The problem
Two major hotel chains underwent a merger that involved 100 million external users and 300,000 internal users, 17 systems, 458 releases, 20 million lines of code and $140 million spent on software development.
The client brought in a third-party consulting firm to shape and support the change in systems implementation as well as a cutover strategy for all the impacted IT systems within their reservations and loyalty business units. For such a complex initiative, a powerful, collaborative tool was required to bring together all the data and tasks in one place. The client asked the consulting team for the most innovative and market-leading solution for orchestrating human and machine activities and making the event observable to the huge number of stakeholders. They chose Cutover.
How we helped
The hotel chain initially started the merger with many manual processes and technical automation and adopted Cutover eight weeks before the first major go live. Cutover enabled them to properly prepare for and manage the complex set of interdependent technology changes by providing a comprehensive event orchestration capability which enabled greater control. All tasks were managed down to the second and progress could be continuously monitored by stakeholders with task orchestration and reporting automated via Cutover. Cutover eliminated the manual processes and provided incident governance, creating immediate value.
Some of the events in the merger involved up to 500 people and they enjoyed using Cutover to rehearse events, which helped to continuously improve and refine plans which had previously not been possible. The visibility into processes and comprehensive audit trail allowed teams to better understand progress during the extremely complex event. Many users and those running the event commented that the merger could not have gone as smoothly without Cutover.
Results
The cutover activities were simulated multiple times, and the actual cutover weekend was a huge success. The biggest benefit was continuous improvement: all tasks, releases and communications were logged in real time for analysis and improvement and to provide evidence to responsible executives.
