Managing those complex changes at your property

When changing a Property Management Solution, one of the biggest challenges for a Hotel or Resort Manager is managing change throughout the organization. Staff need to accept and adopt the new processes and changes coming from a new system. Not all staff are the same and neither do all staff adopt the technology change in the same manner.

A certain percentage of staff will jump at the opportunity to learn and find the benefits of the new technology – call them “Innovators and Early Adopters”. Others will stand back and wait for someone to set the expectations before engaging – let’s call them the “Majority”. Others might avoid using the new technology as far as possible – call them “Laggards”. The above graph represents your staff and when replacing a PMSERP system, leadership needs to drive change differently for each respective group within the technology adoption lifecycle.

Change does not happen just because the goal has been set. I came across a model by Knoster, Villa and Thousand (2000) on managing complex change and when asking General Managers, the changing of a property management system absolutely falls under the “Complex Change” category.

We found managers who can effectively and consistently provide the Vision + Skills + Incentives + Resources + Action Plan, can successfully manage complex change like replacing a Property Management Solution at single and multi-property environments alike.