Live from NCDM: Disney’s Integration
Becoming an “E” focused company allowed for a variety of adjectives, including exciting, energizing, enabling, educational, entertaining, as well as the implied electronic and enterprise, keynote speaker Lawrence S. Hefler the former senior manager of e-Business for Walt Disney Parks & Resorts told a crowd yesterday at the National Center for Database Marketing conference.
Hefler’s address, “The Wonderful World of ‘e’”, covered his tenure at Disney, during which he developed an e-business infrastructure. His talk was shot through with e-references and puns – appropriate, as he noted, for a company which in 1959 introduced the “E” ticket for its most exciting rides, and whose cornerstone is a mouse character formerly known as “Steamboat Will-‘e’” and now world-renowned as “Mick-‘e’.” Hefler recently took on the position of vice president of database marketing at Hilton Grand Vacations Co., Orlando, FL.
But back at Disney, Hefler had to move Disney Parks and Resorts away from “D.” In this case, this meant transforming from a database marketing driven firm to an integrated one, which could support online business.
The goals Hefler sketched out included enabling communication and interaction with customers, driving Web traffic, and saving guests time, whether in the registration or information-collection process. As an example he cited a home page for Disney Vacation Clubs in which site visitors were presented with only two options: Either the ability to request more information, or to have a salesperson contact them.
To accomplish these goals, Hefler surrounded himself with a cadre of other Disney employees, each with a separate responsibility for areas such as E. Marketing, E. Services, E. Content, E. Productivity and E. Communication. The group implemented business information analytic tools, updated the business unit’s Web site, and launched an e-services program, which addressed what the division could do for its best customers.
His own responsibilities included leading bimonthly meetings that served as a forum for best practices, sending out requests for information on designing Web sites, monitoring Internet data and trends and supervising “e-vents” in which member of his staff would come and sound off about their business-related frustrations.
The payoff came in the form of increased site traffic, a rise in the quality of inquires, and higher conversion of inquiries into sales. Other divisions have begun to copy the Vacation Clubs methods, with Destination Disney, for example, implementing a guest relationship management system that allows online booking of hotels, and the recognition of room and amenities preferences, even before the guest has checked in.
Not wanting to let the e-theme go, Hefler summarized his remarks by saying that E-business Is Everything Integrated Online, or E I E I O. Ol’ MacDonald would have been proud.
