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Hotels are complex organisations, with a lot of moving parts. Everything from how the minibar is stocked, to how well the hotel bar can make a cocktail, has an impact on guest experience and so no detail is too small to be missed.
At the same time, many day-to-day hotel operations involve manual processes. Whether it’s time-consuming sheet-to-shelf inventory, paper staff rotas or manually typing up invoices, operational inefficiencies slow down workflows and leave managers working late into the night, just to handle the basics.
So how can you get some well-deserved help?
This is where automation could be your hotel’s best friend.
Automation means using a piece of software or system to complete repetitive, time-consuming or simple tasks on your behalf. It runs in the background, keeping things moving, and is usually led by an “if this happens, do that” rulebook that is predefined.
This is of huge benefit to hotel operations as it means that once you’ve set up “the rulebook” automation is like another member of staff - getting things done in the background and completing tasks with speed and accuracy, and without mistakes.
Now it’s easy to understand how automation works when you’re talking about robots in a car factory putting together parts, but how does it work when it comes to a hotel? This is what we’re going to dig into.
What is the benefit of automating some of the processes within your hotel?
As we mentioned, running a successful hotel is hard! With multiple processes to stay on top of, it’s far too easy to become overwhelmed. Especially if you’re trying to run everything manually or on multiple, disconnected systems. And a single error can have a knock-on effect on your operations, your team’s efficiency and your guests’ experience.
Here’s where the benefits of automation really come into play. Automation keeps all processes running as they should, without you or your team needing to oversee them 24/7. Here are a few key benefits of automating some of your hotel management processes:
- More efficiency - hotel management operations consist of repetitive tasks, like nonstop manual data entry throughout the day. Automation can help to complete tasks more efficiently, such as entering or sending manual data for you, rather than having to rely on staff members to do this manually.
- Greater productivity - thanks to the efficiency gains it provides, automation allows you and your team to be more productive during the work day. Instead of losing hours to repetitive, time-consuming processes, you can do more and focus on high-value activities.
- “Always on” capabilities - automation isn’t limited by time or other constraints. Automated tasks, powered by AI and automation software, continue performing at all hours, releasing you from late nights spent in the office.
- Easy scalability - with automation, you can skip the growing pains that come with scaling. Instead of running into cost and efficiency issues associated with manually completing daily management tasks (often requiring more staff and driving up costs), automation scales easily. Automated tasks run on autopilot, in tandem, and as often as you need throughout the day. This lets you complete several tasks at the same time, instead of spending hours overseeing them one at a time.
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3 ways to use automation to improve your hotel operations
Automation can benefit all of your hotel operations, but most guides focus exclusively on how automation can improve marketing, room reservations and the guest experience. This is great, don’t get us wrong! But what often gets overlooked is how beneficial automation can be for enhancing your overall hotel operations.
This is where you can save time, increase efficiency and free up more capacity. So that you finally have time to market that great new idea, or take staff out for some team training.
Let’s look at three concrete use cases where automation can improve your existing hotel operations.
1. Use automation to cross-validate orders, deliveries and invoices
We all know the frustration of receiving incorrect or missing stock from suppliers. Not to mention the painful process of cross-checking purchase orders with original invoices to identify what went wrong so you can fix it.
Inventory management software such as growyze, has in-built automation capabilities that take away the manual cross-checking process. For example, growyze offers three-way auto-validation which cross-checks orders, with deliveries, and again with invoices.
Using its smart engine, growyze can instantly read each order item line-by-line on the delivery note and compare it with the items delivered, before cross-checking with the items listed on the invoice. Within seconds, it can flag missing or incorrect stock. This automated feature takes away a bunch of manual reconciliations and ensures you never pay for an item you didn’t receive again.
2. Monitor supplier pricing
On that note, keeping tabs on supplier pricing is another time-consuming manual task. Who has time to keep checking previous purchase invoices when reordering stock from multiple suppliers? How do you know if there’s been a sudden, unexplained price hike? This could easily slip your notice, meaning what you’re charging for an item may be less than what you’re paying for it to begin with.
Again, your inventory management software could solve this. growyze houses all of your supplier details in one location, including your purchase order history. Any time a supplier increases the price of an item you use, you get an automated notification.
This helps identify which menu items might not be profitable anymore. From there you can make quick, proactive decisions like swapping out ingredients, negotiating a better price or even changing suppliers - all because you have automation keeping an eye on price changes!
3. Create automated order reminders
Every hotel restaurant or bar has dealt with the experience of missing or limited stock affecting what can be served or when! Forgetting to place an order for new inventory can affect your restaurant’s reputation and affect ongoing profitability. Missing ingredients compromise the kitchen’s ability to make meals for guests, and can lead to negative reviews
This can easily happen when you’re busy juggling so many other tasks and solving problems as they appear. Deadlines for reordering stock in time can come and go without the team noticing. Once again, automation can easily solve this, preventing kitchen disasters and unhappy guests.
Automation can be used in a few different ways; to set up reminders for when you need to place new stock orders, and even to automatically calculate and send new orders when there’s a trigger like certain items getting low. With growyze you can set up customised reminders to ensure you never miss a reorder or order too late again.
Automated reminders take the hassle and stress out of trying to stay on top of stock orders and ensure you’re always able to serve customers their favourite meals with the best ingredients.
Automation with growyze: save time, increase efficiency
With growyze, you can run your hotel restaurant or bar BOH operations with automated help. Say goodbye to manual spreadsheets and counting inventory by hand. We simplify your inventory management, so you can focus on knocking those guest experiences out the park (or the lobby)! Book a demo with us to learn how.
