Abstract
Homestyle Hotels Inc is a result of merger of Lifestyle Resorts and Home Away Hotels. Each individual hotel operates in silos with no standardized process to capture client information. Initially, Ben Garrett (the IT director)’s mandate was to ‘consolidate the firm’s IT’, however with the said objective having been achieved, the higher management now wanted a more cohesive picture to enable better analysis and present a consistent picture to the outside world. The roadblocks to the integration are one too many- two different hotels, two different ways of working, vast geographical expanse. The question now was, of the two vendors who had come to present their software applications, which application would most suit the …show more content…

Quality assurance needs to be integrated to reap the benefits of the merger and break away from the ‘fiefdom’ style of working.
Currently, each hotel is individually managing all aspects of data and is insulated from the overall profitability/loss of the organization. Integration of various functions would on one hand ensure interdependency and on the other hand help individual hotel managers focus on their core competencies as illustrated below:
Maybe better business processes require connected applications, or diverse data must be kept in sync, or perhaps really understanding customers requires creating a data warehouse. Whatever the problem, application and data integration are frequently part of the solution, and they can provide real business value (Chappell D., 2009, p 12)
Outline a process for Homestyle to follow in order to decide between the two software options (i.e., HC and CR)? What selection criteria would you use? Who should make the decision?
First and foremost there should be absolute clarity in what the organization intends to achieve and whether the software is helping in moving closer to the goal. As rightly said, “The worlds of business and IT have traditionally been isolated from each other, leading to misaligned and sometimes conflicting strategies” (McKeen and Smith, 2013). Hence, the goal of the organization should be clearly outlined so as to