Pivotal Allies – Overseeing the launch of smart cruise ships
The cruise ship industry is a large global market facing increasing competition among operators worldwide. In 2023 the global cruise market size was estimated to be over $8 billion and expected to grow by 12% annually. While destinations are often the top consideration in choosing a cruise, the onboard amenities and experience are how cruise lines compete with one another. Creating and maintaining state-of-the-art on-board technology is an important differentiator used to attract and maintain consumers.
To stay on top, cruise lines continue to launch new cruise ships and retrofit existing ships to compete on the overall cruise experience they deliver to consumers. For one of the world’s largest cruise lines, getting their technology deployment right – from conceptualization to oversight – was a time-boxed critical necessity. They turned to Pivotal Allies and their partner Spark Cooperative to ensure they could meet their timelines.
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The Project Management Need
The cruise line’s request was to provide oversight to the deployment of the guest technology conceptualization and buildout process of two new cruise ships. Specifically, the objective of the project was to define the guest experience, provide oversight of the cruise line’s adoption of a portfolio of technology projects, and ensure their successful operationalization and implementation onboard.
In defining and implementing the smart ship guest experience the cruise line employed two large partners, Deloitte Digital and Ogilvy, to help support the IT and data requirements necessary for such a significant build-out. The Pivotal Allies lead was tasked with working alongside these companies to ensure overall program success.
The scope of the deployment of smart-ship technology was significant. For a single ship, the overall project included the rollout of over 3,000 beacons, 1,000 digital touchpoints, and informative/interactive screens to provide passengers. In addition, RFID/NFC technology was rolled out in over 2,000 cabins to provide access and location services to support the passenger experience.
Included in the physical technology deployment, there were mobile applications created to provide a variety of passenger conveniences such as pre-boarding activities, excursion planning, check-in capabilities, and other convenience features. Interactive bracelets and face recognition technology were also used to assist in personalizing the ship experience and the guests’ connection to ship services. Once this project launched, it was repeated on a second ship buildout.
Project management was critical to the success of these deployments. Ensuring all milestones were met on time was crucial to this cruise line. Vacations are planned well in advance, and for that reason, this cruise line had to be certain they could meet the deadlines promised to their future passengers.
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Pivotal Allies Contribution
As a neutral party, our Pivotal Allies leader was expected to be an unbiased source of truth across the project and in dealing with multiple vendors. The executive team valued this neutral insight to ensure schedules were validated and risks were identified and resolved as quickly as possible.
The contributions of this project management effort were broken up across the three primary stages of this program. As required by the cruise line, these project management responsibilities included:
Stage 1 – Startup Phase
- Project Intake Process – Gathering the specifics of the technology portfolio, team members, resources, timelines, dependencies, vendors, and ownership of products.
- Visualize, document, and present the MSC guest technology experience as it relates to these individual products and their relationship to one another, using all activation points: guest service, events & activities, communications & media, ambiance & environment, food & beverage, onboard revenue, and brand partnerships.
- Drive and ensure alignment of the project vision, timelines, and budgets among Executives, IT, Marketing, and technology vendors.
- Identify functional, technical, and operational limitations.
Stage 2 – Oversight
- In partnership with Operations, IT, Marketing, and select vendors, lead the weekly meetings to maintain project progress, identify risks, and ensure team cohesion.
- Work with the Operations team to identify resource requirements, progress, and workstream status.
- Ensure technology requirements are actively fulfilled in a manner that is both technically viable but also operationally usable.
- Define onboard content requirements by technology, location, time of day, day of cruise, and type (informational, promotional).
- The creation of Key Success Factors (KSF) and testing requirements for each project.
- Define Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), roles & responsibilities for each project, including content updates, day-to-day operations, and support.
Stage 3 – Implementations & Operation
- Oversee uploading and scheduling of content to various technology platforms.
- Create training plans, presentations, and train shoreside and shipboard teams.
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Project Success
The initial cruise ship launched on time and met the cruise operator’s deployment schedule. The Pivotal Allies team lead was credited for the contributions from the cruise ship’s VP of Operations, “…he further assisted to mature (the technology platform) and now after 3 successful launches we have a strong base and enough in-house knowledge to take us to the next level mainly because of his great foundation laying.”
As part of the overall program, a fourth project stage included adding new platform features, stabilization of existing technology, and other fast follower requests. These updates were immediately deployed to the second ship, and when time allowed, these upgrades were applied to the initial ship. Due to this program’s success, two more ships were taken out of service for retrofits of this new customer technology experience, replicating the new ships’ capabilities.
Pivotal Allies provides outsourced project management and operational services to enterprises seeking to benefit from experience and discipline.
We provide successfully validated programs and experienced talent to support streamlining internal operations and processes to reduce overhead. We aim to assist you in becoming faster, more predictable, and more cost-effective in your missions.