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An Online Adventure
In 2001 the Web came to MasterCorp, and the company decided to make Bob's Program available to housekeepers, clerks and executives over the Internet. It wasn't an easy sell; Swafford, then de facto CIO, worried that a Web site might not be able to handle the transaction volume. Loveday and Potts spent six months convincing Swafford that a Web-based system was the way of the future. After Swafford went to an HTML class with Loveday to see how it could be done, Swafford approved the project.
Loveday hired Potts' son Blair to rewrite Bob's Program in an Active Server Pages environment and, later, ASP.NET. Loveday and the younger Potts spent nearly a year on the conversion, which also entailed rolling out networked PCs to the company's growing number of satellite offices and training executive housekeepers, many of whom speak only Creole or Spanish. They also added cleaning products procurement capabilities. In 2002, Bob's Program was officially decommissioned and the newly minted Web App took its place.
Today some 300 people -- most of whom are in the field -- tap into Web App. Now an executive housekeeper logs on in the morning and inputs the information she gets daily from the resort; Web App then uses that information to tell her how many hours of cleaning she needs to schedule as well as how to handle special cleaning jobs. She then creates a schedule using online tools and forms, prints out assignment and inspector sheets, and receives weekly demand forecasts based on historical data. The executive housekeeper inputs the data from the sheets at the end of each day.
Back at headquarters, clerks log on and mainly watch the workday unfold online. "It has become more of an auditing function," Loveday says. "It gives us another level of comfort knowing that there's another set of eyes looking at it." Executives can get financials in real time and anticipate demand; before they were in the dark for at least a week as paperwork was shipped to headquarters and clerks entered data.
Executive housekeepers no longer have to make daily calculations or produce paperwork, nor do clerks have to rekey data -- resulting in greater accuracy, particularly with paychecks. "Five to six percent of paychecks were incorrect before the [Web App]," COO Goff says. "Today, there's hardly any more calls to get checks fixed. It's maybe a half a percent. With the Web App, we can communicate with our employees on pay stubs and work assignments."
Web App also lets MasterCorp monitor the job performance of cleaning staff by matching ratings of room cleanliness (as determined by room inspections and visitor comments) with who cleaned them. MasterCorp can then reward top performers and assign more training to poor performers. On the recruitment side, Web App manages a referral program and taps into a 7-gigabyte database filled with present and past employees. Since many hires are re-hires, this database has become a goldmine for filling out worker rosters -- and avoiding problematic ex-workers.
Good workers beget happy customers, and part of what makes a good worker is training. Nearly two years ago, MasterCorp began developing an e-training program tied into Web App. Previously, MasterCorp executives had to visit sites and conduct training sessions. In many cases, site managers at remote resorts fell through the cracks and did not receive regular training. Now the company is more than halfway to its goal of creating a dozen e-courses covering everything from company values to cleaning carpets to the interaction of dangerous chemicals. All site managers are required to complete these courses every year.
"For us being MasterCorp everywhere, we can't do it without technology," says Nathan Bertram, director of employee development and training.
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