Royal Caribbean International

Renewing and Realigning IT with e-Business

When CIO J Gyani came to Royal Caribbean International

(www.royalcaribbean.com), the company’s IT workforce was as diverse as they
come. Employees hailed from more than 40 countries and nearly half of them
were minorities or women. But IT management was foundering. “I want to be
honest with you,” President and COO A Cook told Gyani. “IT is screwed up.”

“It was a very traditional IT organization: command and control. Everything

was locked down; everything was about not spending money,” Bresnan
recalls. It was a traditional data processing shop,” Gyani says. Cost-cutting
was the mantra. Voice mail was new, and the cruise operator was only
dabbling with e-mail. There was no IT strategy for the future and no respect
from the business side for IT.

C Hem, SVP of total guest satisfaction, was “bitter in his disdain for all things
IT,” Gyani recalls, and he wasn’t alone. “To a person, the business had
absolutely lost confidence” in the company’s IT department, he says. “No
matter what we did, it was never right,” recalls Y Chand, IT Director.

Internally, the IT group was made up of factions, and morale was terrible.
Word around the department was that two opposing “mafias” – Cuban and
African American – controlled the data centre and the networking group.
“Each department in IT did its thing and didn’t want any involvement with
the others,” says IT Manager I Bell. “It was an emotionless, beaten-down
group,” says Gyani, who had come from well-oiled, homogeneous IT machines
at Marriott International and Omni Hotels.

Almost 3 years later, everything has changed. “Silos,” or special-interest

technical fiefdoms, and their resulting resentments have disappeared, and the
IT group has become phenomenally successful. Gyani personally sold the
Board of Directors on a $180 million effort called Project Leapfrog aimed at
pulling Royal Caribbean into the 21st century. Since then, the firm’s IT group
has been overhauling the entire IT infrastructure. This effort includes a
PeopleSoft ERP, a revamped public website, and additional automation to
facilitate shipboard and shore excursion activities.

The days, the IT department is respected by the business and proud. “I never
doubted that he would transform the organization,” Cook says. “But Gyani
did it quicker than I thought he would.”

1 Confidential / Nitin Chikhale

Gyani insists that there’s no magic formula for getting a diverse group to pull
together. “All I do is try to create the atmosphere and the environment that
allows people to be successful,” he says. Gyani acknowledges that there’s one
more thing that contributes to harmony in a heterogeneous workplace.
“Integrity establishes a foundation for everything that you do,” he says. “If you
don’t have that, you have nothing.”

The folks at Royal Caribbean watch this play out at work every day. Here’s
their account of how Gyani manages diversity.

Communication. “He communicates all the time, everything to everybody,

and that prevents silos,” says R Sangta, manager of shipboard applications
delivery. “Silos still arise around projects or products, but as long as he’s
communicating the same message and the same goals to everyone evenly,
then no one can use information as a weapon.”

Silo-busting. “Before Gyani, there was more ‘us versus them’ in IT,” Sangta
recalls. He notes, for example, that shipboard and onshore IT people didn’t
mix. “But now we’re forced to work in cross-teams to bring out products for
the business, and the result is to break down the silos,” he says.

Metrics and Time. Gyani has established very specific performance

measures to let his managers know exactly what’s expected of them. He’s also
centralized administrative responsibilities to give managers more time for
their people. “We used to spend a lot of time with vendors and make
arrangements for training and travel,” says IT Manager. “All that was removed
so that we could focus more on our people.’

Respect. “The change has been profound,” says Hem, no longer bitter. “I give
Y Chand tremendous credit for turning around the organization and making
it extremely service-and-customer-oriented. Instead of being seen as an
obstacle, it’s seen as an assist to business.” This new respect makes the IT
team proud of itself. “We have a great working relationship with the business
now, Chand says. They respect us, they look to us, and that raises morale of
the staff.”

2 Confidential / Nitin Chikhale

Case Study Questions:

1. Why did the IT group at Royal Caribbean have such poor

performance and business status in the company?

2. What are the top 3 factors in Tim Gyani’s turnaround of the IT

function at Royal Caribbean? Explain the reasons for your choices.

3. Visit the website of Royal Caribbean. Evaluate the effectiveness of

the website and the services being offered to attract and serve the
travel needs of customers and prospective customers. What could
be improved? Outline the business impact of your idea.

4. Review the competitor’s websites (any one……) vis-à-vis Royal

Caribbean.

5. Assuming that you are the CIO / CTO, what would be your approach
to achieve the objective?

3 Confidential / Nitin Chikhale