Is being short staffed a good reason to not upgrade your hotel technology?
Your hotels are chronically short-staffed. The labor shortage is one of the biggest challenges facing the hospitality industry. The Coronavirus Pandemic exasperated the existing shortage and recent wage increases have not been enough to fill positions, or keep them filled. According to Business Insider, in November 2021, 1 million Americans quit their jobs in the hotel and restaurant industry – roughly 6.4% of the industry’s workforce.
Hotel staff are doing double or triple duty. GMs are plunging toilets and corporate accountants are checking-in guests. Everyone is overworked.
How can you ask your team to learn a new software right now?
On the other hand, consider what is being sacrificed. If your team is too busy, is work being delayed or not done? Are the monthly books closed on time? Are bank reconciliations getting pushed back or ignored? When monthly financial reports are late, operations teams cannot make informed decisions, leading to excess expenses or un-realized revenue.
There is a saying “Too busy to save time”.
If you can find the time to make the switch to a new software, you could potentially be gaining multiple extra hours per employee, per week. Modern hotel ERP technology automates many routine tasks and streamlines processes. Hotel Investor Apps customers see dramatic time-savings across the board, for example cutting time spent on bank reconciliations in half.
Are you too busy to even consider alternative solutions available? We can all relate to the cavemen in the cartoon – both the ones pushing the cart with the square wheels, and the one trying to show them an easier way with round wheels. We are all busy, and we all get overwhelmed.
Here are 4 steps to break the busy cycle and gain back hours you didn’t have in the first place.
1. First, track and catalog where your time and your team’s time is going. Is someone spending 2 hours a day inputting revenue journal entries? Or 20 minutes a day logging into bank accounts? Are there precious minutes spent waiting for pages to load or spent logging in and out of different systems?
2. Second, identify which tasks add value and which tasks could easily be avoided with modern technology. Your staff has better things to do than manually enter data and twiddle their thumbs waiting for slow and glitchy software.
3. Third, research your options. Don’t be the caveman with the square wheels. Take the time to at least be open to new ways of doing things. Hotel Investor Apps ERP & Accounting software can automatically import PMS and POS data, stream live bank balances and bank transactions, and it integrates with many other hotel solutions from payroll to AP automation. Plus, its cloud-based, modern architecture means its fast and reliable.
4. Fourth, track your time savings. Once you have installed your round wheels, i.e., upgraded your technology, evaluate your ROI. Very soon your staff will feel the relief of a lighter workload. Users of Hotel Investor Apps report being happy and excited to abandon old ways, such as tedious spreadsheets in favor of quicker, more automated processes.
Modern technology can deliver not only time savings through automated solutions and software integrations, but also more complete, more reliable data in real-time. Your business will be on track to maximize its earning potential.
If you are ready for round wheels, let us show you want a modern hotel ERP can do. Sign up for a demo here.
Jaime Goss has over a decade of marketing experience in the hospitality industry. At Hotel Investor Apps, Jaime heads up marketing initiatives including brand strategy, website design, content, email marketing, advertising and press relations.
