Choosing a strong and diverse assessment team to help you choose the best tools to run your hotel is also the first step to getting your hotel team on board. It is important that everyone is in agreement when a new property management system is selected for your hotel, resort or hostel. Everyone involved in your organization, from the owner to the hotel management company, including management, reception, reservations, sales and maintenance, must be invested and committed to the project.
Before starting the evaluation process, it is important to designate a project manager who will be responsible and who will follow the project from start to finish. Purchasing the property management system will signal that the assessment process is officially complete.
The project manager is the first person to be selected. This selection may already be determined and it is possible that a consultant has been hired for the position, a manager at the head office, a manager at the hotel, someone in operations or someone in the IT department. information.
At this point, it is important to start thinking about the next project, it will be the training and implementation of the property management system which will probably take place several months to a year after the start of the evaluation process. This time frame depends on the complexity of your business needs and the time that can be devoted to the evaluation and purchase process, not to mention the timeline of the property management system vendor.
Assessment team members can be comprised of operational managers who may use features appropriate to their management role as well as front-line staff who would use the property management software on a daily basis and for most of their day. Staff in a variety of positions such as receptionist, reservations clerk, housekeeping managers or supervisors, sales staff, accounting staff, janitorial staff, and information technology service staff would be able to offer prospects different. Consider including representatives of these ministries in the evaluation process. Their experience with legacy systems as well as their department’s processes and their understanding of the features they need to better serve hotel guests will be very helpful when developing your list of requirements.
The project manager should set expectations and goals for what needs to be accomplished during the evaluation process and provide this information in writing to the team. Setting expectations and goals will help keep the evaluation process on track. The team must understand that while feedback and suggestions are appreciated and needed, not everyone’s wishes will be met. The goal is to choose the best system to meet your specific business needs while providing the best overall tool for all departments and the business as a whole. There will be areas and features that will require trade-offs. Sorting out the items that are needs versus those that are wants is essential during this process. Items that are determined to be needs must be qualified as such.
Now is the time to start building your team!