Comprehensive and integrated business planning and management software has become a prerequisite for the success and competitive advantage of every hotel company.
Comprehensive software means it encompasses all segments of a hotel business. Integral means that all segments of the system are maximally integrated with each other. All departments and processes in the company use the same sources and data / information, share them with each other and there is no multiple entry of the same data / information.
For this reason, the fact is that such software is a very rare “beast” in the world market.
The market offers excellent software for individual business segments (planning, sales, customer relationship management (CRM), financial management, human resource management (HRM), Supply Chain Management and storage management (SCM), production management, food and drink business intelligence (BI) etc.
Examples of such “world-famous” software that cover only one (mostly narrow) rounded segment of a company’s business are, for example, Fidelio and Hogatex (focused on sales and reception). It turned out that buying incompatible partial software solutions and trying to merge them into a complete and integrated system is often a futile business.
For this reason, ERP software appeared on the market, few years ago.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is unique software that covers the entire business of the company. However, all world-famous ERP software and large (global) players (SAP, Oracle, Epicor,…) are mainly focused on trading and manufacturing companies and are focused on internal business.
It is common for ERP software to cover business segments ranging from receiving inquiries and customer orders, through ordering from suppliers, production and storage of goods to issuing and charging products to customers, all accompanied by a close connection with finance, accounting and human resources.
Of course, every hotel company has all these business processes (production is in the kitchen segment, ie food and beverages). However, the hotel business has specifics that none of the big players have (yet) embarked on, and smaller players have failed to impose themselves globally.
Specifics of hotel business
These specifics are related to the key “production” process of the hotel company, ie the whole set of tasks related to the sale, provision and monitoring of accommodation and guest services and other services (congress, wellness, sports, animation, camping,…).
In addition, let’s call it the internal segment of business, to achieve the efficiency of the hotel business is important and a whole series of processes that are closely related to let’s call it external (foreign) systems and / or devices. In addition to the usual connection with customers and suppliers, banks, etc., the integrity of the hotel company’s business includes connecting “business” software with telephone exchanges, key cards, pay cards, PAY TV and various other systems and devices. tourist boards).
All this complexity of the hotel business, as well as their relatively small number and profits in relation to the number, size and profits of trade and manufacturing companies in the world, have conditioned the lack of such complete software solutions for the hotel industry.
The specificity of the situation in Croatia since independence is that the war and the transition to market principles destroyed the vast majority of manufacturing companies and set high expectations from tourism.
The most widespread among them, which uses over 200 accommodation facilities in Croatia is MISH 2000, a joint product of Istria Information Engineering LLC. from Pula and Login LLC. from Rijeka.
On one side, there are partial and difficult to apply solutions to business conditions in Croatia, Fidelio, Hogatex, etc. On the other side, there are bulky, (too) expensive and also incomplete ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle, etc. for the hotel industry.
From all the above, it can be concluded that the owners and management of hotel companies should turn to Croatian solutions that give a much higher and faster return on investment (ROI).
Davor Brenko, dipl.ing.
“Catering and tourism , 9 / 2005”