforms and systems that was complicating operational efficiency and obscuring the path to revenue-generating business opportunities.

As an example, “ILG had seven or eight payroll systems,” says MVW president and CEO John E. Geller, Jr. “And we needed to move not just payroll, but the human resource and information systems for all of our now 20,000-plus associates onto one platform.”

The second inflection point was Covid. Bad for all businesses that relied on people being able to leave their houses, the pandemic hit the vacation industry particularly hard—and that meant that, like so many organizations around the world, MVW had to adjust its thinking from “operational improvement” to “operational survival.”

And it’s perhaps that moment that makes MVW unique. While Covid forced many organizations into long-term operational deep freeze, Geller’s group—supported by its team of collaborators at Deloitte—instead saw a linkage between pandemic shutdown and 2018’s acquisition overwhelm: a common need for operational change.

In other words, 2020 wasn’t just an opportunity to simply batten the hatches and weather the storm. It was a chance to retool the entire organization for the future.

Rising to the challenge

A quantum change in methods of customer engagement is in process now, supported by a Salesforce platform which will soon be at the heart of MVW’s operations—not just reviving, but reimagining the way they offer human-first, human-touch support for the team members, customers, and owners they serve. But to get there, they had to start at the beginning.

While cost savings is always an essential part of operational initiatives, the team knew blindly cutting finances wasn’t the point. “Slash-and-burn gives you short-term results, but usually has a very bad impact long-term,” says Deloitte consulting principal Rafael F. Calderon. “And it can lead to a lost opportunity to streamline your processes and operating model.”

Instead, MVW would have to identify ways to reduce costs so it would then have the financial flexibility to reinvest back into the transformation initiative itself. It was less about cutting and more about funneling efficiency into innovation. And with a mission to invest in tech while seeking close to $200 million in annual savings, that efficiency piece was key. Deloitte showcased strong commitment to MVW’s success by putting a substantial portion of their fees at risk to achieve MVW’s strategic outcomes. Working as one team, the collaboration not only accelerated and maximized MVW’s annual savings but set the stage for transformative growth, while allowing for investments in long term operational success

Translating cost savings into a continual innovation loop takes a wide view of an organization: Where you choose to reduce costs may not be the same business unit in which you choose to reinvest. MVW had to take an appropriately inclusive view of its entire operational footprint. “There's all the aspects of our core business—sales, marketing, customer service, as well as the whole digital experience—and I think companies often choose to tackle those in a sequential order, and maybe not think about it as holistically as we did,” says MVW chief brand and digital officer Lori Gustafson.

A holistic—and human—solution

Adding to the challenge is the reality that the vacation ownership industry is traditionally face-to-face and digital technologies need to complement rather than automate or replace the current methods of engagement. That high degree of personal, human interaction is essential to the company’s products, and a key to keeping timeshare owners happy. This meant that this transformation had to be not just high-tech, but high-touch—enabling sales associates to know more about their owners and customers, more efficiently, than ever before. Sales presentations couldn’t move to purely digital environments; rather, they would have to give associates insights to connect owners and customers to ancillary experiences from across MVW’s full portfolio.

Tech-wise, the company wasn’t starting the initiative from scratch. Some discrete efforts had been underway for years, like the forays into AI and chatbots on the ILG side of the house. But doing all of this work correctly depended on the right network of support.

With help from Deloitte, the team at MVW landed on a Salesforce-based system that helped them not to replace, but to empower that human touch their business depended on. A key example of the success this shift powered was its impact on MVW’s agents: “I think we had somewhere north of nine different systems an agent had to navigate between in order to help an owner,” says Geller. “So one of the major opportunities was making it much more seamless for them.” Now, not only is it easier for agents to do their jobs—it's easier to train and retain them, too.

And that streamlined, personalized experience extends even further. “We have owners and customers committing a lot of their vacation time with us, and we want to make sure that we know them, that we can leverage that data to give them the best service and recommendations,” says Gustafson. Now, they are starting to paint a much more complete picture of each individual, and that information is becoming more broadly available to key service personnel who interact with them. And it's not just call centers: Better and more accessible customer and owner data also drives personalization across MVW's entire ecosystem.

The transformation is just the beginning

Today, it’s clear that the vacation business is back. “It started to recover by Memorial Day 2020, and increasingly through '21,” says Geller. “With cashflow coming back, we could focus on how to accelerate our journey further.” And thanks to MVW's tech-powered transformation, the organization is well-poised to keep growing.

But Geller is also the first to admit that the transformation is far from over. “It's a journey that I don't think ever ends,” he says. “We're still in very early days in terms of the opportunities. But the foundation is strong, and we've got momentum.”