Your Las Vegas experience is carefully designed for your enjoyment. It's in the grand gestures: the extravagant hotels, the spectacular scenery and the world-class food and shopping. But it's also in the little things, where you might book your day's adventure from your smartphone, adjust the air conditioning in your room without ever getting out of bed and play the slot machines with a Bluetooth-enabled account connected to your device.

You take for granted that this is just "how things are" in Vegas — better somehow. But behind each of these pleasing micro-moments lie thoughtful, well-orchestrated, technology-driven processes designed with your security and privacy in mind.

One of the leaders of this mission is Philip Irby, CIO of The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas, a luxury resort and casino on the Strip named one of the "Top Hotels in the World" by the Condé Nast Traveler Gold List. Irby oversees roughly 270 different systems that must cooperate to run the entire property — a property with 3,027 hotel rooms, a 110,000-square-foot casino and abundant space for retail, restaurants, a spa, theater and conventions.

"A resort is not just a hotel with rooms," Irby says. In fact, it's an enormous operation with a lot of moving parts and disparate systems, and his job is to keep information flowing and everything running — a high-stakes endeavor. 

One thing that can't be gambled on: security

In a highly-regulated world like hospitality and gambling, corporate and guest data must always be carefully safeguarded, even as information is made more accessible and usable and the guest experience more mobile.

"How do you provide the quick innovation and provide people access to anything anywhere in the world, and still provide a strict environment and meet our governmental regulations? That's the struggle."

Philip Irby, CIO, The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas

While in pursuit of creating a highly-functional, cloud-based ecosystem of best-of-breed products — Box being one of them — which makes information more accessible and usable, corporate and guest data must always be carefully safeguarded. Irby's team keeps compliance in mind and is thoughtful about how it ports both business and customer data to the cloud. Irby says, "The consumer market is bursting with innovation. You can do anything with your mobile device. On the flip side of that, we're a regulated business. We have to have very stringent controls on customer data and all the data in our environment." 

This is why building a secure content platform with Cloud Content Management from Box has been a key strategic priority for Irby. With Box, Irby can make content of all types accessible for users within the company while also governing and securing that content. 

Customer service elevated by the digital workplace

All guest experiences trace back to the employee experience. You have to create ways for employees to function efficiently and smoothly in their everyday processes. Especially in the hospitality industry, where staff turnover is high and the ability to serve guests quickly critical, the technology and processes that lie behind everyday tasks are pivotal. The 250 staff members who make The Cosmopolitan go round — aptly named "co-stars" — have a huge impact on the guest experience, so in turn, they're an enormous focus of Irby's work.

To better tune in to the needs of the co-stars, twice a year, Irby's IT team interviews all 115 departments within The Cosmopolitan. The team seeks to find out how staff do their day-to-day jobs, what their processes look like and where they need help to optimize their digital business processes. "The whole process gives us a lot more visibility," Irby says. "We're not just reacting to the service desk or someone's pet project; we're looking at what's impacting them on a day-to-day operational basis, and then trying to take that business analysis and turn it into something — either a standard operating procedure, automation, standard provision or a drop-shipped device."

"Everyone wants ease of use, ease of access, ultimately they want their job to be as frictionless as possible. We provide a reliable and secure platform to give them what they need."

 Philip Irby, CIO, The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas

"We're always looking at how we can make our processes more efficient as part of that effort," says Irby. Using Box for Cloud Content Management helps him get there. He's in the process of building an integration framework that will be the key piece of the puzzle to provide what the co-star workforce needs to do their jobs with ease of access, and at the same time, to create better guest experiences that straddle high-touch hospitality and personal convenience. 

The Cosmopolitan has also recently upgraded the guest experience with Rose, a proprietary AI-driven chatbot programmed to address customer needs in areas like housekeeping, room service and concierge services. Rose enables a delightful experience for guests, who are increasingly part of a generation as comfortable with technology as with human interaction. Irby says, "A lot of what we're seeing across the consumer market is that they really don't want to talk to anyone, which is a hard position for us, as a luxury brand trying to create a connection with guests. So we have to try to create that connected luxury experience with technology, too."

Rose also frees up employees from being solely responsible for customer service. With more and more options arising to get value from unstructured data with AI, there's a world of possibility ahead for the hospitality industry to improve both guest and employee experiences.