Unifying Enterprise Data for Hospitality Businesses

The hospitality industry lacks a comprehensive, unified enterprise resource planning ("ERP") system to address its business management and financial reporting needs. Instead, business functions in hospitality companies are addressed by a variety of specialized software packages. Each application expertly addresses its business function, from point of sale systems for restaurants, hotel room reservations and billing, spa scheduling and sales, personnel and labor commitments, time scheduling, and club/golf course membership management. Dependence on “best of breed,” separate systems with separate and possibly inconsistent member data, leave even the large-scale hospitality enterprise without a comprehensive, unified view of their business operations. Stone Bond's Enterprise Enabler^® (EE) has created just such a solution for the hospitality industry.

Enterprise Enabler^® (EE), the next generation application integration framework, ties together all systems, from myriad guest and/or membership databases to multiple point-of-sale systems. EE is a framework that can make the specialized "best of breed" systems work together in harmony. This approach in many ways surpasses the use of an ERP solution. With the implementation of EE, the top-tier hospitality business can achieve a reliable, unified view of its enterprise through the use of an application integration framework.

EE is used for important kinds of application data, such as membership, financial, and operational. EE connects membership and/or guest data among multiple separate systems. For example, a member can charge to his account at both the hotel and spa, without creating a situation where the spa's database is out-of-sync with the membership database. EE moves customer transaction data immediately from one system to the next, creating a seamless experience for the members and guests as well as for the business operations. With EE coordinating information flow and availability behind the scenes, employees can conveniently address all customer needs across all services and locations.

Beyond customer satisfaction, the impact on operations and profitability can be greatly improved by the ability to capture, monitor, analyze, and act on well aligned cross-functional information. The hospitality business is driven on daily analysis of its performance, unlike some businesses that only look at monthly or even quarterly results. With EE, all sales-related data from all applications supporting hotel, restaurant, gift shops, health club, spa, etc. are funneled to a single financial application, providing a comprehensive overview of the company’s financial performance. With the aid of EE, this is performed on a daily basis. Comparing financial performances across departments and services can make for a more efficient operation.

Benefits of EE:

• Helps the specialized "best-of-breed" systems work together in harmony



• Conveniently connects membership data across all services and locations.



• Provides staff the ability to find and review member information quickly and easily



• All sales-related data from all applications funnels to a single financial application.



• Provides daily labor flash reports with a comprehensive overview of the company's financial performance.



• Creates immediate relief of manual data entry



• Provides a single point of management/reporting



• Provides email notifications whenever an update or a problem occurs

Examples:

• Integrates between Micros and Opera, a central financial analysis package



• Integrates Maintenance & Service databases with Opera



• Synchronizes the customer data between Micros, Opera and Solomon



• Creates a consolidated guest stay folio/invoice



• Automates currency conversion, the validation process, and the credit card process



• Integrates membership data among Abacus, the central membership management system, SpaSoft, the spa management applition, and Micros, the restaurant and gift shop point-of-sale systems.



• Financial data moves through EE into Opera, and from there into Solomon.



• EE extracts data from ADP's eTime system, to provide daily labor flash reports

Downloads:
Houstonian Case Study