5 Reasons Why Now is the Right Time for Hotels to Switch to a More Modern and Affordable S&C System
If great technology can act as a catalyst to the success of a business, it should come as no surprise that mediocre technology can have a detrimental impact on your overall technology strategy. This critical balance is aptly realized across the customer service realm, as brands strive to offer a carefully curated balance of high-tech and high-touch service, and the sales and catering industry is no exception.
The meetings and events segment, specifically, involves an influx of moving parts and, as such, demands support-driven technology with the capacity to support hotel and venue sales teams appropriately.
Simply stated, a successful hotel or venue space requires an exceptional sales and catering platform. With the right technology, sales teams can execute their strategies seamlessly, while catering to the unique demands of each client across all touch-points. Once tedious tasks become automated, productivity reaches new heights, and sales staff can focus on high-impact work, namely, client-facing duties, logistical planning, and event execution.
As the industry readies itself for recovery in a post-pandemic landscape, hotels and venue spaces are encouraged to view their existing S&C technology under a new lens.
A high-tech infrastructure empowers high-touch service, and in the post-pandemic meetings and events landscape, this will quickly separate the good from the great. With this in mind, we've compiled 5 reasons why hotels and venues should switch to a more modern and affordable S&C solution.
Streamlined Workflows Legacy S&C platforms are often rife with manual processes and fragmented workflows due to their outdated infrastructure and, consequently, their inability to integrate seamlessly with existing applications and platforms. Not only does this negatively impact the internal user-experience, but it can also create data silos and discrepancies, which are, undoubtedly, bad for business. After all, research shows that poor data quality is responsible for an average of $15 million per year in losses for most organizations.
Next gen S&C systems, on the other hand, boast a full-featured CRM, explicitly designed to help hotels and venues build customer relationships, apply data-backed actionable insights, and maintain an organized and intuitive sales process. Gone are the days of conflicting or duplicate data and inefficient workflows. Instead, your sales team can leverage cloud-based, integrated technology, and customizable workflows to focus on what matters most: the customer, and the unique demands of the reimagined events landscape. From comprehensive GRC to function diaries, detailed booking information, event calendars, contracts, and more, everything your team needs can be found within one centralized platform.
Major Cost Savings The hospitality industry is rather notorious for its long-standing reliance on legacy technology. Often, this is due to perceived costs associated with modern technology investments; however, remaining tethered to legacy technology that no longer offers adequate support can, in actuality, be a more costly proposition in the long-term.
A survey revealed that U.S. businesses lose up to $1.8 billion each year in wasted productivity due to obsolete technology. Not only that, but a Microsoft study found that 90% of respondents said that dealing with a company that uses outdated technology would cause them to consider taking their business elsewhere due to concerns over security, privacy, or user-friendly convenience. Moreover, a State of Workplace Survey, which polled nearly 3,000 U.S. working adults, found that workers spend an average of 520 hours a year on repetitive services and tasks that could be easily automated, such as, password reset requests, new employee onboarding, contract review and approval, and more.
Fortunately, cloud-based, best-in-class S&C platforms are designed to be intuitive, user-friendly, automated, and secure. Unlike legacy platforms, software updates and enhancements are installed automatically and at no additional integration cost to the client. As hotels actively seek out ways to reduce operational costs and boost their bottom line, investing in modern, affordable technology that can save hoteliers money in the long-term is undeniably paramount.
Lower technology acquisition costs and support costs enable hoteliers to be more flexible with their prospective clients and hopefully ensure that they close the business that may have been lost to a nearby competitor.
Advanced Reporting Great service is, more often than not, derived from great data. Across the hospitality landscape, personalization is paramount, and small meetings and events are no exception. As such, reporting has always been an integral part of the sales cycle, providing sales teams a holistic view of the business, which helps to improve lead generation, client relations, performance and productivity, and identify any gaps in service.
Modern S&C platforms place emphasis on reporting, offering hotels and venues access to a wide-ranging list of customizable reports to indicate the overall performance of their sales and catering efforts. Advanced reporting functionality provides sales managers with complete visibility into the team's performance, while packaging key information into actionable opportunities and forecasting future sales.
User-Friendly and Intuitive More often than not, the barrier to adoption of new technology can be attributed to platforms that are difficult to navigate. If the purpose of an S&C system is to automate tasks, streamline workflows and empower your sales team, shouldn't it be easy to use? After all, we aren't trying to make a complicated process more complicated. With this in mind, it's incredibly important to invest in technology that pairs enhanced functionality with a user-friendly interface, as well as on-going vendor support and long-term scalability.
Unlike their legacy predecessors, new-age S&C systems are intuitive in nature and require little to no training following installation. This helps to simplify the onboarding process and ensures the platform quickly earns the trust and buy-in of your sales team. Understandably, meetings and events will be receiving a makeover in the coming months. As hotels and venue spaces ready their properties for guests and attendees, it is integral that they have the functionality and support of a performance-driven, user-friendly platform. With the back-end effectively taken care of, hotels and venues can allocate their attention and resources to the on-going maintenance of new cleaning and sanitation standards.
A 24/7 Solution for a 24/7 Industry To be successful, sales staff must be able to communicate and collaborate with their team members, while quickly meeting business demands and proactively addressing client needs across every touch-point. A cloud-based S&C system provides sales teams with remote access to ensure real-time updates and 24/7 service for any action items which can't wait until tomorrow. Even further, an all-in-one system that boasts extensive communication functionality will help to maintain collaboration across staff members now working remotely. Team members can view and share information, request updates, and collaborate with their co-workers easily and securely across the cloud-based S&C platform.
Ultimately, cloud-based systems offer improved accessibility, more flexibility, and more bandwidth, to ensure your service offering never suffers on account of your technology.
In the coming months, businesses across various industries will look to hotels and venues to lead the way to 'the new normal' for events and meetings. Reliance on outdated, legacy sales and catering systems can — and will — turn into a business liability that hotels and venues simply cannot afford.
Right now, hotels and venue spaces have an opportunity in crisis, to pave the path to recovery with improved systems and processes that will save money and improve client relationships well into the future. Are you ready to take your sales and catering business to the next level? We can help. Click here for more information.
Ryan Hamilton
Co-Founder
+1 847 488 0225
SalesAndCatering.com, LLC
