[10月团队成员故事]本科对外汉语专业的收益副总监究竟是什么来头？——Clay’s Story

今年7月，我们曾经推送过我们的收益总监Mikael的采访。除了Mikael之外，与中心共同成长起来的团队成员还有Clay——人称顾老板。他2012年加入中心后从收益分析员做起，在短短5年时间内他的才能以获得晋升的方式不断被认可，并在去年成为了中心的收益副总监。在我们中心，他写代码的能力无人能敌，由他领导的商务智能团队设计/优化的工具大大提升了中心的工作效率，集团高层也受益其中。可以说，Clay是整个区域商业智能的代名词。可是大家可能都不知道，他大学本科的专业是对外汉语。对外汉语、编程、收益管理，听起来毫不相干的三个词就这样被联系在了一起。如此“跨界”的背后，又有哪些有意思的故事？让我们一起走近Clay，听听他会怎么说。

In July, we interviewed our center’s director, Mikael. In addition to Mikael, Clay, known as “Gulaoban”, is another team member who has grown together with RMCC from its inception. Clay started as a revenue analyst back in 2012, and in the last five years has had his talents recognized with a succession of promotions, the latest being to Assistant Director of Revenue in 2017. In our center, his coding ability is unparalleled. The tools designed and optimized by the business intelligence team (led by Clay) have greatly improved the efficiency of the center and added value to our stakeholders. Clay in fact is synonymous in the region with business intelligence. This is an interesting journey for Clay, who graduated with a major in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL). TCFL, coding, revenue management… these three unrelated words are thus linked together. Let's welcome Clay and hear what he will say.

大家好，我是Clay。我2010年毕业于华东师范大学，并拿到了经济学和对外汉语双学位。同年，我与其他15名毕业生以管培生的身份加入上海希尔顿酒店（该酒店已于2017年12月31日撤牌）。在这个为期一年的项目中，我们通过轮岗的方式以了解酒店的运作流程。就是在这个过程中，我接触到了收益管理。

渐渐地，我发现这个部门做的事情很有意思，并且对于酒店业务起到了非常重要的作用。定岗的时候恰巧没有职位空缺，但当时的收益管理经理Frank Fery还是愿意给我一次面试机会。面试过程我现在仍然记忆犹新。我大体了解到了收益管理主要会做的事情，以及如何提高酒店的ADR（已售客房平均房价）。此外，Frank还问了我几个关于Excel数据透视表的问题，但我当时对这个东西完全没有概念。

在几次管理层的讨论之后，我加入了区域销售团队，负责上海希尔顿酒店和上海虹桥元一希尔顿酒店两个酒店的销售数据分析。刚开始的报告非常原始，所有的数据都需要靠手动复制黏贴与录入，做一次月末报告需要花一周的时间理清楚所有的数据。经过几个月的“折磨”，我觉得应该要找个方法来减少我做这些报告所需要花的时间，也需要让我们的报告看起来更加系统化，于是我就开始着手研究Excel中的数据透视表以及宏的使用。经过差不多3个月夜以继日的学习和研究，我建立了一个简易的报告系统。这个系统大幅度的缩减了需要手工操作的步骤的时间，做同样的月末报告，现在只需要1天的时间，并且报告种类更多样化了。对我来说，这整个过程虽然“很痛苦”，但最后看到成果的时候我还是非常自豪的。

大学时期的Clay//Clay in his universiteria era

Hi everyone, I’m Clay. I graduated from East China Normal University with 2 degrees – Economic & Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language(TCFL). In the same year, I joined the Graduate In-take Program offered by Hilton Shanghai (The hotel is no longer in Hilton’s Portfolio) together with other 15 graduates. In this one-year program, we rotated in different departments to learn the different areas which support the operation for a hotel, which offered me a chance to learn about revenue management.

Gradually, I found what the department does is really interesting and it plays a very important role regarding hotel’s business. There happened to be no headcount when it came to post determination. Luckily, the Revenue Management Manager (Frank Fery) was still willing to give me a chance to have an interview. The whole interview process still remains fresh in my memory — I got a general understanding of what revenue management did and how to improve a hotel's ADR (Average Daily Rate). Besides, Frank also asked me a few questions about the Excel pivot table, but at that time I had no idea what this was.

Then, after several discussions of the management team, I joined the cluster sales team, mainly taking charge of the sales data analysis of Hilton Shanghai and Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao. The initial report was very primitive and all the data needed to be manually copied, pasted and entered. To give you an idea at that time, a month-end report would take a week to put together. After months of “being tortured”, I decided to find a way to save our time and to make our reports look more systematic. Therefore I started studying how to use pivot table and macros in Excel. After 3 months’ studying around the clock, I built a simple reporting system that reduced massively the time of manual operations. Then it only took a day for the same month-end report, and added more analysis and insight. It was a truly painful process, but I was very proud to see the results.

管培生时期的Clay//Clay in the Graduate In-take Program

当然。2012年6月，我作为第一个收益分析员加入了还在开业前筹备阶段的RMCC，那时候一共只有3个人——我，收益总监Varun 以及另一个收益分析员Doris。此后，我和Doris被立刻派往了英国RMCC学习他们的工具以及流程。我们在两周之内学完了原本需要四周的课程，并在回国之后快马加鞭地将所学到的东西在我们自己亚太区的服务器上搭建起来，这整个过程在时间上非常紧张。经过两个月的时间的测试调整，全球第三家收益管理整合中心于2012年9月3日在上海正式成立。首家接入中心的酒店是香港港丽酒店，我们发出了第一个每日详细报告；当时的收益经理，现在的收益总监Mikael完成了第一个每日电话会议。至今，我们已经与RMCC一起走过了无比精彩的6年。

2014年，经过一系列的讨论，我决定接受一个比较有挑战性的职位——收益分析经理，来统一管理中心的所有收益分析员们。在全球RMCC的历史上，这是第一次对所有收益分析员们进行统一管理。这样做的好处是可以更加平均地分配收益分析员的工作量，更好地提供系统的培训以及一对一的指导。

2016 年，我成为了高级分析运营经理并开设了商业智能板块，开始更多地参与到全球RMCC的合作中，与其他中心的技术负责人讨论并共享我们所做的报告以及分析模型。通过开展全球化的项目流程，进一步提高各个RMCC的工作效率。

2017年我晋升到了现在的收益副总监的职位。除了管理收益分析员团队、商业智能板块之外，我更多地参与到了中心运营的其他事务当中。

Clay和Conrad Hilton雕像的合照//Photo with Conrad Hilton's Statue

I joined RMCC as the first revenue analyst when it was still in preopening stage in June 2012, when there were only 3 people in the team—me, Director Varun and another revenue analyst Doris. Then, Doris and I were immediately sent to the RMCC Europe in the UK to learn their tools and processes. In two weeks we learned everything which was supposed to take 4 weeks to learn. After we returned, we quickly built up everything we learnt in our own Asia Pacific servers. The whole process was very intense. After two months of testing and adjustment, our third center globally - RMCC Asia Pacific was formally established in Shanghai on September 3, 2012. Our first hotel was Conrad Hong Kong. On that day we sent out our first daily detail report; our revenue manager, now director of the center, Mikael, completed our first daily detail call. It has been 6 incredible years since then.

After series of discussions in 2014, I decided to accept a challenging position as Revenue Analysis Manager to manage all of the analysts in the center. For the first time in the history of the global RMCCs we decided to manage all the analysts centrally. The benefit of this is that the analyst's workload could be distributed more evenly, providing better & systematic training and one-on-one coaching.

I became Senior Manager, Analyst Operations in 2016, opened business intelligence function and started to participate more in global RMCC collaboration, discussing and sharing our reports and analysis models with other centers’ technical leaders. We further improved the work efficiency of each RMCC center by the implementation of globalized project procedure.

In 2017 I was promoted to my current position - Assistant Director. In addition to managing revenue analyst team and business intelligence function, I am more involved in other affairs of the center's operation.

Clay at RMCC New Office's Opening Ceremony//Clay在RMCC新办公室的开业典礼上

当初在加入RMCC之前我虑过这个问题。基于以下两点，我最终还是选择了RMCC：

-RMCC管理的酒店遍布整个亚太地区，对我来说这个平台能够为我提供更广阔的视野，而这是任何单一酒店都无法做到的。

-我加入RMCC的时候它还处于刚刚起步的阶段。所以我有很多的机会去学习和尝试如何快速带领一个新开的部门快速扩张以及做出成绩。

I also considered about it prior to joining RMCC. I made my final decisions upon these factors:

-RMCC manages hotels across the whole Asia Pacific region. For me this platform can offer me a broader view which a single property could never do.

-When I joined RMCC, it was still in its infancy. So I had plenty of opportunities to learn and try to quickly lead a new department to expand and make my mark.

Clay在海岸线清理企业社会责任活动中//Clay at CSR Event - Coastline Cleaning

如果你要学习一项技能，有人跟你说首先你要很认真的去啃完几本几千页厚的技术手册——千万别这么做，真的。学习编程技术，首先你要能读懂代码本身的含义。例如Python，你要知道里面最基本的概念，赋值，迭代，数据种类等等。

其实最重要的就是要多练。这个“练”更多的是指在逻辑思维方面的锻炼。要达到一个目的，会有很多种不同的方法。对我来说，没有最好的做法，只有当下对于我们要达成的目标来说最合适的方法。任何编写的代码的目的都是为了能给我们的商业部门带来价值，而不是为了显摆我的技术有多牛。有了这个想法作为指引，往往能达到更好的效果。

最后一点，就是永远不要对现在已经完成的项目感到满足，要学会对自己做出来的结果进行批判性反推。原因很简单——没有人比你更了解你自己的思路和逻辑，只有不断地分析自己过去所做的成功与失败，才能找到更多突破自我的机会。

Clay在首届速递日活动中//Clay at 1st Su Di Day Event

If you want to learn a new skill, if someone told you that you should thoroughly read the technical manual of several thousand pages... then don’t do it, seriously. To learn a programming technique, first you should be able to understand the meaning of the coding itself, Take Python as a sample, you need to know the basic concepts, assignments, iterations, data types, etc.

In fact, the most important trick is to practice more. The “practice” here refers more to the exercise of logical thinking. There are many different ways to achieve a purpose. For me, there is no “best practice”, only the most appropriate method for the goal we are trying to achieve. The purpose of any coding is to bring value to our commercial department, not to show how great my technical skills are. With this idea as a guideline, it is often possible to achieve better results.

Last but not least, you should never be satisfied about the program you have completed. You should have a critical mind about the results you have made. The reason is quite simple——no one knows your own ideas and logic more than you do. Only by constantly analyzing the successes and failures you have made in the past can you find more opportunities to break through.

RMCC的快速扩张以及由此带来的挑战。

RMCC自2012年成立至今，经历了数次人员更替，办公室搬家，人员也从我刚加入部门时的3个人，扩张到现在的94人。在这样的快速扩张背后我们面临过很多挑战，我也很高兴能够有机会参与解决其中的一些问题。中心刚成立时一切都是以程序/秩序为中心的，而现在我们则逐渐地将重心转移到团队士气和企业文化上。

RMCC最重要的资产是人，酒店和高效的技术。从部门成立到去年为止，每年一次的酒店总经理满意度调查诸多条目中，对RMCC报告以及分析工具的满意度一直是最高的几项之一，对于这个我也非常自豪。在快速扩张的过程中，我们的技术以及产品并没有掉队。要知道，管理客户需求一直都是一项不容易做好的任务，因为客户的期望永远会随着产品的改善而提高，对于这一点，我们的收益分析员团队功不可没。

此外，我们从未停下创新的脚步。没有什么是一成不变的，任何产品都有改进的空间。如何改进，何时改进是我们经常需要思考的问题。而这些创新都有一个统一的目标：给我们的公司带来价值，给我们的酒店带来收益。

Clay在收益分析员团队团建活动中//Clay at RA Team outing

I would say “RMCC’s rapid expansion and the challenges brought by it”.

Since its official establishment in 2012, RMCC has experienced several team member turnover and office movement. 3 team members including me at the very beginning, and now we have 94. We’ve faced several challenges behind such rapid growth, and it is also a valuable experience for me to have the opportunity to participate in solving some of the problems. When the center was first established, everything was centered on process/order, and now we are gradually shifting our focus to team morale and people & culture.

RMCC's most important asset is our people, our hotels and our efficient techniques. Since our establishment until last year, the results of annual hotel general manager satisfaction survey always shows that people are quite satisfied about RMCC reports and analytical tools. I am also very proud of this.

In the process of rapid expansion, our technology and products have never left behind.  You know, it has always been a difficult task to manage customer demand because the customer's expectations will always improve with the products’ upgrade. I’d like to recognize our analyst team for this.

We have always maintained an efficient innovation process, there is no perfect tool or process, every product can be better. How to improve, when to improve are the questions we often need to consider. Any innovation should be bases on bringing value to the business and benefits to our hotel.

Clay在2017年大中华区年度总经理大会上//Clay at 2017 GCM GM Conference

运动的话，平时我喜欢跟朋友打打网球。其它的爱好就是看电影和唱K了。

Clay在校园十佳歌手赛上//Clay at college Top 10 Singing Contest

Speaking of sports, I like playing tennis with my friends. Other hobbies are watching movies and going to KTVs.

2015年年会舞台上的Clay//Clay performed at Hilton 2015 Annual Party

还有什么想跟我们分享的嘛？

Is there anything else that you’d like to share with us?

A classic motto that I like the most: Keep your head in clouds and your feet on the ground.