Opportunity presented by globalization for hospitality related industry

Under the umbrella of hospitality industry, media & entertainment industry, food & beverage industry, airline industry and travel agency industry are typical service industries which can apply cloud computing.  They can be niched and share the same supply chain to increase the business opportunity with each other.

Opportunity presented by globalization

1.          No time lag on business

With cloud computing, the main benefit is users can access company service anywhere in the globe with network connection. Companies in different industries can be benefit from sharing information and company service by some self-developed internal software instantly without time lag through cloud. Also, it allows them to handle and resolve different requests from different places efficiently. For example, all industries can manage global online purchase and global supply chain by setting up a private cloud. The private cloud in headquarter can handle all request instantly without time lag from anyplace. Even the company has many different business location, cloud computing can reduce lag time in the business decision making in order to avoid business risk and increase utilization of working capital.

2.          Remote visualization

Remote visualization is a concept that visualize the data computed on server side with high computing power (Innovation, 2015). Therefore, the client terminals from user side can have less or no computing power but just visualize the result. With the service nature of hospitality, many of the staffs need to walk around to serve during duties. We can understand that it is not handy for a customer facing staff to use a full function notebook to handle customer requests. It would be more efficient to use handy device with efficient software which cater the service need. Remote visualization allows employees to access anywhere with network-connected tiny, handy device as cloud will perform all computing in the backend. The terminal of staff can be small with less computing power and longer operating time which can access anywhere in the world. It would be a nice service for business with multiple locations with high mobility.

3.          Increase outsourcing

Furthermore, globalization resolves the geographic limitation by increasing the ways of communication and not limiting just face to face format.  At the same time, cloud base server allows users to access anywhere, even offshore.  Therefore, some of the back-office duties can be outsourced or moved to the places with lower operation costs.

4.          Increase B2B collaboration

By collaborating supply chain perspective, business opportunities can be created through cooperation or strategic alliances between corporates.  While cloud computing can share the platform as a service to different users with a centralized work station, new services combination release.  For example, strategic alliances companies in different industries share the same booking system and offer different discount or loyalty programs for customers so as to increase one and others profit and lower maintenance cost.

Emerging innovation practice

Customer service quality is the core value in hospitality industry, while globalization speeds up the creation of new business model, customer co-creation, by combining the use of cloud technology.  For instance, customers were involved in the business process by making online reservation, flexibility to select and fulfill personal needs, wherever they are with handy intelligence device.  These experience emerges with cloud computing development.    

New knowledge management or organizational learning models

1.          Knowledge management

In the era of globalization, knowledge is being considered as one of the key drivers that provides company with business intelligence and competitive intelligence. Cloud computing provides new models of knowledge management and knowledge sharing, and enable people to develop set of practices to create, capture, share and use knowledge in a new way. Service industries are always facing the problem of growing need of IT and infrastructure to keep and manage customer information so as to improve customer service level. With cloud computing, SMEs aiming for service industry is also given the chance to have better ways of knowledge management and quicker access of knowledge sharing. As cloud computing can provide the right level of security for knowledge management, service-providing companies can achieve protection of customer information at the same time provide them with the most desirable experience. Hybrid cloud can help overcome organizational culture challenges by developing company culture that embraces learning, sharing, changing, and improving knowledge sharing.

2.          Organizational learning

When applying cloud computing to organization learning, it can also change the current situation through several ways. Could computing enabled organization with anywhere and anytime access to learning applications. It also help companies streamline learning delivery, enhance video and mobile learning access, improve management costs and efficiency, and most importantly, it gives users much more autonomy to its learning process. (Ramani, 2012)

Reference

Innovation, S. A. (2015, 4 18). Remote Visualisation. Retrieved from http://www.hpc.cineca.it/services/remote-visualisation

Ramani, R. (2012, 07 31). Six Ways Cloud Technology Will Impact Learning. Retrieved from clomedia: http://www.clomedia.com/articles/six-ways-cloud-technology-will-impact-learning

Sajid Ibrahim Hashmi, V. C. (2011). Using the Cloud to Facilitate Global Software . 2011 Sixth IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering Workshops, 70-77.