Case Study 1
This is a Case Study of the work Andrew did with Victoria Hall on their Website & back office systems. This does not cover the marketing aspects of the project.
Victoria Hall
The Background
Victoria Hall was a busy city center accommodation complex offering long and short term accommodation to:
- International Students
- Short Term Business
- Backpackers and other travellers
- Conference and other large groups
The Problem
A complex paper based system involving dozens of forms
#1 Under utilisation of resources
#2 Hard to identify late-payments
#3 "squatters" tenants not paying rent
#4 Customer dissatisfaction with unmade beds
#5 Wage costs due to excessive paperwork
#6 Producing statistics was an extremely time consuming process
Dira Mivora Pty are a family owned property management and development company. They were aware of the fact benefits would be made automating systems and process' and that there could be significant additional revenue made from online marketing, however they were concerned about the cost of a comprehensive system that would meet their needs.
Experienced in business they had researched a number of solution, and the only ones that would meet all the needs of their multiple accommodation style setting were cost prohibitive.
The Process
An eighteen month project. Taking a holistic approach to the business Andrew spent a number of weeks working in all areas of the Victoria Hall business, shadowing housekeepers, receptionists, night managers and even taking on the role of manager to fully comprehend the scale of the business and identify the possibilities for integrating IT into the infrastructure in a way that would work for and not against the business and its key stakeholders. Starting as a customer, and testing each and every process from dorm to private room. Before going on to shadow every member of every team to see how their job was done and to identify duplication and room for improvement through effective use of IT.
Andrew understood the only way any solution he provided would work, would be if all the stakeholders had their needs satisfied. The building owners, the management team, the staff including housekeepers and maintenance, its partners and agents and finally but by no means least the customers.
Quickly realising he could deliver value through his research stage, Andrew actively performed the role of Manager enabling Dira Mivora to accredit a large part of the fee's paid to Andrew against that of a mangers salary. Further down the line much of Andrews work was tied directly to performance enabling Andrew to offer risk-reversal, meaning he took on the risk, being paid on proven net benefits to the business.
The Findings
The business had no website and was in no way capitalising from its prime CBD location by making its rooms available online directly.
The process' that were in place at Victoria Hall were in fact all necessary for the smooth running of the building. However there was far too much duplication of information and room for human error. Andrews role was to streamline all process, reduce the opportunity for human or clerical error, and maximise the use of resources through better reporting on past performance as well as importantly, future availability.
As the accommodation at Victoria Hall was a mixed use of hotel, hostel, dormitory, short and long term stay accommodation there were some complex considerations. Some rooms would be serviced daily, whilst some only on checkout. For example some rooms had multiple occupants staying for differing lengths of time. Technically only some beds needed to be changed, in practice the complex system meant that all beds were made regardless of need or hotel policy. At a cost of $8 this was significant when duplicated 10 times a day 3 or 4 times a week.
Private rooms at peak season were charged at $99 a night, however the complex paper based system meant that it was not possible to pre-book to full occupancy. No way of looking at availability in 3 or 6 months time except in the vaguest of terms.
On one occasion rooms were overbooked. This meant the overbooked clients needed to be put up at other hotels at enormous cost. This resulted in the Management policy that the hostel should never be booked to over 90% occupancy to allow for clerical errors.
Check-in and check out times took much longer than needed, this made for unhappy customers, stressed staff, and unnecessarily high wage costs. On checkout the Receptionist was to add the room to the Housekeepers Form, the housekeeper would then go clean the rooms on the list and call back to reception when done. Whereupon the receptionist would update another form. Lots of room for confusion, at busy times inhouse calls may have been ignored or missed.
Clients booking rooms online would send an email and staff would then need to update all the relevant paper based forms in relation to the booking.
There are dozens of other examples and at some point this Case Study may become more thorough, however this provides a good overview of some of the problems.
The Method
Whatever system was implemented had to be taken on-board by all members of the team and needed to be truly integrated with all aspects of the business.
Andrew created a front end website using Joomla, including creating all content, the design and photography.
The online booking engine needed to be integrated into a back office system. The back office system would need to generate all manner of reports based on the data.
The front office system would also need to be integrated with the back office. In this way a customers name is ever only entered once, usually by the client when booking online. Thereafter that data was made available to all departments automatically where needed. Previously a customer staying for 3 nights would have their name entered onto a minimum of 9 separate forms.
Utilising an open source system Andrew extended the functionality to provide the features that Victoria Hall required.
With the system fully implemented the receptionist now had an Automatically generated:
- List of rooms due to check-out (enabling them to call and remind clients to ensure they checked out in-time for housekeeping)
- List of rooms overdue payment
- List of rooms that have occupants that need to vacate- due to high occupancy
After check out time housekeepers had a list of:
- Rooms that need to be cleaned
- Beds that need to be made
- Rooms that need to be checked
Maintenance
- Had reports of rooms with problems
Management
- Could see past/future occupancy rates
- Check Housekeeping schedules past/future
- Check maintenance schedules
These were just some examples of the reports that would be generated to make life easier.
The Results
The benefits and improvements are best summed up by Yossi Gallor from Dira Mivora.
As the operations manager for a 100+ bed city centre building offering short,
medium and long term accomodation in a private room and hostel stye setting I
deal with many problems on a daily basis. Hiring Andrew was refreshing as he was
able to quickly identify practical improvements to systems and procedures that
when implemented saved us time, money and stress.
Andrew's forward thinking approach was integral in taking our city centre
accommodation Victoria Hall in Melbourne Australia from a paper based
Reservations and Client Management system to an IT based system.
Andrew truly proved to be an all round benefit. Developing our website, our
reservations system, our back office hotel management application, whilst
providing general on and offline marketing services.
Identifying the fact that the improvements to the business would be vast, and
devising a unique pricing plan which ensured our budgets could accommodate the
development, implementation and training in the use of a wholly IT based system
resulted in:
- Improved efficiency
- Increased Occupancy
- Increased Turnover
- Enabled higher occupancy
- Eliminated double bookings
- Streamlined work process'
- Sped-up check-in and check-out times
- Identified Delinquent Accounts
- Reduced non-payments and overdue payments
3 years after his initial work we still utilise the same systems that Andrew
implemented. The original website although it has been re-designed several times
it still utilises the original CMS he installed.
Andrew still makes himself available when it comes to server and management
issues if required, although we have found we can happily manage the systems
in-house, with his assistance we found a great webhost for our dedicated server
to host the solution he provided and have no doubt the systems have saved us
tens of thousands of dollars in saved man hours and better utilised resources.
His holistic approach to our business problems meant we saw improvements across
a variety of departments with the system helping not only the Hostel Managers,
but housekeeping, maintenance, catering and even with security.
- Yossi Gallor, Victora Hall
