MIS Research Center Seminar Series

Date:  February 6, 2004 Speaker:  Gino Giovannelli, Vice President of e-Business Solutions, Carlson Companies Topic:  "Establishing An Effective Customer Relationship Management-Based Organization"

Abstract:

Despite being the buzz acronym of 2003, many companies have struggled implementing effective Customer Relationship Management ( CRM ) solutions. At first, this may seem strange considering that the philosophy of CRM is quite simple: determine who are your best customers from a potential lifetime value perspective and then develop deep relationships with them in order to maximize their actual lifetime value.

Sounds easy right? So what's so hard about that?

Take a journey with Gino Giovannelli, a specialist in the area of CRM and e-Business at the Carlson Companies, and learn first hand the challenging steps that the Carlson Companies have taken to implement CRM. He will emphasize both the strategic aspects of building a customer-centric organization and the organizational issues that had to be dealt along the way to achieve success. He will cover the following:

• Educating your organization on what CRM is and (more importantly) what it is not
• Identifying CRM opportunities within your organization
• Project investment evaluation practices for CRM-related projects
• Determining what aspects of CRM are best done internally vs. externally
• Establishing effective organizational strategies to maximize the success of CRM
• Measuring the results of CRM that are accurate and understandable
• Organizational design and technology issues

Gino encourages seminar participants to come prepared to share their own organizations' experiences with implementing CRM.

Format

The format of this seminar will involve a presentation by the featured speaker in two parts plus a break, and an open-mike discussion among the seminar attendees and the speaker to wrap up the morning event.

Biographies

Gino Giovannelli is currently Vice President of e-Business Solutions and a member of the Carlson Companies enterprise wide Relationship Management and Development team. In this role, he has been responsible for establishing and implementing effective e-business strategy for the Carlson's Companies' hotel division (Radisson Hotels & Resorts, Country Inn & Suites, Park Inn, Park Plaza, and Regent Hotels International), cruise division (Radisson Seven Seas Cruises) and restaurant division (TGI Fridays and Pick up Stix). Prior to that, from 1999 until 2001, he was a Director of e-Commerce at Radisson Hotels & Resorts.

Giovannelli received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Bucknell University in 1990, and also attended the Institute for European Studies in Vienna, Austria in 1990. He is also a 1996 graduate of the MBA Program at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and completed the Carlson Companies Executive Leadership Program in the Executive Development Center of the Carlson School in 2000.

He has a rich background of business experience, especially in the areas of Information Systems, Electronic Commerce and Marketing. Out of college, Giovannelli held various positions in sales and marketing in the plant automation field prior to jumping on the bandwagon in 1997 and doing the dot com thing with a Minneapolis-based startup company named e.Media Group, where he was Vice President of Business Development. The company specialized in the development of Web sites and multimedia CD-ROM products, and is still in operation today as a full-service new media agency.