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How RLH Corporation stays authentic with digital transformation

Focus on: Empower Employees, Optimize Operations

From the snowy peaks of Mount Rainier that tower 14,410 feet above sea level and the Seattle skyline, to the depths of the Columbia River Gorge, a canyon that winds over 80 miles from the Portland metro area through the Cascade Mountain Range, the Pacific Northwest offers travelers a wide range of unforgettable adventure opportunities. In fact, the entire Pacific Northwest has cultivated a reputation for adventure and discovery. Whether you’re a nature enthusiast planning an outdoor excursion in one of the region’s four vast national parks, or a food and culture aficionado seeking a one-of-a-kind experience in Seattle or Portland, PNW has you covered.

As a growing hotel operation with strong roots in the Pacific Northwest, RLH Corporation prides itself on embracing this mentality of adventure and discovery. It pervades everything the organization does, from providing its guests with local knowledge and an authentic, community feel, to how it approaches technological advancement.

In the hospitality industry, RLH Corporation has always been a technology leader. But a pair of recent acquisitions have rapidly expanded and diversified the company’s portfolio of properties – and prompted the company to explore the impact of technology in broader terms. In 2015, RLH Corporation acquired the GuestHouse and Settle Inn brands, a move that doubled the amount of properties under the company’s control. A year later, its acquisition of Vantage Hospitality grew operations from 120 hotels to more than 1,100 franchised, managed and operated, and owned properties across the Western and Southeast United States and Pennsylvania.

Turning Communication Challenges into Opportunities With a much larger and more diverse network of hotels, RLH Corporation began looking at technology more holistically to address new realizations, challenges, and opportunities.

“Whether it’s web design or true IT, [we have] always had leadership that has been in step with the industry,” says John Edwards, CIO of RLH Corporation. “The biggest change was the addition of a new CEO in 2014 and the concept that the need to lead with technology doesn’t just live within IT. We began looking at how technology impacts the entire organization and the entire business, from guests and their experiences, to owners, to franchise operators, managed operators, and corporate staff.”

“Right after 2014, Greg Mount came on board and brought his leadership team with him,” adds John Reeves, a 23-year veteran of RLH Corporation and the company’s Senior Director of IT Operations. “From day one, the focus has been on leading with technology, and I think we’ve accomplished that.”

As the company transitions from a smaller, nimble operation to a much larger group of brands and properties, leadership has focused on leveraging the latest technology to maintain integrity and stay true to the authentic feel and voice that has defined RLH Corporation since 1959.

“In the last 18-24 months, [we have] experienced exponential growth,” says Reeves. “It’s always been a smaller organization that’s been nimble and able to move pretty quickly, whether in response to a technology trend or a specific trend in our industry. Now, to see that same mentality translate to a large organization is really interesting, but we’re able to keep that concept of innovation and nimbleness by being open to change and constantly reviewing how we do business and impact our industry. It almost has a startup feel to it.”

To accomplish this, the company’s leadership team knew improving connectivity and communication across all employees, teams, and properties needed to be a priority. But traditional instant messaging tools were too disjointed and informal, while email quickly became too formal and, at times, overwhelming. What they wanted was an intuitive group communication platform that integrated with their existing tools and solutions—Yammer, SharePoint, Exchange and Office 365—to streamline the communication process and democratize their organizational knowledge, and Microsoft Teams delivered.

“The persistence of communication is what distinguishes the Teams solution,” Edwards says. “The style is somewhere in between where IM might be too loose and email which is much more formal. It’s much more of a conversation; it’s much more efficient. We don’t have people saying where’s this or where’s that because they haven’t lost it in the noise of email.”

With Teams, RLH Corporation doesn’t just have a centralized hub, but a living source of authenticity, and collaboration that reinforces the natural conversations and organizational culture the company was built on. That accessibility has helped drive adoption by creating persistent tools and solutions that lend themselves to organic user adoption.

Streamlining Smarter Data ManagementAs the number of RLH Corporation properties grew exponentially, so did the wealth of data the organization had been collecting. With each new property came new streams of information, and leadership quickly realized the strain this would put on the company’s two disparate legacy systems – and budget.

“The home-grown solutions were going to become impossible to keep up,” Edwards says. “That’s not our business, that’s not who we are. We’re not in the business of software development, we’re not in the business of building a CRM and so finding the right CRM solution that matched the other business tools was really a deciding factor.”

Together, Edwards and Reeves found a single, scalable platform to unite their data management systems in Dynamics 365. The flexibility of Microsoft’s CRM solution means the team can adapt their tools to meet the needs of each new franchise and acquisition. As their business needs continue to evolve, Dynamics 365 helps them meet their objectives and keep incoming data organized. With Dynamics 365 as a foundation, RLH Corporation has streamlined the franchising process, allowing new business opportunities to get up and running faster and cheaper.

Driving Digital TransformationWith the power of Teams and Dynamics 365 at their disposal, RLH Corporation is looking forward to more innovation opportunities in the future.

The CRM foundation the team has built is opening new opportunities for seamless management of structured and unstructured data with AI and machine learning capabilities. Moving forward, Reeves and Edwards view Teams as a vehicle for driving smarter, customer-centric decisions among its employees. Eventually, their goal is to extend that proactive cultural mindset into how RLH Corporation engages their customers and improves the guest experience.

The secret to RLH Corporation’s authenticity and technological innovation, is a commitment to progress – and a desire to never stop learning, adapting, and listening to industry and technology trends. With new technologies at their disposal, and their relentless pursuit of authenticity and adventure, Edwards, Reeves, and RLH Corporation looks to continue making trips “worth it” for their guests for many years to come.

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