How Dusit Got Back 40% of Their Time: A Case Study on Reducing Delays and Streamlining Pre-Opening Processes

The Client

Dusit is a Thai multinational hospitality company based in Bangkok, Thailand. With nearly 300 properties in operation in 18 countries on four continents, Dusit has been a leading force in global hospitality since its founding in 1948.

Dusit Thani means "Town in Heaven" and represents an ideal from Thailand's King Rama VI, who envisioned greater harmony between Thai and Western values. This harmony remains a core defining principle of Dusit's global hospitality to this day.

Their Use of Excel Sheets Was Causing Costly Delays and Hours of Lost Sleep

Initially, Dusit relied on Excel spreadsheets to oversee their rapidly expanding projects, which had grown to over 4,000 tasks each. Since Excel isn't set up for real-time updates, managing the project tasks quickly became its own mini-job. Any updates that needed to be made to the lists would cause further delays and operational inefficiencies.

"Managing them was a nightmare. Any change required manual updates to multiple spreadsheets, which was time-consuming, especially with 6-8 hotel openings at a time. General Managers (GMs) sometimes worked on outdated versions, leading to ineffective data and more delays." - Aloysius Michael, head of Operational Excellence and manager of hotel pre-openings.

Any project delays could cost a property between $10,000 and $20,000 daily. Additionally, they faced opportunity costs and reputational losses from not opening on time since the last thing you want as a premium hotel brand is to be forced to place clients in other hotels.

Why Taskworld

Dusit's COO, Gilles Cretallaz, recommended that their operations team look into Taskworld based on their previous experience with the work management platform. He remembered Taskworld's ease of use and felt it would be a perfect fit for their work.

So Dusit ran a thorough internal test, comparing the various work management platforms and conducting reference checks. After testing all the different options, they found Taskworld to be more user-friendly and better suited to their hospitality needs.

Our White Glove Onboarding Provided a Painless Transition Experience

Transitioning to anything new in a multinational company is never easy, and this is especially true when juggling projects of this scope with this many globally distributed team members. The transition phase at Dusti from their old system to Taskworld was a smooth experience thanks to hands-on help from members of the Taskworld team.

"Initially, there was some reluctance to change internally and various challenges in transferring existing templates. However, Taskworld's team supported us through hands-on presentations, initial template setups, and weekly calls. The first hotel project we implemented Taskworld in was successful, which helped in convincing others." - Christopher Bader, Senior Manager of Business Development & Operational Excellence at Dusit Hotels.

A major tipping point came for Dusit when they integrated Taskworld dashboards into their monthly progress reports. Stakeholders and executives loved the real-time visibility over tasks. This transparency and accountability helped Taskworld gain wider acceptance inside Dusit.

We asked the team at Dusit if they had any tips for other organizations making the transition.

Aloysius Michael—Push for more buy-in from the start. Ensuring leadership support is crucial for successful implementation.

Christopher Bader—Emphasizing GMs' leadership from the beginning helps tremendously. Leaders need to see the value and follow through for the system to be effectively adopted.

How Taskworld Has Transformed Operations

Taskworld is now a central component in their pre-openings, helping to streamline and standardize their projects, ensuring brand standards are consistently met.

Christopher Bader - "It has streamlined our workflows, improved transparency and accountability, and significantly reduced the time spent tracking and managing tasks."

Dusit regularly uses the planning feature, which allows for agile realignment of all task due dates. For a new opening, they simply need to change the "opening date" in the planning milestones, and all tasks are realigned for the latest hotel pre-opening, saving significant time. Similarly, if there are any delays during an opening, such as from construction, they can quickly realign all tasks by changing one date in the planning.

Taskworld’s task designation feature helps ensure that the right person is always assigned to the right task, enhancing accountability and providing team members with the necessary access and visibility.

Christopher finds the designation feature especially helpful. "Once we assign a team to a property, it automatically links to the entire template, saving us from having to input each task manually. Also, the ability to adjust timelines dynamically based on changes in opening dates is fantastic."

Aloysius Michael appreciates the analytics feature, which “provides a clear overview of the task completion and delays, essential for reporting to executives and owners."

He's also been traveling a lot and enjoys using the app on his phone every day. "I can manage everything with this!"

How Dusit is Using Taskworld

Taskworld has become essential for managing pre-openings, KPIs, and task management at Dusit Thani.

An overview of Dusit uses Taskworld to manage their pre-openings:

• In the template workspace, create hotel pre-opening critical path templates with milestone details, designations, start/due dates, and assignees.
• When a new hotel opening approaches, copy the templates to a new workspace, update the milestone dates, and add users to the designations. The critical path is then ready to go.
• The hotel opening teams coordinate with HQ to complete thousands of tasks, updating in real-time with Taskworld.
• HQ and the hotel property team hold regular progress meetings using Taskworld to discuss pre-opening progress through the overview and project analytics page to ensure things stay on course.
• Run GM and Brand audits in Taskworld after project completion to find areas where they can improve operational efficiency.

Taskworld has been such a hit with the team that they are now exploring its use in sales-related tracking and other operational areas. They've seen Taskworld used on various projects from other departments, such as F&B, Branding, Sustainability, Operations, etc.

What Taskworld Has Learned Working with Dusit

At Taskworld, we take great pride in continuously improving our product by working closely with our customers. As we’ve worked side by side with Dusit over the past months, we’ve gained valuable insights into not only hotel pre-openings but also other specific needs of multinational operations. Because of our active role with them, we were better able to understand the pain points causing sleepless nights and costly delays.

We learned day-to-day operational details that normally will only come up if you constantly communicate with a customer. For example, we learned specifics about Dusit’s project audit needs and developed changes to audits in Taskworld to suit not only them, but also businesses of all sizes.

“Working with Dusit has been an illuminating experience. Their unique challenges have provided us with invaluable insights, enabling us to refine Taskworld further. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together and excited to see how everything we’ve learned will benefit all our clients.” - Florian Dumain, Head of Customer Experience.

By regularly engaging with, listening to, and understanding our customers' unique needs, we refine and strengthen our product to better serve their workflows. When we’ve developed a new feature, we love sharing it with everyone else. Our customer-centric approach ensures we remain intuitive, efficient, and aligned with our users' evolving demands.

Recapping a Successful Partnership

Dusit Thani is a company experiencing explosive growth, with significant projects underway with international attention.

They needed an updated system that would allow them to streamline processes and avoid costly delays.

After thoroughly reviewing all the major software platforms available, they landed on Taskworld.

"Taskworld allowed us to follow up on the completion of tasks internationally. We were able to check the proof of completion easily and QA it. This would've not been possible prior on an international scale. My life has changed tremendously. Don't hesitate. Taskworld will change the dynamics of how you manage projects and improve your overall efficiency." - Aloysius Michael.

Christopher Bader says, "If you want to streamline workflows, hold people accountable, and ensure organizational transparency, Taskworld is the way to go."

Now, Taskworld is an integral part of the pre-opening workflow at Dusit.

"Taskworld has made us better project managers and significantly improved our efficiency. I spend about 40% less time on tracking tasks now. Before, I only slept 2 or 3 hours per night because I needed to update large Excel files, chase people, and build reports. Now, all of this is done in Taskworld, allowing me to sleep 1 or 2 hours more per night" - Aloysius Michael.

"I would not even consider any pre-opening without Taskworld since starting to use it." - Christopher Bader

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