IHG's Chief Technology Officer Shares Lessons Learned After Four Years

Changetake

After Dan Blanchard's hour-long HITEC presentation (half of which was a Q&A with the audience), dozens of people were lined up to talk to him. He'd learned a lot in his four years as IHG's Chief Technology Officer, and people were clearly interested in hearing about it.

Justin Dawes

IHG Hotels & Resorts was a little too aggressive in the early stages of developing the technology.

The hotel brand had a lot of ideas to test, but the infrastructure couldn't keep up, so the company had to backtrack to iron out some issues.

That was one of the lessons IHG Chief Technology Officer Dan Blanchard shared during his HITEC presentation and brief discussion with Skift on Monday, when he launched the company's newest technology efforts since joining the company four years ago.

“This has been a journey of maturity; there's been a lot of failure,” Blanchard said during the presentation.

I stubbed my toe a lot, but most of the time it was just from being a little too aggressive, going too fast on something.

Blanchard explained that IHG had to rethink this issue and others in order to develop at the level it wanted.

Reducing organizational barriers

IHG's technology infrastructure and processes weren't robust enough when Blanchard took over, he said, meaning the company needed to move systems to the cloud, choose which tech vendors to fire and cut down on bureaucratic approvals for experimentation.

When I joined IHG four years ago, the company philosophy was, “No vendor is left behind.” “We've been spending money on too many vendors to count. We've significantly limited that,” Blanchard says.

Standardization is important to IHG, but it's still a work in progress. The company uses some legacy systems, but has done enough modernization to lay the foundation for progress, he says. Nearly 60 percent of the company's applications are now in the cloud, he says.

“We found that having a set of standards was really important to moving quickly,” Blanchard told Skift. “Having all these standards discussions along the way just complicates the discussion. We've had success when the standards are clearly defined and people are using them.”

Encourage innovation without a focus on profits

IHG isn't so concerned about whether each individual tech or AI experiment will generate revenue, Blanchard said.

The idea may stress those with financial concerns, but the focus must be on the bigger picture, he said. And defining criteria that includes establishing a long-term budget for technology experimentation means IHG has more freedom to try things.

“I don't know what's going on. [that team is] “While we haven't yet determined what we'll do beyond next quarter, this gives us great flexibility, which will be extremely important as we start talking about meeting the needs of the next generation of travelers,” Blanchard said.

For example, IHG launched a wishlist feature on its app in September.

“And that turns out to be a big thing. People love to make wish lists of places they want to go. And it's very sticky. People make these wish lists and then they book them later,” he said.

and, [return on investment plan]”It was someone's idea on the team, he said. They built it, and now it's a big hit with customers.

Assure people that they won't be fired if their experiment fails

Blanchard said IHG tries to avoid using the word “project” when talking about tests in its internal innovation programs.

That's because there's an implication that if the project fails, the employees working on it will be fired, he said. Such concerns can stifle innovation that includes regular failure as part of the process.

People need to know that getting involved in something that doesn't work out won't affect their careers, he told Skift.

And in a rapidly evolving technology environment, encouraging experimentation in the company's innovation programs will be key, he said.

We're not even close to what we'll see in the next few years with next-generation AI, he said.

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