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4 Ways to Customize Your Hotel Operations Software

Hospitality has been impacted by many challenges throughout the global pandemic. In the past year, hotel service standards have evolved, staffing changes have increased, and the way in which hoteliers use hotel operations software are also changing! To get the most out of your hotel operations software, it’s essential to customize it.

A hotel operations platform is a tool built to optimize task management, communication, and analytics. These sound like overwhelming concepts but the baseline question is: how can you get the most value out of your hotel management system? The answer is customization.

Make sure you work with your operations team to fully understand where potential gaps in operations may lie. This is key to establishing and communicating goals before and after implementation. At ALICE, we can configure our product to fit general use cases as well as specific use cases at your hotel. However, it’s impossible to actually understand your unique processes when they haven’t been communicated.

It’s extremely important to not only communicate your needs, but to also learn the product in depth. Self-service resources help you to rapidly yield the best results possible. Furthermore, you can leverage other resources, such as support services or your dedicated account manager.

So, let’s dive a little deeper into these ideas:

1.  Identify your goals

It’s critical to establish motives and end goals. Remember, you purchased hospitality technology software for a reason. The tool that you sought out is meant to make life easier for you and your team, which ultimately, leads to better guest-facing service.

One way to identify your goals is to read about industry trends and take advantage of every analytics tool within your reach to formulate an action plan to update the product you use. ALICE has an extensive suite of reports that you can use for operational insight.

Your operations software collects data and creates reports that are in line with your goals. Make sure to personalize your goals! Every hotel is unique, and your goals should be reflective of this.

2.  Implementation is just the beginning

It’s imperative to invite the right people into the room, as well as provide all operational information necessary to your vendor before you launch ALICE. In fact, ALICE’s implementations team makes it easy by providing some user-friendly intake forms to provide the right level of customization.

Software implementations can be a big project to manage, especially when there are different stakeholders involved. However, implementation is the very beginning of your relationship with the product. Ensure your team knows where to find resources, such as a knowledge base or a point of contact, if they have questions.

ALICE’s Customer Success team is comprised of hospitality experts who put a lot of effort into maintaining a long-term relationship with customers. Explore the set of tools that have the ability to guide you towards potential solutions to meet your ever-evolving goals.

3.  Become the master of your product

With COVID-19 forcing hotels to shift budgets, as well as forcing them to undergo major procedural and staff changes, these changes need to be reflected in your ALICE configuration. These changes may include updating checklists, adding more Logbooks, more services to your facilities, or more message templates to address new demands.

This is where your ALICE Champions are essential. Their goal? Master the product to the point where it becomes your hotel’s operations software. Get to know the ins and outs of the different features and keep up with its product releases. I can assure you that getting to know a tool that can make your day-to-day more productive is nothing but a fantastic investment of time for you, your staff, and your career advancement.

ALICE maintains a thorough knowledge base, hosts regular webinars, and sends newsletters regularly. Explore all the self-service resources your provider has to offer and apply any acquired knowledge to real-life situations.

4.  Actively communicate with your provider

Actively communicating with your operations software provider reiterates the fact that software implementation is not the end, but just the beginning of your hotel’s journey to efficiency. When applying the use of operations software to your daily operations, there are always new questions, feature requests or challenges that need to be answered.

We encourage you to lead your efforts in troubleshooting to get the fastest results possible. However, communication is key when it comes to product support and development. If you do experience a challenge, please contact support to find a resolution in real time.

The customer success team of your operations provider are your first responders and represent the brand. Chances are, you can bring problems to the attention quickly and they can provide support sooner rather than later.

ALICE is a company that doesn’t hide from feedback. Quite the opposite — we value customer feedback. It is extremely valuable. We have a team that’s eager to run beta programs to collect feedback, as well as run surveys that can potentially shape our product roadmap. Our Product team works extremely hard to create a user-friendly product, and they look forward to hearing any kind of feedback that can help the product grow.

Knowledge is power. Evaluate the guest experience, their needs and allow your team to provide feedback on challenges at the property. Customizing your operations software allows you to maximize the tool’s value and increases buy in from the rest of the team.

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