Phoenix, AZ (PRWEB) November 22, 2013
Having developed solutions to resolve their own internal needs, some non-technology businesses now offer the results of their IT departments’ hard work to other companies-in some cases their competitors-by forming separate divisions or even corporations.
This creates opportunities, not only for additional revenue, but also for increased brand awareness. And, of course, it engenders the risk of failure, financial loss, and internal strife.
There’s at least one long-lasting role model: Sabre Airline Solutions, which began with a chance meeting between C.R. Smith, president of American Airlines, and R. Blair Smith, a senior sales representative for IBM (sponsor of Internet Evolution) in 1953, and spun off from American in 2000.
Some retailers are adding services related to e-commerce and marketing, such as sales analytics and website design. Probus One Touch, for example, owns six online operations, and recently launched Snap Agency to sell online marketing and e-commerce, analytics, and design services to businesses.
“The expertise and the competency are sitting here. We’re just using them now to help other organizations,” founder George Lee told the Star Tribune.
Other businesses are driving a little further down the technological highway.
Earlier this month, Canadian Tire announced it will open the Canadian Tire Cloud Computing Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, this fall. The 28,000 square foot site will house the Canadian Tire family of companies’ digital content warehouse, application lab, testing lab, and high-performance datacenter. Canadian Tire will also develop digital apps here, the company said in its press release.
The center, which will initially employ 50 new hires, is expected to support Canadian Tire’s businesses, including Canadian Tire Retail, Mark’s, Sport Chek, Sports Experts, National Sports, Atmosphere, Partsource, Gas+, and Financial Services. But it could eventually expand its offerings to other businesses, one executive hinted.
“Part of the reason we chose to build the centre in Winnipeg is its growing population of technology professionals. For instance, we need to connect with a lot of talent in the local online gaming and mobile community to develop new apps,” Eugene Roman, Chief Technology Officer for Canadian Tire, said.
Choice Hotels is definitely expanding to external customers via SkyTouch Technology®, a completely separate division that focuses on selling, servicing, and supporting its eponymous property and rate management system to hotels around the globe. Headed by industry veteran Ric Leutwyler, SkyTouch® leverages Choice Hotels’ history with its in-house choiceAdvantage solution.
Choice views SkyTouch as a startup, albeit one backed by a hospitality heavyweight, Leutwyler told me.
When Choice started to talk to me about this opportunity, this just seemed perfect to me, this opportunity to take a really strong platform, but be able to lead it and introduce it in a way that was much more entrepreneurial was exciting. It’s a completely separate division of Choice with 110 people and growing. It’s all the people that were involved in creating and supporting and implementing what Choice has been using in this platform, for years, plus who I’ve hired. Really, Choice has become our customer.
In forging a separate company and serving a mix of hospitality companies, SkyTouch® will no longer have the luxury of dealing solely with one type of reservation system, revenue management application, or guest loyalty program, Leutwyler said. Not surprisingly, then, much of the company’s time so far has been spent on integration work so it can work with clients’ existing systems, such as Pegasys. But because Choice has a franchise model, the focus on seeing each hotel as a customer hasn’t changed:
We have this heritage that is really customer focused. They’re also helping to shape who we are going to be in the future. [Choice] is a hotel company. It is a franchise-focused business. Up to a point, these are services you provide to franchisees.
Like Choice, SkyTouch has adopted an agile environment. The startup plans to expand upon prior social media and customer relationships for product development: In 2012, 62 percent of enhancements came from customer suggestions, Leutwyler said.
We want to take that further. We not only get to leverage that but open it up to a broader audience. Reaching a wider market is, of course, the ultimate goal for those companies that turn an IT development into a marketable product. This could help dramatically reshape corporate perception of IT and an organization’s bottom line.
