Should Marriott hire a Crisis Management Agency?
Oct 1, 2018, 3:13 am
#31
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As an "IT Professional" with 25 years of doing conversions, migrations, etc., for F100 companies, I can assure you that every single one of them went through at least 8 mock conversions, often more, and at least 2 passes with no significant issues.
Not once did the actual go-live run without significant unexpected issues.
This is worse than many, not as bad as some. But to just say "they should have tested it until it worked" and thinking that means it would have worked flawlessly, simply isn't realistic.
And no, getting the work done and effectively communication are certainly not mutually exclusive.
A "a Crisis Management Agency" would probably just slow things down. And everyone here would complain that "all they're doing is PR, why don't they fix it".
Not once did the actual go-live run without significant unexpected issues.
This is worse than many, not as bad as some. But to just say "they should have tested it until it worked" and thinking that means it would have worked flawlessly, simply isn't realistic.
And no, getting the work done and effectively communication are certainly not mutually exclusive.
A "a Crisis Management Agency" would probably just slow things down. And everyone here would complain that "all they're doing is PR, why don't they fix it".
Oct 1, 2018, 8:26 am
#32
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It's possible they got very bad advice from consultants who only pretended they knew what they were talking about. That definitely happens. It's also possible Marriott management completely screwed the pooch here.
I don't think there's any question but that's exactly what was happening.
Oct 1, 2018, 8:51 am
#33
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I imagine no one in this forum ever had the (dis)pleasure of surviving an ERP change to SAP?
Deapite running in parallel for months, we still managed to drop $21 million in sales because our production and shipping systems were in rough shape after we flipped the switch.
These things happen and my old company is still thriving. You know what they say about omelette and eggs.
Deapite running in parallel for months, we still managed to drop $21 million in sales because our production and shipping systems were in rough shape after we flipped the switch.
These things happen and my old company is still thriving. You know what they say about omelette and eggs.
Oct 1, 2018, 10:28 am
#35
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I think Marriott's crisis management approach is to just have a bunch of cowboys shooting from the hip. It seems to be working great.
Oct 1, 2018, 11:44 pm
#36
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Perhaps I was raised/trained differently. At my first real job, I remember the chief engineer telling me, "It better work the first time, every time, even in the middle of a Cat 5 hurricane." Tons of testing, even flat-out abuse to the equipment and systems. This also meant not trusting anyone else to do what they said they would. ~25 years & multiple Cat 4 hurricanes later, these facilities never went down. Some of the 25 year old systems are still in use.
Oct 2, 2018, 5:49 am
#37
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