well hello everyone and thank you for joining us for another of our aquam insights sessions my name is Leon Burke and I'm a director here at Ackman Consulting in today's session what we'll be doing is having a look at the integrated info Hospitality solution and we'll tease out the efficiencies and the cost savings that infor provides firstly I just want to say that I'm presenting from Melbourne located on the lands of the world laundry First Nations people for around 3 have lived here continuously for over 40 000 years I want to thank the First Nations people in all the lands for their care of those lands the water and the animals and I pay tribute to the elders past present and emerging and myself Craig today will take us through infor's integrated operational Solutions he will make he will explain how inform manages the guest experience from check-in through to the operational reporting that it provides to explain how infor's AI allows hotels to learn and project out pricing and he will overview info's workflow automation as it allows hospitality people in hotels to redirect Staffing efforts away from management and into bettering the guest experience Craig will hand over to me then and I will provide you with an overview of infor's financial management solution in force on systems and we'll go through how aquam deploys it specifically for hotels in coming weeks we'll do deeper dive so today's is really just an introduction ahead of those sessions so Craig with further without further Ado I will hand the floor over you beautiful thank you Leah good afternoon everybody um hope you're having a good week so far um yeah as Leon said my name is Craig Dimmitt I'm your account director for info hospitality and I manage all the software Solutions across the Australia New Zealand on the South Pacific region look as Leon said this is the first one of a number of discussion sessions we'd like to engage with you um over the coming weeks um and this one is going to be a summary of what those sessions are really going to be talking about and as an introduction to what we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks and there are really other four basic subject topics there is that Leon has already said so we're going to talk about the paperless process in in h in in infor software Solutions we're going to we're going to touch on how infor is adopting AI Solutions and capabilities within the platform and then obviously we're going to have a quick chat about the workflow Automation and what that's bringing into parts of the software solution and then and then Leon we'll we'll discuss the the finite side of things and how that impacts and these are really our part of our four core products within the hospitality suite info HMS our property management solution in for easy RMS or as we're rebranding it in for RMS and infor sales and Catering are sales and catering and event management solution as well as infor send systems probably the most popular Finance platform in the hospitality industry today in Australia so let's kick off um the paperless process I could talk all day about this and I'll try and keep it as brief that's like well for most of these topics and what is the paperless process look it's all about the environment how to stop printing Reams and rooms of paper at your hotels um how to stop you wasting ink cartridges when you really don't need them all of these things add in significant cost on Opera to the operation as well as adding to that environmental uh negativity around the business and all of these items have to be disposed of or stored of um and again it's reducing your carbon footprint by taking all of these items into the cloud and in four we're very much driven by that cloud environment so what do we do with that paperless process oh it's quite easy in four software Solutions are all driven in the cloud so every single time you access info platform you're accessing on an iPad device a laptop a computer you don't have to print anything off and that starts from the very beginning of the process a check-in process your guests are coming to your hotel and how you're making sure you're looking after and taking care of those guests we provide the digital registration card signature app so when your guests come to the front desk you're not pulling out a piece of paper from a draw because today is quite inelegant you simply present them on iPad on the iPad is their digital registration card the guests can obviously update that add their email address correct the address that's maybe on there that's that's incorrectly added onto the system and full leading saved within the property management solution and that we are providing and again it's a seamless operation not only does it save uh um paperwork and it also saves your printer cartridges it's also saving time at the front desk the checking is quick and easy and it's also then saving you not having to store that that piece of paper somewhere in your business checkout again is very simple you're not printing that failure at the guest and saying please check on this have a look see what's on here you present that to them on an iPad out front desk makes the whole process very elegant a very seamless and again it's completely relieving your front desk of papers but how do we also take that from the management perspective we've talked about the guest but from a management perspective you can have an iPad for every single Monday morning meeting we all have those Monday morning meetings in our hotels when we're working in hotels of everybody sitting around discussing how the hotel has performed over the week and you can usually come armed with a whole pad of paper that you've printed off to discuss with the general manager and the director of sales and marketing and the conference manager in the food and beverage manager you can remove all of those with info of those working on your iPad you've got your set reports on the iPads and you simply sit around the desk and on your tables and you're not printing out those rooms and reams of papers and again that whole that whole process of you don't have to have a piece of paper at front desk you don't have to have that inefficient operation this is driving a pure efficiency across the entire entire front office and back office environments and of course there's a lot more functionality in those devices um you're removing a patterned paper you're removing that book that we've all had in the past of what's my lost and found where has everything found and and stored again within four we can remove all of those or pain points from the operation to make sure that you're really gelling the guests you're able to answer the guest issue there and then with that device in your hand and you're not having to go go backward to the system all the time and look at look information up on a piece of paper a little bit into AI as well um and again we'll talk mostly about AI with how the revenue Management Solutions can work but voice activation is now a key thing within the iPad solution you want to check somebody and you pick the iPad up check in Leon Burke the app will finally unbox registration card and start that whole process on the app itself so again voice activation is one part of AI driving into the housekeeping departments within the hotel again most hotels today in the morning at 7am will print off a whole pile of papers and them to their housekeeping team on a little clipboard with little Biro not only is it insecure because most of those have the guest name on it that most of the housekeeping teams quite often leave on their housekeeping carts but the minute you print that report it's out of date info provides that mobile housekeeping application it's completely up to date it knows what the system is doing a guest checks out from from a from Room 101 and there's a VIP going in there it automatically alerts the housekeeping staff member Room 101 is the next room you must service because of a VIP arriving early in the morning so let's get that done and it's a digital room attended assignment system you get you do away again with more paperwork you're not printing out documents you're not being out of debt everything is in real time the housekeeping teams are walking around with it with an iPod or an Android device and your supervisor is walking around with an iPad again not having to go down to the phone to the phone on the end of the corridor to find out what's going on in room 301 um has the guest in 653 checked out yet because we need it for a very very important guest and again it makes that whole process quickly and easier everybody knows where that room is up to and we have clients around the globe who tell us it's made out it's made our checking processor from despedia because we're turning the rooms quicker where it used to be front desk testing the housekeeping teams they actually the way around the housekeeping team are chasing for a desk why isn't Mr Smith checked out yet and it just makes that whole process a lot quicker and easy of course we add in Lost and Found You Want to you you have a ring found in a guest room the housekeeping staff can immediately take a photograph on that device and it stays into the system and logs into the system in a very secure manner a security is paramet to all what we do with info obviously we're backed by Amazon who is our primary database manager and we utilize the latest Technologies with the Amazon Cloud we also scale up into the guest experience so we've gone from the front desk we've gone from the back office and we've gone to the housekeeping teams but also we can extend that to the guest experience so when your guest comes to check into the hotel we know a lot of your guests are returned guests we know a lot of your guests are time time conscious so send them the pre-checking email welcome to the hotel you're checking in tomorrow here's the full check-in screen from basically from the PMS that you've got in front of your your front desk but it's in a mobile app and it's tailored for your guest the guests can select their own room if you are if you want them to the guests can tell you what time they're coming so again that goes back to your housekeeping team so your housekeeping teams are fully aware of what time you're going to be arriving at the hotel do you want to upload an ID or a passport information more importantly and this is a Cash Generator this is a complete Revenue generator add things onto that booking do you have a distressed infantry tonight can you upsell that guess from a a standard room to a superior room or from a superior room to a suite and and add on another 75 to their room rate is the guest there for a special occasion do they want a box of flowers in the bunch of flowers in the room or a box of chocolates or a bottle of champagne all of that can work really well and nicely into the guest experience and then obviously that last paperless thing we have is that analytics solution and it's an optional add-on to infor HMS where more than 2 000 reports and dissectional reports you can cross compare information from demographics to Country to to arrival dates who's coming in and when to make sure you know your guest you know the revenue of the guest and you can pull up those reports out for your owners your operators your managers your heads of departments and that's really where we see that analytics piece sitting into the equation and again a lot of different reports can be pulled out whether they're graphic or tabular um extract them into Excel if you want to make them even more um requirements from in your internal business and it really gives you that power to control your business and manage your business so let's now move on to AI the second part of the conversation today within the sphere of what we do with info we work a lot in AI um what is that well it's a very basic premise artificial intelligence is how we're making computer smart to make them a bit more human-like enabling to learn to think and as a sincere to really start making their decisions on their own and here's where info RMS really grasps that and takes it to the end level the AI in use in a hotel can be very very powerful indeed artificial intelligence is as simple as asking Spotify to play Taylor Swift that's an easy artificial intelligence but we're taking the AI one two steps beyond that we're now looking at the power of the data in your in your system it's looking at the booking process it's looking at the premise of how that booking is Reviving at your hotel when the gift is arriving how far away they booked in in days and months and weeks to really make a pattern of every single guest that comes to a hotel the machine behind Ai and we call this deep learning start to think it starts to understand it starts to comprehend and the Machine starts learning patterns in your business this then allows you to drive your forecasting more accurately so you can make sure that every single day when your your pricing team are sitting down your Revenue management team is sitting down and saying where should where should our our pricing be the machine will tell you the system infor RMS will guide you through that whole process whatever take away a revenue manager's role but it makes that revenue's manager's role a whole lot better you become better at your job because it's getting better at its job and this machine literally will start making decisions and no two hotels are the same when it comes to RMS no through to no two hotels have exactly the same pattern and we don't deploy the same model and mentality to every single Hotel RMS will start learning your business it will start to estimate it will start to guess and it will really start to make sure that your hotel is driving those Dynamic pricing strategies and we're not also talking about just pure room rates RMS is smart enough to take in the accommodation but also your food and beverage your mini bar your spa it takes your Revenue business to the next level because it's simply not looking just at your room Revenue it's looking at holistic what is my what is my business generating in money and what is what is my best rate for today is it a Best Rate including a package should I include my spa packages should I have a minimum stay should I have a maximum stay should I have a close or open to arrival and we're dynamically changing those rates for you and making those recommendations which you can then adopt alter um and then send into your PMS onto your ota's your online channels and again we can do that also with meeting spaces in your hotels and the often neglected side of a hotel where you're thinking what is my meeting space rate for today should it be the same every day or should it be as dynamic as my roommates and we say yes you can as a segue then for also within for an AI is our ability of actually using that in the call center environment and one of our new modules that we're sitting alongside easy RMS and HMS our call center and again that's going to introduce the apparent the ability for the call center attendant to upsell to a guest where they're making a reservation most hotels still have guests who like to phone up to the hotel and ask for a hotel room and we can automate that process as well just making sure that you're not just everything's not being run on a preset rule you're recommending the right upsell to the right guest at the right time and that really sums up what we do with Revenue management the idea about Revenue management is and also the call center module with the artificial intelligence built in you're selling the right product to the right guest at the right time at the right price for the right duration and more specifically on the right channel again we know that your channels some channels cost you more than others and you're there to maximize revenue and to maximize the return on your investment and to maximize your processes and that leads us integrated workflow processes what are workflows processes well it can be highlighted the best way of highlighting a great workflow process with an interpore solution is within in for sales and Catering we have a fantastic tool that we call the event lifecycle technology and what does that mean well you have a banquet operation in your hotel you have a banquet business you've got your meeting rooms and your conference spaces but you have that guest on the phone asking for a price you have a guest on the room who isn't sure what dates they want to be on and you build all of that into the profile into in for sales and Catering and when that guest phones you back and says I like your price yes I can do that date let's confirm it most of the time what do you do in your business in for sales and Catering has a has a life cycle sitting behind that as that guest phones up and that that PCO the conference organizer phones you back says yes I want that room yes I want that event on that day and yes I I wanted to go ahead and make the reservation you simply click on one little button and in for sales and catering and behind the scenes it starts taking over it starts to send out a confirmation email it goes through a change in the system you may have accommodation rooms behind the the the event that you're hosting at your hotel so again it starts to confirm those hotel rooms for your your hotel your conference organizer and the booking agent and it's a step-by-step prompt for you to do something it's transparent so you say yes this has now gone from being a tentative inquiry to a confirmed booking in full sales and Catering will then start to update itself and everybody knows in the business exactly what's going on for that event at any one time and again the beauty of this is no two hotels are the same on how that process should work so we give you the flexibility and the configuration within sales and Catering to change the way the life cycle technology actually works in your business we don't dictate how that works for you you tell a system when I change this status this is going to happen and this is going to happen and this is going to happen and then it starts generating those tasks and reminders you then have to tell chef chef you need to order in 15 chickens you need to order in 25 loaves of bread you need to order in coffee you need to order in tea here's the menu we're going to put together and it's triggering all of those pieces of information that's going to each individual Department within the hotel to make sure they're fully aware and fully around exactly what is going on inside the business and again this is how we drive efficiencies within the platform one of the things we always talk about going paperless AI efficiency it's an efficiency driven solution and the minute you start doing that it then starts creating the documents behind all of these in the past you've had documents that you send out to a conference organizer where you've had to chop and change all those components but because how you've set the system up because I've Had A System's been designed the system chops and changes those documents for you so you're not having to remove from a Word document because infor sales and Catering knows which components you need it knows when you're sending a letter to your PCO it knows when you're sending a letter to the to the Banquets person at the conference end of what need to be on that document and again we produce those documents for you and it speeds up that whole process and makes it wholly efficient so your Banquets team can get on with doing what your Vanquish team should be doing not spending time at their computer messing with it with it with a piece of technology but using the technology to allow them to do their job better to serve the guests better and again generate better profits for the hotel and then we have the accounts and contacts within info sales and Catering basically a mini CRM a business to business CRM for your operation this solution allows you to have that as it says here it's that really rich client relationship management and a database where you're looking at buying history who's called who who's called who when and who made that call all is transparent with an info sales and Catering no more having to ask the person asking your colleague at the desk did you did you phone the guy at Telstra last week to confirm this did you phone the guy at CBA last week to confirm that you log all of that into info sales and catering and your entire sales team you've got anybody that has access to the info sales and Catering solution can look at that and know exactly what the status of that account is and how important that account is and the person that's booking it and again you can have your guests that are staying your PCOS the organizers the finance people that are paying the bills all of those built into a very very feature-rich account management solution structure and that really hands over to Leon um who is now going to have a chat to you about the finance side of things um within the the platform um so Leah okay thanks Joe thanks for that that was um insightful really was on all the operating modules within the import Suite set appreciate that um what we're looking at here is a one-pager of the M4 Sun systems solution um when it's deployed in the cloud so this is this is the way that we deployed at aquam um for our Hospitality clients so looking at the screen um it's a little bit hard to read but we we generally deploy three modules so three functional modules one being the accounting module where which produces all your reporting does all your GST looks after all your debtors um and it's it's your core accounting module we also uh deploy the corporate allocations or into company modules or uh for spreading shared services across organizations for spreading or for for accounting foreign companies as well and the third module that we will put out to the hospitality Market is the fixed assets module so you can handle all your book depreciation text depreciation is going to count for all your assets so fixed assets is certainly one way we'd apply out there a lot now one of the the things that that um that our customers love about the product is a product called q a info query and Analysis so info query and Analysis is an Excel tool which allows the finance department not the idea department but the finance department to self-serve and run reports out of the accounting module the corporate allocations module and the fixed assets module it is truly a system owned or a module owned by finance and it uses that native Excel skill that every accountant has so that is definitely one that that is very popular with our client base now looking at that they're the modules that we have and and I suppose the question is why do why is sound systems the product of choice within Hospitality so one aspect of that is its transaction analysis dimensionality so we have the ability within some systems to be able to store a stack of metadata on the transactions not just the accounting information but also things like holding the property ID the department the outlet that the project this you might want to record start dates on projects end dates on projects Milestones within projects we can handle all that within the accounting module the corporate allocations and fixed assets modules so we hold all that information we also hold and bring across from our TMS or from our um our different feeder systems information relating to the market segment so things like where does the business come from is it from Airlines is it from group tours so that type of thing is all stored on the transactional again important systems we also store things like the meal type or the beverage type in the finance system so you're starting to get this picture of of all this information held within your Finance system being able to be reported upon using that that Excel tool q a so holding dimensionality and and deep insights on the financial transaction that is one reason why the market loves it another reason that that we get great uptake within within the hospitality arena is our use of the usale principles so your salary principles that um that that that really provide structure over the the hotel industry we deploy that within each and every one of our hotel deployments so um we we think it's a very powerful thing and it's something that we're really quite proud of at Akron having built up uh third thing I just just going to run through quickly was um was fixed assets just explain that a little bit further so we can hold um book and tax registers we can hold we can do forecasting of depreciation and then we can do all the grouping um that you acquire in your hotel for your assets whether assets located what sort of class the asset is which department or Outlet is using the asset and those types of things so we can do all that and then what we can do is we can actually split depreciation across across different departments as well where you've got shared assets so so looking at the core product there are the reasons that we we get great uptake in the market um for some systems and then just when you deploy with the cloud you get this the wrap around so we call it infraros wrap around or wrap up which sits over and above the product and it's available when you're selling to the cloud so we have data fabric services so just to outline that that's essentially it's a data lake so you can bring up some systems information you can bring out information from your PMS you can mount information from other areas of the business and you can can store it all centrally within the import data Lake which is a very powerful thing it comes part of just comes as part of the subscription price when you purchase info Sun systems machine learning Craig's talked to that um we have different machine learning and and AI capability within within info um Craig's talked about the hospitality specific ones we also have a common AI engine which comes as part of the multi-tent offering from M4 so the document repository so imagine being able to store supplier contracts our supply record within some systems that's what IEM does we can hold pictures of your assets we can hold different non um Sun systems specific information all in within a central uh info.net management system we add to that process and automation of workflows this this all comes part of the info as part of the info OS wrapper and that's in addition to what Craig's mentioned before in the hospitality products extensibility so what extensibility provides is is the ability to add on modules in the sun system so we can provide extensibility via inform Mongoose engine that comes part of the product we can we can call we can add collaboration to the the tool set as well so you might have conversations happening within the team we can use our collaboration engine to to set up those Communications and have a record record of those as well when you when you go and purchase info you've got single sign-on it's almost uh that they're given now that you'll have some simple Asylum and applications but but we certainly provide that within the cloud um a single sign-on for when you when you jump into some systems when you jump into q a um all part of the One login that your users have and then just finally just to to explain and the inter the integration and API Gateway that we have um so if you're wanting to connect um from a third-party application uh open apis within info OS will allow you to do that we'll be able to you can send information into some systems you can send information out of some systems using that Gateway so there's a lot in in the info uh Sun systems and subscription now it's not just the product of all those additional things uh over the top um and it's it's it's certainly getting a good take up in the market um and uh we hope you will enjoy it um but that's all I wanted to go through with the Sun System side of things um and and that concludes our presentation today all the formal content um so great thank you very much for your presentation we do appreciate it always great tragedy thank you
2023-10-01