Going Mobile and Social on the Slopes

I’ve just returned from the annual Information Week 500 Conference in Dana Point, CA, where CIOs get to strut their stuff in hopes of being recognized for their leadership and innovation. In the promotional material for the conference, Information Week published the results of their survey of CIOs that asked what were their top innovation priorities for 2011, and the top two responses were “Make business processes more efficient” (54%), and “Introduce new IT-led products or services for our customers” (45%); those two imperatives resounded through the presentations.

The highlight of the conference is the selection of the top IT departments overall, and in a specific set of categories like business analytics, revenue generation, and customer experience. While it wasn’t identified as a separate category, mobility was a big part of several winning solutions.

Paccar, maker of the Peterbilt and Kenworth brands of heavy-duty trucks, walked away with the overall prize for their innovative in-cab electronics. Partnering with Microsoft and their Windows Embedded Automotive 7 solution, Paccar’s in-cab system provides six touch screen “virtual gauges,” and that number will grow to 22 with the next software upgrade. It also includes the SmartNav (Peterbilt) and NavPlus (Kenworth) navigation system that uses GPS, but identifies constraints like weight and height restrictions for bridges that are key for their customers.

The design also incorporates the TruckerLink system that provides continuous location and diagnostic information. The tracking solution required virtually continuous access, and Paccar’s IT group lacked the necessary background in wireless so they partnered with SignalSet. SignalSet’s patent pending wireless modem connects to multiple wireless carriers, so the truck can report through either T-Mobile’s GSM or Sprint’s CDMA network, whichever has the strongest signal.

The application that really blew me away though was from Vail Resorts of Broomfield, CO, who came in first in the “Customer Experience” category, and number 10 in the overall rankings. The company operates 6 major ski resorts in Colorado, California, and Nevada along with a hospitality company and a real estate development company.

Anyone who has ever mounted a ski lift will be familiar with the lift ticket that usually hangs off the zipper tab on your jacket. According to Vail Resorts’ CIO Robert Urwiler, the company’s bar code-based tag system was on its last legs, so in 2010, they introduced a new solution called EpicMix that uses an RFID chip embedded in the tag. The basic advantage of RFID, is that the tag can be read through cloth, saving customers the annoyance of digging through their clothes to get to the tag.

However, Vail Resorts went a lot farther than just swapping bar codes for RFID. Since the system knows which lifts the customer is using, it can compute the total number of vertical feet the customer skied in a day, a weekend, or a season. With a free EpicMix account, the customer can view their day on a map of the mountain displayed on a laptop or on an Apple or Android mobile phone app; the customer could also share that on Facebook. Customers could also earn “digital pins” for accomplishing feats like using every lift at the resort.

In the first season EpicMix had 100,000 activations, but according to Mr. Urwiler, they’re not done yet. For the coming season they plan to add two major additions. First, the company is taking on photography. Ski resorts typically have photographers who snap pictures on the mountain, but the customer then has to go to the photo store, find their picture, and pay for a print if they like it.

The resort plans to hire their own photographers who will snap the picture and then ping the customer’s RFID chip; the pictures will be made available automatically in the customer’s EpicMix account. Low-resolution images (with a Vail Resorts’ logo) will be available free, but they can also purchase the high-resolution JPEG file for $19.95. They also plan to allow customers to add their own photos and share them on Facebook.

The other planned enhancement is social networking. The mobile app is being enhanced to give users the ability to see which of their friends are on the mountain. Buddies can swap notes or make plans to meet up. As Mr. Urwiler put it, “Skiing is a social activity, so adding in social networking is a natural extension of the experience.”

While the major “wireless” part of EpicMix is just the RFID tag system, these guys have shown some marvelous creativity in building value on top of a basic production system. Mr. Urwiler’s team recognized the importance of the customer experience in what Vail Resorts offers, and working with the marketing department they did a bang up job in weaving IT and social networking tools into that customer experience.

So if the two major innovation priorities are to "Make business processes more efficient," and to "Introduce new IT-led products or services for our customers," I think Vail Resorts has hit the target.