Our industry is a resilient one. We have managed to bounce back from a multitude of financial and health-related catastrophes over the past century. However, the latest crisis brought a huge push forward in the adoption of new (or new to the hotel industry) technology. Some of this was for the safety of guests and some was for the cost-cutting initiatives made necessary by the pandemic.
With each of these investments, brands, owners and management companies likely went through a relatively thorough evaluation process. Once the decision was made, an implementation process was created followed by a training process. Some savvy hoteliers may have put in some type of monitoring program to track usage but the ones that added a return-on-investment tracking process will be the ones to come out ahead.
For many, this is where things stopped. Very few (if any) companies invest in ongoing support beyond the basics of keeping the software up and running. Many individual hotels and their staff were left to wander the path of ongoing usage, thinking they knew the full extent of the software’s capabilities.
If you doubt this, look at your existing technology, then ask yourself, “Who is the expert in it?” or “Who in your organization is responsible for keeping up with new releases, enhancements, training, ongoing usage?” Chances are there is no one.
The fact is the farther removed from implementation the more diluted usage becomes. The initial users after implementation are typically trained on all aspects of a product. Then as new users are brought onboard, they are taught the pieces the original user used, while the unused features (even though they might be quite valuable) are ignored or forgotten.
Run this through multiple generations of user training (think about the turnover rate in the hospitality industry) and by generation three or four, the typical user knows just enough to do his or her job and nothing more. Now add in the enhancements and new features the typical software-as-a-service vendor adds in a year, and you get a system where users utilize a small percentage of its actual functionality.
This means the next salesperson with a slick sales pitch can unseat an existing vendor easily because no one knows what their actual technology can do for them. "Can" is the important word in the sentence. The reality is that while you may think you know what your technology is doing for your current users, you likely don’t know what it could do if only you had kept up with the technology and the vendor.
This begs the question: Who is responsible for this process? Should the purchasing company be responsible? Should the vendor be responsible? The answer lies somewhere in between.
What’s Missing from Your Evaluation Process?
Let’s start with how most companies evaluate a new technology. A quick Google search will result in 10 to 15 checklists on how to evaluate most technology. Additionally, depending on the sophistication of the company writing the check, there may be someone in-house who has a checklist specific to his or her previous experiences. Typically, the following things are evaluated at varying degrees of complexity:
- Disaster recovery: Testing, frequency of testing, recovery time and geo-redundancy are a few of the categories in these. This makes sense because everyone wants to make sure their data won’t be lost because of vendor errors.
- Security: PCI compliance, audits, firewalls, log file management, identity management and visibility into emerging threats are all reviewed to exhaustion. Again, this makes sense because the protection of personal data is paramount.
- Flexibility of service ecosystem: Typically this is limited to the system’s ability to integrate with other systems. No one wants a rigid system where they can’t cross-pollinate data.
- Service-level agreements: This is almost always focused on uptime. Uptime is important but SLAs should cover much more.
- Global reach: This is the one often dropped when the company doesn’t have (or doesn’t believe it has) global reach.
- Costs: Setup, maintenance, license, et.al. are included for obvious reasons.
- Features: Do the existing features answer the pain points of the organization? This should be done but does the evaluator have a clear understanding of new pain points that may occur if current users aren’t utilizing all the functionality of the existing product?
- Word of mouth: Typically this is limited to the “references” provided by the vendor.
This is by no means a complete list, but it highlights the top items evaluated. Do you notice anything missing from this list? The one thing rarely evaluated is the training partnership component. How does the vendor partner with your company to facilitate ongoing learning? What about ongoing updates? Is your staff up to speed on the latest, perhaps essential, changes to the software?
Most software vendors have some version of a learning-management system that houses all their intellectual knowledge about the product. Generally, every user has access to this, perhaps not all of it if it’s a user based LMS, but significant amounts to facilitate learning and usage.
Additionally, during implementation, it is assumed there is a comprehensive onboarding process that covers the employees using the platform at that time. But what happens once the onboarding is signed off by both sides and the product reaches “steady state” within your organization?
This is where your organization must commit to the process and partner with the vendor to create an ongoing initiative to stay up to date. Take a moment to think about all your software (SaaS or otherwise). Do you have this process in place for any of your existing products? Have you replaced software without thoroughly evaluating the usage of the previous software?
It’s a tough question to ask, but a necessary one. It can also be a time-consuming evaluation but it’s a worthy one. It’s worth mentioning this evaluation should be done for your existing technologies but note that this process should be added as part of onboarding new technology. Doing so will prevent having to repeat this process again and again. So, what should you be doing?
- Create a list of all the technology being used by your hotels. There is no small technology; everything should be listed.
- Investigate the usage of each product. Work with the vendor, if necessary, to understand how frequently it is being used, who are the super users, what features are being overused, underused, not used at all, etc.
- Break the list into the departments (areas) it is meant to service.
- Conduct comprehensive interviews with those departments to determine the pain points each piece of technology solves and those it creates. In those interviews don’t limit yourselves to the leaders, make sure you speak with the day-to-day users as well. You will be surprised how often new use cases emerge when you step down to the people who use it most frequently. Ask everyone if there are other departments who would benefit from using the product.
- Ask each person interviewed if they have a wish list for functionality. Make sure they can defend their wish list and explain its use case.
- Compile a list of all the pros, cons, pain points and wish list items and present back to the users to confirm you have represented all their information. This might seem like an unnecessary extra step, but you will be surprised when it’s all presented in black and white how many extra viewpoints you will find and how many solutions you will get.
- Schedule time with the vendor to walk through your findings and give them the ability to digest them and respond thoughtfully. This is not designed to be a “gotcha” moment but an investigative call to understand current usage, gaps in usage, gaps in functionality, and more. This should be a true partner call. If your vendor is unwilling to go through this process with you, you have an important answer to an even more important question.
- Work with each vendor to create a gap assessment. This could be training (on your side) or roadmap (on their side) but don’t assume the assessment is one-sided. Be sure to uncover what costs might be included in this process (on both sides).
Moving Forward to Better Understanding Your Technology
From here you should have a better understanding if the technology you have is the “Mr. Right” or simply “Mr. Right Now.” This will let you better understand what technologies to invest time and energy in and those to invest time and energy into replacing. Either way you will be in a better place moving forward.
Once you have made your decisions, commit to an internal process of continuous learning for each technology product. Here’s some tips to get you started:
- Determine an internal champion for each product. This person is responsible for monitoring usage, coordinating training (not necessarily doing the training but making sure there is a process in place, and that it is followed.)
- Create a training guideline for each new hire as well as an ongoing continuous learning process for existing employees.
- Partner with your vendor for tracking usage. This should not just be limited to logins but feature usage as well.
- Establish an enhancement introduction process with your vendor partner. This should include use cases and training as necessary for the appropriate staff members.
- Ask to be included in roadmap conversations with vendors so you have the ability to inject requests for functionality and potentially vote on upcoming functionality.
- Institute biannual reviews of each product to make sure it is keeping up with your needs and to make sure users aren’t slipping to the “path of least resistance” usage before renewal time.
Technology is an expensive investment for most hotels. Too often, we choose to “replace” rather than review. In doing so, we create a waste of resources, time and money for our companies. As such, a technology purchase can’t be a “set it and forget it” concept. Someone somewhere must be accountable for the purchase and making sure it’s being used to create value. If you don’t have that process in your organization, chances are you are underutilizing products to your own detriment.
Before you look to purchase your next technology or replace an existing product, ensure you have asked the important questions, questions of both the end user of the product and the vendor. Software is ever changing and should be ever improving. The point of the SaaS model is to provide your team with ongoing improvements and enhancements to optimize performance and productivity. Failing to accommodate and incorporate ongoing training and having a good understanding of your product’s newest capabilities is tantamount to flushing your investment down the drain.
Kristi White is chief product officer at Knowland.