Transforming Data, Talent and Communications into Impact at Sheraton Okinawa Sunmarina Resort

Abstract

In an effort to transform business operations and to integrate the property into the Sheraton chain of the hotel after a recent acquisition of the Okinawa Sunmarina Resort, the Starwood group was exploring opportunities for revamping talent operations, organizational architecture and internal communications. Shifting from pure intuition and just “doing one‟s best” to a data-driven business operation was one of the first initiatives the management implemented. Along with this, the Starwood Group introduced a series of new talent operations, geared at hiring and successfully on-boarding international talent needed to provide multi-lingual service to a rapidly diversifying clientele. These initiatives were complemented by a combination of carefully devised data utilization and cognitive architecture techniques, which were meant to induce awe and to create agile employee and customer engagement. The main purpose of this article is to analyze the effectiveness of the techniques utilized by the Starwood Group to revamp organizational architecture and to modernize communications and talent operations in order to illustrate the effectiveness of digitalization, built architecture and user engagement initiatives in creating modern organizations, integrated communications, and agile talent operations.