When Martha Poulter went to the University of Connecticut for computer science and engineering in the 1980s, there were very few women in the program. But that didn’t stop Poulter from pursuing her passion. The 25-year tech veteran recently left GE Capital to become Starwood Hotels & Resorts’ new chief information officer. And while engineering and computer programming are still heavily skewed toward men, Poulter is dedicated to bringing more women to science, tech, engineering, and math fields. And what better role model to have than the female leader of a global IT team? Especially at a company that’s driving as many innovations as Starwood.
After 19 years at GE Capital, did you experience any culture shock when you came to Starwood? This is such a warm industry with hospitality embodied in the employees and the service we’re providing. You feel it in the company culture, and that’s a real difference from other industries. But all companies that will win in this era have a business strategy that’s intertwined with technology. Here, it’s about figuring out how we drive incremental revenue to our hotel system.
What drew you to computers and IT systems? In high school, computing wasn’t fun because computers were so limited, but what hooked me was that I could tell them what to do, and they didn’t argue back. They followed directions, and that’s a beautiful thing.
Where do you see the hospitality industry on the spectrum in terms of tech innovation? For every industry that has some level of longevity to it, you have a mix of a legacy environment and a non-legacy environment. The reality is, there are strong operational systems at every company. The great thing about what I see here is a robust technology environment that has been architected in a forward-thinking way to be accessible to our guests and customers across many channels by whatever means they find most convenient.
In what ways is Starwood focused on technology? Over the next couple of years, we have a steady stream of investments that we’re going to do in mobile, in data, in on-property, and associate-facing capabilities. We do think that being first in some of these new advances—Google Glass or Apple Watch or having a Chinese-based language Android app or allowing our guests to post their own content on our Instagram or Facebook pages—is part of us helping to shape the experience that we want our guests and customers to have.
How does that tie into the innovations lab Starwood just opened? We think having teams work together in a space that allows them to collaborate is going to be the way we accelerate innovation. We’ll have brand teams together with design, digital, and technology teams. And we aren’t stopping with that one site either.
Can you talk about the evolution of Starwood’s social media call center? You can think of the customer contact center in its traditional origins, which allowed you to make a reservation with a human. Our Ambassador Program was borne out of this, and it offered our top SPG members a personalized experience and one-on-one dialogue with their own ambassador. Then you had the birth of social, which presented us with another opportunity. So we started with four people and trained them in the call center to monitor the mentions of our brand and hotels on Facebook and Twitter. That group has evolved to 20 people today who do this 24/7, and we have coverage across 11 languages.
How does the Starwood SPG crowdsourcing community work? Part of what we’re working toward is to provide a platform for all of our guests to share their experiences. Consumers’ opinions and what others think of their experiences is more highly valued in today’s economy than ever before. That kind of presence from the digital word-of-mouth of our guests and customers is hugely powerful.
