Everything You Need to Know About Purchasing a Property Management System

Transcription

1 Everything You Need to Know About Purchasing a Property Management System

2 3 Introduction 4 Must-Have PMS Features 7 Customizing Your PMS 8 The Importance of Interfaces 11 Development Considerations 15 PCI Compliance and Security 17 How Much Should a PMS Cost? 18 Buying Checklist 2

3 Choosing the right PMS software for your property is no easy task. There are a lot of options on the market and it can be difficult to select the system that will work best for you. In fact, there are so many things to consider it s hard to know where to even start. Don t worry, we re here to help. Choosing the right PMS software essentially comes down to answering these questions: Does the PMS have all the features my hotel needs? Does it interface with my existing hardware and software? Is it easy for my staff to use? Can the PMS be customized to my property? Can the system be expanded if my software needs change? Will the company you choose actively support and improve their software so it lasts over the long term? Is the software secure? Is it affordable? This ebook will explore each of the above questions so you know what features you should look out for, the importance of interfaces, what it means for PMS software to be secure, and more. By the end of this ebook you ll know exactly what to consider when choosing a PMS including how much you should pay for one. 3

4 The features your property management system must have in order to adequately power your property s operations. Modern PMS software is loaded with features there are so many features, in fact, that it wouldn t be very prudent to list them in this ebook. Instead we re going to focus on the must-haves, the things your PMS absolutely needs to be able to do. A property management system should make front desk operations easy and the feature set here should be very comprehensive. At the minimum it should include: A visual room chart (this may be called a tape chart or a rack, depending on the PMS). The room chart makes it easy for staff to see bookings by room over a period of time. The ability to quickly see availabilities and rates. Speed is important here staff will check rates when people call in so it shouldn t take more than a few seconds to pull this information up. Manage guest reservations. Whether someone walks-in or books a reservation months in advance, the management of this process is a cornerstone of PMS software. It s critical you establish a list of must-have features for your hotel. This will take the guesswork out of the selection process See a complete guest profile and history. It s important to be able to reference guest information and history in order to give the highest levels of service. Check guests in and out. Quickly. Create invoices and booking confirmations. While there are many more features available in modern PMS software, this is the core of the functionality for the front desk. 4

5 Every PMS should have a rate management system that will allow your hotel to take advantage of flexible pricing. If rate management is a brand new concept to you, here s how it works: With a rate management system you can automatically change rates based on occupancy, days, seasons, or events. Let s say an event is happening in your city one weekend. You know that the hotels in your area will have elevated demand and you re all but guaranteed to sell out your rooms. You can configure your PMS to automatically increase rates. Likewise, if you have steady demand you can set it so that after a certain level of occupancy is reached, rates go up. This system is important because it helps maximize the revenue and profitability generated by your hotel. PMS software functions as the central place for your hotel s data. All your guest history, rates, and interface connections will have their information flow into this system. How do you organize all this information? With reports. The PMS should have reports built-in (that is to say they re pre-built and can be generated in an instant), but the system should also allow for custom reports. This will allow your hotel to gather and view data in a way that suits your organization. 5

6 Regarding the functionality of your PMS, there are a lot of different departments that will utilize the system which is why it s so important that the software work with your specific property if it doesn t then a lot of people end up wasting time fighting with the software. There are two things that really matter when it comes to a PMS that works with your property: 1. The PMS should be customizable to your property s unique layout 2. The PMS software needs to work with your type of lodging. Other Important PMS Features Group bookings Have (or interface with) a loyalty program Allow for packages to be created, letting guests take advantage of bundled deals Configure special offers Be able to handle tax in your locale Integrate with OTAs and other 3rd party providers We ll explore each of these points on the next page. 6

7 PMS systems should be customizable to your property s layout. This means that your building(s), rooms, room-types, and room features should be stored in the system. Ensuring your PMS is able to handle property specific operations is extremely important. Custom building information allows your front-line staff to give a better guest experience while taking reservations, allowing them to more closely line-up a guest s needs and wants with hotel availability. Being able to see the available ocean-view rooms, for instance, is a nice touch that guests will appreciate through the reservation process. For managers, the PMS s reporting functionality should allow custom reports which make ongoing reporting a breeze. If you manage timeshares, all-inclusive resorts, extended stays, condos, vacation rentals, or marina resorts the average PMS might not work great. These properties require different operating procedures that some PMS software may not be able to fulfill. When selecting a PMS, make sure you spend the time to ensure the needs of your specific property can be met. Is there an owner portal available for timeshares? Can the owners be managed and billed? Is there a way to book slips for your marina resort? There is no reason your PMS can t be this tailored to your property. At IQware the way we address property specific functionality is by having a core PMS solution and then providing property-specific enhancements as optional modules. For our customers this works great if you don t need the functionality it s not in the software (and you re not paying for something you re not using) but if you do need it the module integrates perfectly into the PMS. 7

8 When choosing a PMS make sure it integrates with your other systems - there is little that s more important to your technological operational efficiency. No matter what PMS software you choose, it is essential that it is able to link with other systems in your hotel. Interfacing a PMS with other hardware and software is one of the most powerful things you can do from an operational standpoint and as you ll see it, can also positively impact the guest experience. Typically your property management system will house the bulk of your guest information. It s where you ll go to determine who is at your hotel and who has stayed there. You ll also find RevPAR and other essential metrics in your PMS. Put another way, it s the primary data-house for your property. Your PMS is also the central point of your hotel s operations. It s the first place your staff will go to manage guests, reservations, and more. We bring up these two points to highlight the importance of PMS software within your hotel. Since it stores the bulk of your hotel s data and is the central point of operations, from a connectivity standpoint virtually any system you connect to it will create real benefits to your hotel s operations and the guest experience. This sounds a little ethereal so here are a few tangible examples: 1. Two of the most common types of software you ll find in a hotel are a PMS and a POS (point of sale software). On their own these two systems will work just fine. However, when your POS and PMS are connected, you can do things like post charges to a guest s room with the press of a button. 2. Interfacing your booking engine to your PMS completely eliminates manual entry 8

9 Our PMS software is able to integrate with more than 500 systems, thanks in part to our partnership with Comtrol. There s one other thing we do at IQware that helps our PMS connectivity: We build a lot of our own software and we make sure it communicates with our PMS. Some of our integrations run pretty deep. Our channel manager, for instance, works right inside the PMS you d never know you were using another piece of software. and reduces the risk of overbooking. The same goes for channel managers where overbooking can be a very real problem without a real-time PMS connection. 3. Some of your property s hardware should certainly connect to your PMS software. At the most basic level this means hooking up a printer to your PMS. More advanced options include linking the system to room safes. 4. Mobile apps are becoming more and more important as they deliver a truly superior guest experience while maximizing revenue for the hotel through upgrades via a mobile check-in process. Processing these upgrades is a lot less efficient without a PMS interface if customers pay to upgrade to a room that s not available, that creates a terrible guest experience before they ve even walked into their room. Your PMS will work fine on its own, that s for certain. You ll be able to take reservations, check guests in and out, and bring up room rates. However, interfacing with additional systems is very powerful. If you read through those above points again you can quickly see how your hotel will simply be better with PMS connectivity in place. In some cases, not having connectivity defeats the purpose of using some software altogether (for example, a mobile app isn t much good without the PMS interface it s 9

10 too limited). At other times, the interface will massively streamline your operations. Interfacing your system with your PMS means you ll never have to export another.csv list again (ask your marketer what they d think about that). Interfacing a channel manager to your PMS means never having to manually enter a reservation from an OTA again. Both of these examples are huge time-savers. It s for these reasons we say that it s essential a PMS system integrates with your hardware and other software because while you can use a PMS on its own, it s not a great way to structure your hotel s operations. That s not to say that everything in your hotel should be connected that might prove to be too costly or the potential benefits would be too minimal to your hotel. Still, as a general rule the more that connects the better. At the very least you want to have your POS, booking engine, channel manager, and CRS integrated with your PMS. 10

11 When choosing PMS software, be sure to select a vendor that makes substantial investments in software. Technology will continue to change, you want your PMS software to stay up-to-date. There s a golden rule in technology new is always better. This year s laptop is better than last year s. This software release is better than the previous. What s latest in technology really is the greatest. Mostly. There s an important exception in that new entrants have to try very hard to make better technology than established players, and within enterprise level software like PMS that is very challenging - there s a reason the big dogs stay big year after year. At this point you might be wondering what this has to do with choosing PMS software. The answer is a lot as not all companies are equally dedicated to new is always better. There are some companies that invest very heavily in ongoing development. They genuinely strive to produce great software and to make that software better year over year, adding in new features and improving the technology behind it. On the other hand, there are companies that have built software and are now content to maintain it mostly as-is, barely adding in upgrades. You can t just build software once and two decades later be using the same code. That code needs to be enhanced as new technologies become available and old ones are depreciated. Fall too far behind and the new entrants genuinely will have created better software than a laggard established player. Imagine you build a new hotel given your industry you might have done that. At first it s new and modern, guests flock in. Of course you have housekeepers and maintenance personnel to do the upkeep but what if you don t replace things? Over 11

12 time items start to fall apart and the decor starts to look dated. Your ratings online decrease and fewer guests stay at your property. This analogy aligns closely to the software industry. A new piece of software will be modern. Maintenance and housekeeping are like bug fixes. Issues arise when software companies, like hotels, don t invest in making their products notably better year after year by renovating and replacing dated components. The companies who stay up to date are leaps and bounds ahead of the companies that fall behind because who wants to be using a system that s built on twenty year old technology? (Let s remember that twenty years ago you were groaning every time Windows 95 crashed) And this stacks year over year in an insane way. Take two software companies that launch today with similar products. Say one company invests $300k/year into development (which would be very low), and the other company invests $3 million/year. After a decade, one company has invested $3 million total, the other $30 million. It s not hard to see which organization will have the better software. Remember to choose a provider that actively and deliberately invests in making their software better. When is the last time you read a manual for a piece of software you use in your personal life? Unless we miss our guess, the answer is probably never. Spotify? Gmail? Dropbox? You don t need to use a manual. How about your iphone/android? Nope. Did you ever think about why that is? Software development on graphical-based systems (GUIs) is only a few decades old, kick started with brilliant software engineers stretching programming languages as far as they could go. Twenty years ago we were building our first programs for the web, and those were viewed as highly experimental and regarded as almost certainly doomed to failure. 12

13 And when these brand new programs started to come out? Well, it s not a big surprise that they were a little clunky. Many readers will be familiar with the progression from Windows 95 to 98 to XP, where each of those releases marked milestone improvements in the ease of use of the operating system. If you think about it, you ll have seen milestones like this all through the software world over the last twenty years. This is because many companies have stopped focusing on just software development they started investing in the user experience. Data is really clear on one thing with software: If it s hard to use, people will stop using it. In the industry we call this adoption and if you do some quick Googling you will see it s a huge problem for many, many companies. Now, a lot goes into adoption (training is one very important factor outside the scope of this ebook), but realize that user experience is at the core of it. This is why savvy firms invest heavily into making sure their software is as easy to use as possible, which involves being well thought out (called UX user experience) and visually well designed (called UI user interface). Today, many firms put the user experience first when designing their software. From a consumer standpoint, this means that there is absolutely no need for your staff to struggle to use software. With that said, Perhaps you ve tried to use Photoshop at some point in your life. Photoshop is a brilliant piece of software but without taking classes or looking at tutorials, good luck making anything wonderful with it. This is why graphic designers 13

14 are considered skilled labor it requires time invested to learn how to use this software, not to mention developing and harnessing creative talent. The staff at your hotel are not the same as graphic designers. Their jobs are not dependent on mastery of a single piece of software. They shouldn t be expected to spend years learning how to use your PMS. One last point enterprise software will always have some challenging aspects to it because there are so many features inside. It s completely fair to expect that at some points you might have to do some Googling or make a quick call to the company s support team to figure something out. That is okay. You could make Photoshop easier to use by taking out features say you took out so many you turned it into MS Paint. Now the program is far less useful and graphic designers would hate the changes. This isn t a great option. Above all else, make sure you choose hotel software that s easy to use. Your staff will appreciate it, and so will you. Here s a tip: the newer a user interface looks, the easier it will probably be for your staff to use it. 14

15 booking engine will all need to be PCI compliant. PCI compliance is a mandated security standard that properties handling credit cards must adhere to. Any time a property stores or processes a credit card it must follow this process, and each year it must be certified to prove purchases are being handled correctly. Note that PCI compliance does not apply to debit or other types of payment methods. There are a lot of rules revolving around PCI compliance. From Wikipedia, the requirements are to: Build and maintain a secure network, protect cardholder data, maintain a vulnerability management program, Implement strong access control measures, Regularly monitor and test networks, maintain an information security policy, and the software also has a compliance system, called PA, which works hand-in-hand with PCI. Having multiple technology solutions in your hotel can make things challenging. Your POS, PMS, and At IQware we developed a unique PA compliant solution for our clients called the IQvault. Properties using our PMS/POS/booking engine are able to offload their credit card storage and processing needs into the system. Basically, it serves as a central point for all your credit processing needs, which keeps things extremely simple. Properties that use the IQvault will still need to obtain their own PCI certification with the assistance of a third-party auditor, however our PA certification will ease this process. When choosing a vendor, make sure the software is PA compliant. This is essential for ensuring PCI compliance within your organization. 15

16 You probably should. It s very understandable that properties do not want their employees accessing the entire system. This is easily solved in PMS software by ensuring there are permission settings for a variety of access levels. Typically you ll find settings for administrators, managers, and front-line employees. When it comes to purchasing PMS software, this should be fairly standard across most major providers, but it s worth double checking to ensure the functionality is there. Be sure to adhere to best practices with your data security ensure your staff are using strong passwords and promptly remove access from anyone who is no longer employed at your organization. 16

17 PMS software is typically charged via a monthly fee based on the number of rooms you have. You should find a provider that charges an all-in fee and allows you to lock-in your rate for a period of three to five years. It s very important to choose a vendor that will not charge you for upgrades or system enhancements this should be included as part of your monthly fee. The total amount you pay will vary based on three main factors: How robust is the functionality in the system? A system with increased functionality will tend to be more expensive How many rooms do you have in your property or properties? A higher room count will lower the cost per room. What optional features do you want added onto your PMS? You should expect to pay between $3 - $10/room/month, plus optional features. While fees are calculated monthly you may be billed quarterly or annually and may incur additional fees for set-up and/or training. 17

18 Key Features Visual tape chart Key Features Easy to check availabilities and rates Key Features Guest profile & history Key Features Guest check-in/out is fully functional and fast Key Features Ability to create invoices and booking confirmations Key Features Rate management built-in Key Features In-depth reporting functionality Key Features Easily customizable to your property s unique layout. Connectivity Interfaces with your other systems Development Software is actively being upgraded and there is a recent history of these upgrades being deployed Development User interface is modern and easy to use Security Software has user access control Security Software is PA compliant for PCI compliance Fees Cost for the base PMS is between $3 and $10/room/month Fees Upgrades and system enhancements are complimentary Fees Pricing can be locked-in for three to five years 18

19 IQware s Industry Leading Property Management System

20 For fifteen years we have been developing software to address every aspect of hotel operations. This exclusive focus has made us experts at creating powerful solutions that increase profitability and strengthen guest relations. Our flagship software, the IQware Property Management System (IQpms), is a comprehensive hospitality application designed to completely satisfy the unique requirements of small to large hotels, condo-hotels, resorts, and multi-property operations. We also provide software for asset and guest management, point of sale (POS), reservations, and more. The future of the hospitality industry will be marked with rapid change but one thing is certain: Technology will play a significant role in the success or failure of lodging establishments. At IQware we recognize this and provide our customers with the tools they need to manage their operations and deliver exceptional guest experiences.