In two previous SAM articles I outlined some basic guidelines for computer use at small areas and detailed our success with computers in marketing. The insatiable thirst for information in the marketing department and elsewhere, has placed a computer in almost every department and on almost every desk at Swain. Like the Tribbles of Star Trek fame, once the PC finds warmth and love, its uses multiply geometrically.
Ski School
Our biggest nightmare in ski school is scheduling. We teach almost 6,000 students each week from more than 160 schools and industry clubs in the course of an eight-week-long school ski program. That’s the easy part. Scheduling 125 part-time instructors to deliver the program could tax the Pentagon’s computers.
We do the scheduling with a Lotus 123 for Windows program because that’s what the ski school people know best. (If it were my job, I’d use a true database like Paradox [my favorite] or Dbase.) The Lotus printout serves not only as a schedule, but also as a check list to determine who actually showed up and what lessons were taught.
From that checklist, we build a spreadsheet that shows the day, type of lesson, level of lesson and number of students each instructor taught for the season and we base the instructor’s benefits package on this information. The computer assigns a weight to days of the week, times of day, ability levels and instructional specialties we have identified as most valuable. The fully certified instructor who teaches a beginning snowboard lesson to four SkiWee kids on Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. will receive more points in our flex benefit program than the new-hire who teaches a “C” lesson to two adults on Sunday at 1:00 p.m.
Being able to identify and reward the 20 percent of the instructors who do 80 percent of the work has been a great morale booster. Tighter scheduling also has cut staff requirements and prevents bringing in instructors who won’t even earn their gas money.
Food Service
Swain has a scatter-system cafeteria, an upscale-table-service restaurant and two bars. We own and operate our own food services and have been very proud of the quality and service offered. Until three years ago, however, we never used the words “profit” and “food service” in the same sentence. Then we hired a young MBA with a background in food service who used Lotus 123 to cost-out each item on the menu resulting in dropping some items and re-pricing everything that remained for profitability.
Previously, we had based our menu and pricing on our competitors. I now know that they don’t make any money on food service.
We had also always checked our cost of goods sold, labor costs and inventory on a monthly basis using internal statements. By the time we spotted a bad trend and moved to correct it, the season was over. Food service now creates weekly statements on Lotus and inventory and ordering are handled on the computer. Inventory has become so accurate that the manager calls ME when they can’t find a missing bottle of premium chardonnay. (It’s hard to get away with anything these days.)
It’s embarrassing to admit that our controls were so lax, that in the last three years computers and good people have been able to cut our cost-of-goods sold by almost 20 percent. Food service is now a top profit center and still gets rave reviews for quality, service and value.
One food service caution: We installed a sophisticated point-of-sale register system in all food service centers. I’d do it again, but these computer-based systems can generate an avalanche of information. We had to spend programming time and money to find the information we needed amid tons of ticket tape that only McDonald’s corporate headquarters could use. Keep the reports simple.
Ski Patrol
We input key information from accident reports into Paradox to generate weekly accident summaries needed by our insurance carrier. The database is also helpful in finding reports years after an accident when the skier can’t even remember the date of the mishap. We simply query the database on his or her name. Surprisingly, we find repeat “victims” and other details we might not otherwise pick up.
I’d like to see the insurance companies develop a universal computerized entry form that parallels the paper accident form. It could be argued that this much information might give us more “constructive notice” about possible accident situations than we could deal with. I think our risk management skills have reached a level where we could profit from a database that is this complete.
Rental Shop
We are in our first season using computers in the rental shop. Using a program from Sport Select, we build a database of the inventory and maintenance done to each piece of equipment. We also capture the names and addresses of all customers and what they rent.
Marketing information is our primary purpose in computerizing, but risk management could be a close second. If there is an injury on a rental ski, we can query the database to see who else has rented that same equipment. Showing that a number of guests safely used the equipment before and after the accident, could go a long way toward establishing the fact that the equipment was not the cause of the accident. Without a computer, looking through 30,000 transactions for a specific customer or the rental history of a particular unit, just isn’t realistic.
Weather Forecasting
We subscribe to a good, but expensive, weather forecasting service. After getting the report, we still make decisions by looking at the sky and watching TV from cities upwind of our resort. When the decision really counts, I check all sources of current information, including color weather maps, by using a PC to access Compu-Serve for little more than the cost of a phone call.
With our very valuable local knowledge, the on-site weather instruments we own and our PC, we probably could forecast our own weather all the time. The bottom line is, it would be cheaper.
