Over the next few years, computers will have a great impact in how ski schools are run. From simple stand-alone PCs on the ski school directors’ desks to complex multi-machine local area networks handling reservations and ticketing at numerous sales points, they hone the capacity to deal with a vast amount of operational minutiae. This, in turn, will create more informed managers, better results and improved performance.
The basic arenas in which computers are of benefit to a ski school include financial analysis and projections, record keeping, point-of-sale ticketing and staff management and lesson-reservation systems.
For financial management, spreadsheet software such as Lotus 1-2-3 can be configured to provide a detailed analysis of daily, weekly and yearly income for each ski school program and matching spreadsheets can tally payroll and expenses for these programs. Merging the data from both gives up-to-the-minute information on the profitability of each offering.
Given some historical data of ski school performance from prior seasons or even from the earlier part of the current season, statistical software and business graphics packages allow directors to project future performance. Utilizing these resources, I have projected end-of-season gross revenues of a school to within a couple thousand dollars based only on a few weeks of current-season operations. All sorts of “what if” scenarios can be run, decisions made and the real impact on the bottom line can be viewed.
Database software such as D-Base can be configured to handle the record keeping needs of almost any school. Systems can be developed to track staff training, work assignments, injury statistics and other employee information. Guest demographics can be recorded and analyzed by program offering. Combining a database of customers with the mail-merge function of database software and word processors can provide lists so that first-time skiers receive a personalized letter after they take their first lesson. Educational tools for staff training such as a database of exercise lines by skill development category can also be developed.
From my discussions with ski school directors, I have found the most desired applications are point-of-sale school ticketing and lesson reservation/staff management systems. The two main reasons for this are to improve guest services and operational efficiency.
Foremost is better guest service. The skiing public has come to expect high levels of service and to meet these expectations, even smaller ski schools must be able to compete with other businesses for customers’ discretionary dollars. Computers can help provide superior guest service by making information and services available quickly and conveniently.
Any improvement in the management of lesson bookings would be a godsend to ski school supervisors. Manually keeping track of 50 to 100 ski instructors’ complex hourly schedules, scheduling multiple types and durations of lessons, making sure a qualified person is available for every lesson and then getting correct payroll data recorded would baffle the mission planners at NASA. Computerization of these functions is a natural in eliminating labor, decreasing errors and, most importantly, maximizing staff utilization. All of this drops dollars directly onto the bottom line.
The first step in improving guest services and efficiency is to have a good ski school ticketing system. Point-of-sale ticketing systems are available from manufacturers that supply modules for lift ticket sales programs and a quick reading of advertisements for resort ticketing systems reveals a number of options. These packages are generic so they can be configured to support many different ski school product offerings as well as the demands of different physical layouts of ski school facilities.
Tom Haas, the ski school director at Loon Mountain, N.H., installed a system by Delta Information Systems that is networked to all retail sales points in the resort. Haas says that in addition to being more convenient for guests, the system offers opportunities for add-on sales of lessons. “It’s like McDonald’s,” he says. “Would you like a ski lesson with that lift ticket, sir? It’s the one-stop shopping for the guest that we have been looking for.”
Another aspect of this system that aids the ski school director is the statistical information available from the Report Generator part of the software. Haas gets detailed reports at the end of each day about the volume of business generated by each sales point, the breakdown of types of products sold and accurate financial data. With this information available, he is able to better manage day-to-day operations.
Detailed tracking of products sold, the ability to bring up current lesson sales levels on screen for operational planning purposes and guest convenience are all tangible benefits of having this type of system in place. Unfortunately, these ticketing systems up to now have not provided the function most wanted by ski school managers — a lesson reservation and staff management system.
Anyone who has spent much time around a ski school desk during Christmas week knows the horrendous problem that lesson bookings become. Manual tracking systems are time consuming and prone to booking errors such as not having the requested instructor, double booking the same instructor or just not having enough staff to cover the sales already contracted. When you try to accommodate multiple remote sales points, the problems expand geometrically and things quickly slip into crisis management. Everyone in the ski school experiences stress. So does the guest.
To deal with these problems, a reservation and staff-management system has been in place at Okemo Mountain, Vt., for four years. It was designed to run on the resort’s existing System 36 mainframe, to handle a very large private lesson business.
When Marty Harrison, Okemo’s ski school director, went looking for software to perform these functions, she found there were no commercial packages that could do what she envisioned. So she hired a local programmer, Kathy Aines of Resort Information Systems, to implement the concepts she needed. “The most challenging aspect of writing this type of software is making it fast,” says Aines. “You don’t want to keep the customer waiting.”
The system runs on four sales IBM-compatible sales terminals at the main ski school desk that access the resort’s mainframe on which the software runs. They sell lessons only at the ski school desk because Harrison says she wants more intimate contact between the ski school staff and the guest, although the system could be expanded to an unlimited number of sales points with the addition of more terminals. This system allows a lot of statistical and management functions to be performed quickly and efficiently, generating staffing schedules, tracking lesson counts by category and instructor and recording the instructors’ work hours for payroll. Supervisors can get on-screen status reports instantly.
This software is a combination of a database and what programmers call an expert system, because it takes on the function of making most decisions about which instructor to assign to the lesson. It is this capacity that makes the system so powerful — it transcends a record-keeping system and makes the computer appear “smart.”
Another separate point-of-sale system is used at Okemo for ticket generation and payment for all ski school lessons, because the current POS ticketing system does not integrate the private reservation system and the reservation system does not interface into the ticketing program. This necessitates duplicate hardware and additional steps for the staff, an inefficiency Harrison would like to solve in the future.
What’s the cost of this type of system? Kathy Aines says a System 36 or AS400 with three terminals and the existing software would run around $15,000, with the software being about half of that price. Any changes or customization from the basic system would add additional costs.
Right now, she has plans to move the software to a different computer platform, like the IBM PC, because of the limited market.
At Mammoth Mountain, Calif., Larry Van Kirk of Minaret Reservation Systems developed a sophisticated reservations and staff-management package two years ago that runs on the area’s DEC mainframe computer. He recently adapted it to operate on 80386- and 80486-based PC’s running on a Novell network and is now offering it commercially as a stand-alone turn-key installation packaged with Gateway computer hardware.
“For a basic system with up to four terminals, I recommend at least a 40 Mhz 80386 as the main file server with the additional terminals being 16 Mhz 80386’s,” says Van Kirk. Again processor speed is the major issue to keep things moving quickly at the sales points. This type of system would cost about $10,000 to $13,000 for the software, and another $10,000 for hardware. Because it is installed specifically for each ski school, some limited customization is possible within those prices.
The system is quite elaborate, composed of four sections that work together. The Office Management module maintains information about the instructors and their pay rates, the Staff Management and Scheduling module takes care of the instructors’ schedules and maintains repetitive regular assignments such as group-lesson line-ups; the Private Reservation module deals with scheduling lessons up to two years in advance; and the Management Report module allows the data obtained by the program to be manipulated in almost every way and output to either the screen or the printer, giving instant access to such things as current business levels by product, staff availability and numerous revenue/cost analysis reports.
Why should a ski school utilize such a system? “It greatly reduces the labor hours to run the operation and management can retrieve information instantly, which allows changes in the way the business is being run,” says Van Kirk. “Management in a non-growth, mature market needs this kind of sophistication.” It is the potential to use the staff more effectively by having detailed, exact scheduling that really makes this type of system cost-effective.
Van Kirk says the ski industry is behind other recreation businesses in utilizing this type of computerization and it’s due in great part to the seasonal nature of this business. “They are reluctant to invest this kind of money in the off-season when cash flow is down,” he says. “By the time operations have started and ski area managements realize they need it, it’s the wrong time to implement and debug such a system.” A Catch-22 situation.
So why can’t ski schools find an inexpensive, off-the-shelf, generic reservation and staff management package? “Developing any reservation system is a very complex and expensive situation,” says Dennis Brobst of Delta Information Systems. “Ski School operations are more complex than the average reservation system because of all the variables. It’s not just keeping track of the lessons, but the details of scheduling the instructors, different ways of tracking pay rates and the like. It just goes on and on.”
Such expensive R&D work has to be paid for out of the proceeds from software sales. “It’s difficult to financially justify the development effort, because of the limited audience for the product,” says Brobst. “Even though we understand how vital it could be for our customers.” Major off-the-shelf business-software packages sell in the $500 to $700 range, but they have a huge market, thereby spreading the development costs over more units sold. With the limited number of units that might be sold to ski schools, the development costs drive the price of these specialized reservations packages up.
One partial solution to this problem is to adapt one of the existing packages developed by a programmer for a specific resort so that it integrates with existing ticketing systems. Delta is looking at that possibility and may have such a package available in the future.
For individual resorts, one way to get such technology at a lower cost is for a group of similar-sized areas to get together and decide what features could serve the needs of all, and then contract a programmer to develop it. This approach could benefit smaller areas for whom the current cost of software is difficult to justify.
Beyond the sophisticated, specialized computer packages, should ski schools be utilizing computers? Yes. The administrative benefits far outweigh the minimal costs for basic systems. Should ski schools be utilizing a computerized point-of-sale ticketing system? Most likely. Today’s POS ticketing programs are like state-of-the-art cash registers. Should ski schools install a computerized reservation and staff-management system? Maybe. To be really effective, such a system needs to adapt to individual school situations at a price that makes sense for the dollar volume the school generates. There are a couple of existing packages available that might meet individual needs, but does the price tag work? Each ski school director must analyze what kind of savings might be realized and what increase in revenue generation would result.
Like detachable quads, power-tillers, and automated snowmaking, such capabilities will be spread throughout the ski industry quickly. The public will demand it. One thing is sure; it won’t be long before every ski school will be using some form of computerized reservations and staff management technology. Should you start planning now? Absolutely!
Making Software Appear Smart
One of the fascinating aspects of computers is their ability to emulate human decision-making processes. Software that can do this is called an expert system, because it takes the decision-making knowledge of a person (or group of people), programs that into the computer so that the “expert” is always on duty and the job is always done the same way every time.
To arrive at such expertise, a programmer sits down with the people whose knowledge the computer is to simulate and analyzes the items considered in making decisions. He or she then codes a series of logic steps that lead to the appropriate conclusion. With this type of system, given the same data, the same conclusion is always reached.
In the case of lesson reservation software, the computer can help make sure that an appropriate instructor is assigned to a lesson. It also assures that the instructor doesn’t get double booked, that the ski school doesn’t sell more lessons than it can staff and that there is the ability to utilize all available staff.
By having the desk person ask the guest specific questions, the computer can be given enough data to select an instructor for the lesson. As an example, let’s take the following selection criteria that are typical issues when a guest is looking for a lesson:
- Is the instructor scheduled to be here on the date needed?
- Is the instructor of the proper sex?
- Is the instructor certified?
- Is the instructor qualified to teach the level of the lesson?
- Is the instructor qualified to teach the age group?
- Is the instructor already booked for the date and time slot?
- Is the instructor already booked in an adjoining time slot that would conflict with the duration of this lesson?
- Who is next up in the assignment rotation as of this moment?
As each question is evaluated by the computer’s decision-making logic, the group of possible instructors gets smaller. The first question establishes all of the instructors who are available that day. The next question about the sex of the instructor, if one was specified, could narrow the selection down to only males or only females. Then of those instructors, if the request was for a certified instructor, the field would be reduced to only certified instructors of that sex, who are here on that day.
This narrowing down is repeated for each consideration until the final question is answered: who is next up on the rotation schedule? As if by magic, that person’s name pops up on the screen, the lesson is booked for the guest and the booking is placed into the instructor’s daily schedule.
— J.B.
