Collecting, structuring and exposing B2B service catalogues
Helping Accor structure and manage an international database of servicesAccor is Europe’s largest hotel group, with a capacity of over 750,000 rooms across 5300 locations. Following an “asset light” strategy, Accor offers a myriad of services to its hotels and franchisees. These services, available throughout the world, and constituting a core element of Accor’s value proposition to it’s hotels, needed to be structured, digitized, and made available online for all to discover.
It is in this context, and after having attempted multiple other approaches (of which the use of a PIM) that Accor finally adopted Second as it’s technological solution for this core line of business.
Objectives
To structure a global catalogue of services and make it available to all stake holders.
Core features
- Service Information Manager
- Service management and servicer vendor management
- Culture contextualized services
- Service availability in space and time
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Hospitality -
International
Second’s benefits
Structurally, services and products are radically different. A product (or good) exists irrespective of whether it has a buyer or a seller, and can be stocked in advance to be shipped at a later date. A service on the other hand changes in nature depending on who renders it, and who consumes it. It is intangible and will only exist when consumed and rendered. These differences explain why a PIM (Product Information Manager) is unsuitable to create and manage a catalogue of services. The Second Service Information Manager responds to the requirements of companies that need to create, structure, manage and share a catalogue of services. After several attempts to approach services as though they were products, Accor finally opted to adopt Second. And the Master Services Database was launched in 6 weeks.
