Blog

CRM Technology for Travel: Leveraging the Power of the Internet

2010-08-26T01:03:18Z

According to Internet World Stats (www.internetworldstats.com), there are over 1.9 billion Internet Users (roughly 28.7% of the world’s population). Over 77% of the North American population uses the Internet, followed by Oceania/Australia (61.3%) and Europe (58.4%) with the highest levels. As of July 2010, 500 million people all around the world are actively using Facebook to stay connected with their friends and the people around them. There are now over 100 million Twitter accounts, tweeting 65 million messages per day.

Does your hospitality organization have an Internet strategy? That’s a loaded question. That’s because, today, there are various components to the Internet. First, most hotels are available to be booked on travel agency systems (GDSs) and other online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, along with thousands of others. In fact, approximately 90 million American adults planned travel during the past year, with 76 percent of them using the Internet to plan their trip. Most online travel planners are somewhat or extremely satisfied with their experiences in using the Internet to plan their trips. Importantly, most see the Internet as a very useful or essential tool for planning many/most aspects of a trip including where to stay overnight, planning travel routes, potential places to visit, attractions to visit, as well as learning about what to do. The primary tools for travel planning are online travel agency websites, search engines, company websites and destination websites. Airline tickets, overnight lodging accommodations and car rentals are the dominant travel products and services purchased online by travel planners. (Source: Travelers’ Use of the Internet)

Your organization’s website probably provides your customers the ability to book rooms directly. But, is that all it does? As the general public becomes more Internet savvy, it is more important than ever to position and represent your hotel properly on your website, while providing plenty of features and functionality. For example, in addition to pictures and directions, does your website allow you to communicate and exchange information with your customers? Can they make changes to their profile? Update their preferences? Manage past and future stays? Get a copy of a past folio? Make service requests?

A Customer Portal is a consumer-facing application that offers stay-aware content and self-service options for hotel guests and customers. It can also be extended to include links to your hotel’s web booking engine, car rental reservations or airline check-in options, thus providing your customers with a single access point to all their travel online. It’s been established that people are more likely to provide details about themselves (phone numbers, email address, birthdays, likes, dislikes) in a secure Internet environment than in a paper questionnaire or face-to-face interview. Embedding a Customer Portal into your website provides this security to your guests along with upcoming reservation information to print property maps, directions or even coordinate airport pick-up. Additionally, your customers may request room assignments, review concierge offerings and make activity reservations for their stay.

A Customer Portal can also provide a set of applications that are stay-specific. These features allow your in-house guests to learn about hotel amenities, along with local attractions, weather and maps. Customers can request housekeeping services or review their bills. They can even schedule spa appointments, golf tee times and other activities at the click of a button. From dining reservations and room service to posting their online survey, customers can directly customize their stay. And, for those guests that have already checked out, they are able to view past stay information and guest folios, sign up for email offers, post travel reviews and update their stay preferences for future visits.

A Customer Portal can also become an integral part of your loyalty and rewards program by offering program members a way to view and manage their membership data online, redeem reward points, purchase gift certificates and request room upgrades.

And here’s the best feature. A Customer Portal can integrate seamlessly with your Customer Relationship Management application. What’s the benefit? All information such as guest preferences, service requests, activity reservations or survey results is then automatically reflected on your customer’s profile, triggering any pre-defined task assignments and workflow rules.

What’s your go-forward website strategy? A simple booking engine doesn’t cut it any longer. Your customers are demanding more, and a Customer Portal can deliver.

Libra OnDemand Summer'10 Release Adds Major Enhancements

2010-07-05T21:52:55Z

We are pleased to announce the release of the Summer’10 version of Libra OnDemand, which is a major release that incorporates several significant enhancements on both the back-end and the application levels.

Back-End Enhancements

Optimized Data Model

The data model for the application has been optimized to provide better support for the functional enhancements that have taken place since the product launch in March 2009. We have removed deprecated data components, standardized the structure of guest preferences, improved the model for storing statistical data, introduced new objects for storing availability and rate information, introduced dynamic components on reservations and built support for group blocks and multi-rate records. This new optimized data model provides a solid foundation for future growth of the product.

- Removed deprecated objects and fields
- Removed non-essential Tabs and Report Types
- Removed LOD Settings object, replaced with Salesforce Custom Settings functionality
- Combined Reservation preferences, notes and specials into a single object
- Combined Contact preferences, notes and specials into a single object
- Enhanced standard Activities object to support Flags on Reservations
- Synchronization of Flags and Preferences between Reservations and Guest Profiles (Contacts)
- Converted multiple field types on Reservations from Text to Lookup and Picklist
- Added Group Blocks, Room Types, Rate Codes, Room Rates and Negotiated Rates objects to support new functionality
- Replaced Revstat Rooms object with Stat Roomtypes to support storing of availability data
- Replaced Revstat Accounts object with Stat Reservations to support storing of both daily reservations statistics and planned daily rate and roomtype changes
- New Queue object for receiving and updating statistical and availability information
- New MatchQueue object for receiving new and updated reservation profiles data
- Matching logic is now stored in unmanaged state to allow customer-specific customizations

Optimized Matching Engine

The matching engine is a core component of the application that provides the ability to match incoming reservations with existing guest profiles and other reservations that already exist in the system. A number of significant enhancements have been introduced in the new release, with the focus on flexibility and ease of customization of matching rules based on specific requirements of each implementation.

- Matching is now done between incoming and existing guest profiles, incoming reservations and existing profiles, and incoming and existing reservations
- Ability to create custom matching formulas for each of the three matching groups
- Ability to configure custom matching rules by Site
- Ability to store reservations without profiles if match not found (default behavior, will greatly minimize data storage requirement for guest who stay only one time)
- Option to create profiles only after on checkout
- Option to always use PMS profile without matching

Informatica API Integration

Libra OnDemand has partnered with Informatica to use Informatica Platform and Informatica Cloud services as the foundation for third party system integrations. Current release ships with a web services connector between Informatica Cloud and Libra OnDemand, utilizing standard Libra OnDemand web services APIs (Reservations WSS and Stat WS).

Application Enhancements

Guest Room Availability Management

To support the use of Libra OnDemand as a Group Sales Management application, we have enhanced the product with the ability to manage guest rooms inventory and are allowing for both interfaced (with the PMS) and non-interfaced usage scenarios. In an interfaced environment, rooms inventory will be uploaded from the PMS, and availability will be calculated based on received group blocks and reservations. If there is no PMS interface, then a user is able to manually specify rooms inventory and transient allocations.

- Guest room Inventory and Availability by property by room type
- Transient Allocations (to support non-interfaced customers)
- Automatic computation of availability based on Reservations and Group Block data
- A new visualforce screen to display availability by Property, by Date and by Room Type
- Two-way Room Type and Rate Code synchronization with PMS

Reservations Enhancements

Reservations object has been enhanced to allow modification and creation of new reservations natively in Libra OnDemand, with back-end support for dynamic API calls to PMS and CRS applications.

- Last Name is now used as the primary record name field
- Support for daily room and rate changes during stay
- Lookups on room types and room rates
- Picklist fields for configurable parameters

Group Blocks and Group Rates Management Enhancements

To provide full end-to-end group sales functionality, we have added the ability to define Group Blocks and Group Rates, including the ability to manage Agreed, Blocked and Picked Up values. The new Rates Management functionality allows to set up Rate plans with default and group-specific values, including the support for shoulder rates and comp room allocations.

- Group Name is now used as the primary record name field
- Group Blocks by date and by room type
- Agreed, Blocked and Picked Up values by room type, by date
- Rate Codes and Room Rates with occupancy-based property-specific default rate amounts
- Group Rates with group-specific rate amounts
- Complimentary rooms by group
- Shoulder rates (rates for guest stays before and after the group block)
- A new visualforce page to manage group blocks
- A new visualforce page to manage group rates
- Optional integration with standard SFDC CRM Opportunities object
- Lookup relationship to Events object to allow multiple groups under one Event

Guest Services Enhancements

The new release consolidates all previously released features on guest services management that have until now been customer-specific and existed outside of the main package. We have streamlined the process of managing guest preferences, notes, amenities and flags and implemented synchronization of these items between guest profiles and reservations.

- Guest Preferences and Contact Preferences objects now combine all types of guest-related information, such as notes, preferences, specials and amenities
- Automatic lookup of Specials if matching categories found
- Synchronization of Preferences between guest profiles and guest reservations
- Guest Flags as a Task type
- Recurring Flags (between stays and between days of stay)
- Two-way Specials synchronization with PMS (configurable)

Analytics Enhancements

The changes made to the data model of the application allow us to introduce enhanced reporting capabilities, that cover not only past performance, but also allow forecasting on occupancy, revenues and group performance (based on reservations on the books data). The optimized data structure makes reporting more straight-forward and easier to use. Removal of managed report type components allows a user to create a greater number of custom report types.

- Ability to forecast occupancy and revenues
- Ability to create custom report types
- Ability to drill down into reservation level from statistical reports
- New Stay Analytics dashboard
- New Top Producers dashboard

Release Availability and Upgrades

The Summer’10 release is available now for all new customers, through the Trial subscription at www.libraondemand.com.

Existing customers on previous release levels will be upgraded by Libra OnDemand Customer Support. There is no cost for performing this upgrade and there will be minimal downtime that will be coordinated with each customer. To schedule your upgrade, please log a case through your Libra OnDemand Support Portal or contact your account executive.

CRM Technology for Travel: HITEC 2010 in the Cloud

2010-07-01T13:00:15Z

The “cloud” was certainly a popular topic at this year’s Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition & Conference (HITEC) in Orlando, Florida. It seems that many vendors are touting that their solutions are now “in the cloud” and therefore are offering all the benefits that come with this technology. But, are they really? There’s a lot of what I call “cloud washing” in our industry (and others), whereby companies re-label their products as cloud computing, produced by marketing innovation instead of real innovation. The result is a lot of overblown hype surrounding “cloud computing.”

What, exactly, is this cloud? Put simply, the cloud is a collection of computers and servers that are publicly accessible via the Internet. This hardware is typically owned and operated by a third party in one or more data center locations. The machines can run any combination of operating systems; it’s the processing power of the machines that matter, not what their desktops look like.

Cloud Computing: What It Is — And What It Isn’t

To some, cloud computing might sound a little like network computing — but it isn’t. With network computing, applications and data are hosted on a single company’s server(s) and accessed over the company’s network. Cloud computing is a lot bigger than that. It encompasses multiple companies, multiple servers, and multiple networks. Plus, unlike network computing, cloud services and storage are accessible from anywhere in the world over an Internet connection; with network computing, access is over the company’s network only.

The key difference between network computing and cloud computing is the cloud itself. The applications and data served by the cloud are available to a broad group of authorized users using different operating system platforms via the Internet. It isn’t apparent (and, in most cases doesn’t matter) whether cloud services are based on HTTP, HTML, XML, JavaScript, or other specific technologies; to the user, the technology and infrastructure behind the cloud is invisible.

In short, cloud computing enables a shift from the computer to the user, from applications to tasks, and from isolated data to information that can be accessed from anywhere and shared with anyone. The user no longer has to take on the task of data management; he doesn’t even have to remember where the data is. All that matters is that the information is securely in the cloud, and thus immediately available to that user and to other authorized users.

Inside the Cloud: How Cloud Computing Works

In cloud computing, a network of computers functions as a single computer. This network exists in the cloud of IP addresses that we know as the Internet, offers massive computing power and storage capability, and enables wide-scale group collaboration.

Individual users connect to the cloud from their own personal computers or portable devices (such as Apple’s iPhone or iPad). To these individual users, the cloud is seen as a single application, device, or document. The hardware in the cloud (and the operating system that manages the hardware connections) is invisible.

This cloud architecture is deceptively simple, although it does require some intelligent management to connect all those computers together and assign task processing to multitudes of users. Each cloud uses various monitoring and metering functions to track usage so that resources are apportioned and attributed to the proper user(s).

This automation of management tasks is key to the notion of cloud computing. The system isn’t a cloud if it requires human management to allocate processes to resources. For a system to attain true cloud status, automated processes must replace manual management.

Understanding Cloud Services

Any Web-based application or service offered via cloud computing is called a cloud service. Cloud services can include anything from calendar and contact applications to word processing and presentations to business applications, including but not limited to PMS, CRM, CRS and POS. An individual user runs the application over the Internet, typically within a Web browser. The browser accesses the cloud service and an instance of the application is opened within the browser window. Once launched, the Web-based application operates and behaves like a standard desktop application. The only difference is that the application and the working data remain on the host’s cloud servers. On the downside, cloud services can only be accessed when a user has a live Internet connection; they’re not suited for instances where no Internet connection is available.

Why Cloud Computing Matters

Why is cloud computing important?

For developers, cloud computing provides increased amounts of storage and processing power to run the applications they develop. Cloud computing also enables new ways to access information, process and analyze data, and connect people and resources from any location anywhere in the world. In essence, it takes the lid off the box; with cloud computing, developers are no longer boxed in by physical constraints.

For your hotel’s IT department, cloud computing offers more flexibility in computing power, often at lower costs. With cloud computing, IT departments don’t have to engineer for peak-load capacity, because the peak load can be spread out among the external assets in the cloud. And, because additional cloud resources are always at the ready, companies no longer have to purchase assets (servers, workstations, and the like) for infrequent intensive computing tasks or new hotel openings. If you need more processing power, it’s always there in the cloud — and accessible on a cost-efficient basis.

For a hospitality organization’s end users, cloud computing offers all these benefits and more. An individual using a Web-based application isn’t physically bound to a single computer, location, or network. Their applications and data can be accessed wherever and whenever. They don’t have to copy every document and file when moving from office to home to remote location. Gone also is the fear of losing data if a computer crashes. Documents hosted in the cloud always exist, no matter what happens to the user’s machine.

And then there’s the benefit of group collaboration, for both individuals and organizations. General Managers and other key personnel can collaborate on the same documents, applications, and projects, in real time. It’s a whole new world of collaborative computing, all enabled by the notion of cloud computing.

For everyone concerned, cloud computing does all this at lower costs, because the cloud enables more efficient sharing of resources than does traditional network computing. When you tap into the power of the cloud, you get supercomputing power at personal computer prices — something that offers particular appeal to hotel companies in today’s economy.

Bottom line? When considering a solution for your organization, I offer the following criteria to be used when determining if a vendor’s application is truly in the cloud:

If they are trying to sell you hardware… it’s not a cloud.
If there is no API… it’s not a cloud.
If you need to re-architect your systems for it… it’s not a cloud.
If you know where the machines are… it’s not a cloud.
If you need to specify the number of machines you want upfront… it’s not a cloud.
If it only runs one operating system… it’s not a cloud.
If you can’t connect to it from your own computer or personal device… it’s not a cloud.
If you need to install software to use it… it’s not a cloud.
If you own all the hardware… it’s not a cloud.

CRM Technology for Travel: Recognize and Reward

2010-05-25T13:30:43Z

Does your hotel participate in a customer loyalty program? I’m impressed at what lengths some hotel companies go to in order to earn and maintain guest loyalty. Generally, there are two aspects to these types of programs – recognition and rewards.

I’m the type of guy who prefers “recognition with perks”. For example, when I’m flying, I’m perfectly happy getting “bumped up” to first class or having priority check-in to avoid the long lines at the airport. I really don’t need the miles I earn from free travel. Trust me, the last thing I want to do when I take some time off is to get on an another airplane, rent another car, and check in to yet another hotel. I already do this about 40 weeks per year. I do, however, like feeling privileged when I travel. It makes my trips easier. If you know me, you know that the basics I look for in a hotel is a clean room, comfortable bed, good Internet, fabulous shower head, and… bottled water in my room. I am more likely to use my miles to buy upgrades or “stuff” (like my new office printer), instead of getting free or discounted travel. Because, after all, loyalty benefits for me are best redeemed through recognition.

My mother-in-law, on the other hand, does everything she can to maximize and build her earning of points. When flying out to visit her “favorite grandson,” she books her flights, not necessarily based on cost or schedule, but in a way so she can accrue more miles. And, since her credit card earns miles, she eats in restaurants, shops in stores, and recently even charged her bill for new kitchen cabinets just to get more points. She gives her loyalty whenever possible to companies which give her miles in return, so she can then use those miles primarily for free travel. Because, after all, loyalty benefits to her are best redeemed through rewards. Loyalty Management is a key component and discipline of customer relationship management (CRM). Your CRM technology should have the ability to meet the needs of both of these types of customers. It should also have the ability to produce email communications, updating members of their status and balances, as well as personalized features allowing them to redeem their points directly on your company’s website.

For some time now, only the major hotel companies have had this type of technology. It’s the mid-majors, small groups and independents that have not have affordable access to these systems. But, here’s the good news. The days of manually entering information into another system or sending a database to third parties for processing are coming to an end. Fortunately, today’s cloud computing solutions and Web 2.0 technologies allow organizations of any size to have this type of technology.

Summary

CRM is the only effective way to recognize and reward your customers. It’s just as important that you know your customer’s preference for loyalty (recognition or rewards?) as you know their preferences during a stay (feather pillows or extra towels?). Central reservation and property management systems do a great job at recording a customer’s stay, but most are limited when it comes to loyalty redemption. This information needs to be shared with the customer relationship management system so that you can effectively recognize and reward your customers according to their preferences, and ultimately keep their loyalty.

CRM Technology for Travel: Know Your Customer

2010-04-14T02:52:00Z

How well do you know your customer? In a hotel’s attempt to offer a high level of guest service, I’m often asked when checking in, “Have you stayed with us before?” When I reply “Yes,” it is often followed by “Welcome back” or “It is good to see you again,” together with “As you know then the restaurant opens at 6:00 AM” or some other item they feel is important to tell me. Shouldn’t they already know I’ve stayed with them before?

This tells me that the hotel is not practicing effective customer relationship management. Wouldn’t a better interaction be once I tell them who I am, “Welcome back, Mr. Hopkins. Your requests and preferences have been noted. Please let me know if there is anything additional you require during your stay. And, we’ve recently introduced a new Executive Chef in our restaurant so be sure to check out the new menu.”

You probably spend thousands of marketing and email dollars every year trying to earn your customer’s loyalty. To have that relationship ruined by one simple question is obviously a bad business practice. Ideally, the only time your guests should be asked, “Have you stayed with us before?” is if there is no indication of any previous history. An answer of “Yes” should trigger the guest services agent to dig a little deeper in matching the reservation with the CRM profile, while a confirming “No” answer should invoke the standard welcome your guest services agent normally goes through in orienting new guests to the hotel.

Effective CRM allows your organization to develop a one-to-one relationship with each and every customer. It allows you to “learn” your guest’s preferences, requests, comments, spending habits, booking patterns, etc. from their stays or activities at all of your hotels, restaurants, golf courses, spa and other venues. From a CRM technology perspective, the key is to have connectivity to all systems that contain the customer’s profile (CRS, PMS, Spa, Golf, Dining Room Reservation, Service Optimization, Concierge, etc.) allowing you to have a 360-degree profile of that customer. This will provide you with information you need to make specific, targeted email offers and other suggestions to that customer, and anticipate their requests and requirements to insure a positive stay experience.

Knowing your customer may be even more important in the reservations office. When taking a reservation on the telephone or via your organization’s website, it’s vital that you know WHO is inquiring before knowing WHEN they want to stay. Wouldn’t you agree that establishing and maintaining repeat business is one of the most important, if not the most, aspects of a successful hospitality organization? You need to understand the value of your individual customer. How much business have they given you in the past? How much can you expect to have them in the future? Shouldn’t some of your most loyal and valuable guests always have a room, or table, or tee-time, or appointment available to them? One easy way to lose a customer is to open up the opportunity to let them try out your competition.

This happened to me. My business takes me to Miami for meetings at least 9 times per year. I, typically, stay at the same hotel for 2 to 3 nights each time. In addition, others in my company stay at the same hotel. I would estimate, that as a result, we give the property 100 room nights per year. Not a huge amount of business, but significant. Several months ago, I booked a reservation at the hotel. The website told me that the first 2 nights were available, but the property was sold out on the third night. I went ahead and booked my reservation. When I arrived, I inquired about the third night. The guest services agent recognized me and told me that he would leave a note for the General Manager, and they would let me know. I hadn’t heard anything, so on the third morning I inquired about my status. I was told that I would have to checkout, and that if anything opened up during the day they would call me. Later that afternoon, they did call me. But, out of necessity, I had already arranged a room at another hotel and they lost my business. I was treated as just another customer, without regard to if this was my first visit or my one-hundredth visit. To my surprise, I was more satisfied with my accommodations and rate at the competitor’s hotel and have therefore stayed at that hotel ever since, together with others from my organization. What’s amazing is that I’ve not received any communication from the original hotel asking me “Why don’t you stay with us anymore?”

Summary

CRM is the only effective way to know your customer. Once your guest checks out, it is easy to lose touch with them until they make another reservation. Central reservation and property management systems do a great job at recording upcoming and past stays, but most are limited. This information needs to be shared with the customer relationship management system so that you can predict, prepare, communicate, and serve your guest. It is with CRM that you truly “Know Your Customer.”

CRM Technology For Travel: The Time is Now For Cloud Computing

2010-03-02T16:37:44Z

At the Dreamforce conference last December, Salesforce.com released the White Paper “5 Reasons CIOs are Adopting Cloud Computing in 2010.” It’s a great read, so I decided to sparse the article together with how I feel it applies to hospitality CRM and related technologies.

For years, companies such as eBay and Google have used cloud computing to bring easy-to-use services to consumers. Salesforce.com has been a pioneer in bringing cloud-based applications to users as well.

Cloud computing is transforming the way IT departments deploy custom applications during lean times. By offering a fundamentally faster, less risky, and more cost-effective alternative to on-premises applications, cloud computing will forever change the economics of hospitality information technology. Even though we are experiencing one of the most difficult economic situations in 50 years, CIOs must continue to deliver additional business value in the face of consistent budget cuts. The old models increase complexity and generate additional cost. IT departments of all sizes are now looking to the cloud to break the cycle. I find this to be especially true with hospitality IT departments worldwide, as they are reevaluating their strategies and looking for innovative ways to create competitive advantages. CIOs are redefining their value to the enterprise by looking for new, cost-effective alternatives for application enhancement and development, including cloud computing.

IT projects have always been judged by three financial criteria: initial capital expense, ongoing operating costs, and time to value. In 2010, while planning for gradual recovery, IT projects will continue to be evaluated rigorously by this criteria.

Many hospitality organizations have already made, or are in the process of shifting to cloud-based solutions. However, for those that are still on the fence, here are five reasons why companies are betting that cloud computing is the right technology strategy for 2010 and beyond:

Delivers faster time to value
Requires no up-front capital expense
Minimizes operational costs
Requires fewer technical resources
Simplifies integration

1. Delivers faster time to value

Many organizations are delaying projects that won’t deliver a return on investment within weeks. With cloud computing, companies can speed up time to value. Cloud computing streamlines all stages of the application development cycle – requirements gathering, design, coding, testing, application delivery, and training – with a fully integrated development environment. This environment provides complete, prebuilt applications and project management services. Instead of spending weeks on the project and administrative setup for each new application (including authentication, globalization, workflow, mobile device support, and much more), developers can get to work immediately on value-added activities such as defining the data model or business logic and creating the user experience. For example, once Libra OnDemand applications are built, they are automatically supported by the Force.com platform with world-class security, sub-second performance, full disaster recovery, and instant access to multiple production-quality environments for development, training, and testing.

One of the most overlooked advantages of cloud-based applications is how much faster and less expensive it is to scale to multiple applications. Because cloud development is based on subscription pricing, there are no additional costs to deploy additional applications to existing users. And because all applications are built on the same platform, pre-existing application services such as authentication, data objects, UI layouts, and logic can be reused across multiple applications. This approach results in economies of scale in which each additional application deployed decreases the overall costs of the applications. This model is the inverse of on-premises development, in which each additional application increases costs because it requires additional infrastructure and resources over its lifetime. To take advantage of the cloud-based approach, Libra OnDemand now builds and deploys its entire application portfolio on the Force.com platform.

2. Requires no up-front capital expense

Cloud computing platforms are based on subscription pricing. This approach is a major departure from the traditional IT procurement process. With subscription-based pricing, no capital expenses are required to kick off projects. Companies can start small, with virtually no up-front costs, and instantly scale to meet broader business needs. The ability to pay-as-you-go is expensed as a service or operating expense rather than a capital expense. This difference makes it a compelling option for CFOs who are intensely focused on financial predictability and project accountability.

The pay-as-you-go model minimizes both project and financial risk because organizations can scale the project based on business results and also ensure that vendors are held accountable over the project’s lifetime. There are no large up-front investments that lock a project into a specific technology. That means CFOs can account for the business value generated by the service during the same financial period as costs are incurred. In other words, cloud computing provides a better way for IT departments and CFOs to match investments in a project with business value or return.

Because there is little risk and no up-front costs, cloud computing helps hospitality companies attain better technology despite reduced capital budgets. And because charges from technology vendors usually go in the column of business expenses rather than capital expenses, hotels can invest in cloud-based projects even when IT budgets are slashed.

3. Minimizes operational costs

With cloud computing, there is no software or hardware to purchase initially. Perhaps even more important, cloud computing reduces overall application maintenance and support substantially over time. With cloud computing, multiple environments are immediately available to developers, testers, trainers, and end users. And all environments are vertically integrated with ready-to-use services for project managers and administrators. These services include user administration, security, globalization, and centralized governance, all of which help to reduce project time and cost.

Once the application is built and deployed, the vendor manages the burden of operational maintenance. Performance tuning, patches, and upgrades are delivered as part of the service, with minimal demands on the property’s IT team. As a result, your IT team can focus on delivering business value instead of keeping busy with standard maintenance and administration tasks.

Such operational efficiencies are the result of a true multitenant architecture. Multitenancy is a key Salesforce.com innovation that’s at the heart of the Force.com platform. Multitenancy makes possible a pace of innovation and collaboration that’s simply not achievable with on-premises platforms. For example, instead of providing an upgrade every other year, at considerable expense to the customer, Salesforce.com delivers three or four major upgrades every year that cost customers nothing. Every time a major innovation is released, every customer instantly benefits.

Multitenant applications are designed so that users share the application’s physical instance and version. Individual “deployments” of those applications occupy virtual partitions rather than separate physical hardware and software stacks. Multitenant business applications built on the Force.com platform, which run on the same proven platform as the packaged applications from Salesforce.com and its ISV partners (such as Libra OnDemand), benefit from the highest levels of security and performance.

The multitenant architecture makes possible the quick deployment, low risk, and rapid innovation for which Salesforce.com is known. The Force.com platform passes on this architecture’s operational efficiencies to customers, including automatic upgrades and lower costs.

4. Requires fewer technical resources

Because the concepts and technologies used to develop Force.com applications are similar to those used for on-premises development, developers trained in Java, .NET, or PLSQL can ramp up in just a few days. And because performance tuning and maintenance are handled by the vendor, resources that would be required to support the applications are freed up for other projects, improving the overall productivity of the IT department.

Force.com provides a more agile development environment, based on configurable metadata, in which changes can be made, tested, and deployed in a fraction of the time of on-premises platforms. One of the advantages of this environment is that, once applications are built, they can be rapidly changed to adapt to shifting market demands.

5. Simplifies integration

Gartner estimates that up to 35 percent of the implementation costs associated with on-premises application development is for integration. In comparison, cloud computing makes integration faster, easier, and less risky than ever before. In fact, more than half of all transactions supported by the Force.com platform today are Web service integration calls to the Salesforce.com API.

By making it easier to integrate and extend legacy environments, and with built-in toolsets for connecting to other cloud services including Amazon, Google, and Facebook, Force.com delivers a new level of integration across the enterprise. To ensure customers can integrate to any endpoint, Force.com provides comprehensive technologies that offer maximum flexibility while dramatically reducing the integration effort. Force.com has proven integrations with every major enterprise application and middleware solution in the market, including SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, Informatica, and many more. Because the Force.com API is based on a multitenant architecture, integrations no longer “break” during upgrades, require intricate technology dependencies, or lead to vendor lock-in.

With Force.com, the multitenant model makes an ecosystem of partner applications available on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange. The AppExchange is a marketplace similar to the App Store for the iPhone. Here, customers can find, test drive, and install solutions from major applications business categories, including ERP, SCM, HR, IT, Finance, and many others with just a few clicks. The applications are automatically installed and integrated in customer environments and instantly deployed to users, either as part of a custom application (such as Libra OnDemand) or on their own. The AppExchange connects customers with thousands of commercial application developers who are constantly building new and innovative solutions for the Force.com platform. To date, more than 800 applications and components are available on the AppExchange. Recently, Libra OnDemand was named one of the “Force.com Top 40” applications on the AppExchange.

Summary

In today’s economic climate, with limited budgets and a highly dynamic market, it is critical to be able to refocus an organization and its systems quickly, with minimal resources. With cloud computing, hotels can extend the life of their existing systems with new innovations, improve time to market of new systems, and create competitive advantages faster than ever. If you are considering cloud-based technologies, the time is now to make your move.

HTML Email Template Editor Now Available

2009-11-13T22:45:39Z

Since the release of the Email Marketing module in Libra OnDemand, our customers and partners have been asking about a visual tool that would provide email template editing functionality natively within Libra OnDemand CRM.

We are now happy to announce the release of a brand new HTML Template Editor, built around the open source CKEditor platform. We are very excited about this new feature. It is not only very functional, flexible and fast, but also innovative, smart and user friendly.

To start using the new HTML editor, just click the Templates button when creating a new campaign or select the template URL in an existing campaign.

All templates are saved as Salesforce Custom HTML templates and are accessible from the native LOD/Salesforce template folders as well as directly from the Email Campaign forms. Our Vertical Response integration automatically converts these templates into the VR format for use in your email marketing campaigns.

Last but not least, you can merge any Contact or Reservation related field directly into the template. Simply press the Insert Field button to select the Contact or Reservation field that you want to use in your form.

If you are a Libra OnDemand customer and would like help getting started to use this new feature, please call your support office or log a case through our Support Portal.

Hooray to the Team!

2009-11-05T22:00:21Z

Libra OnDemand hospitality CRM selected as finalist in the Force.com 40 Innovation Showcase! Please follow this link for additional details. Congratulations to the Libra OnDemand Dev Team! Our app will soon be featured in the Force.com 40 Innovation Showcase Gallery as a Round 3 finalist - hooray!

CRM Meets Email Marketing

2009-10-08T06:50:42Z

Libra OnDemand does a great job at tracking all of your customer profiles, their preferences, survey results (feature released last month) and stay details. This is all great, but now that we have a wealth of information about each guest and their stays, what do we do with it?

Email campaigns have always been a popular way to communicate with your customer base and market your product. But so often it’s been shots in the dark, sending out standardized mass email communications to hundreds of thousands of addresses. This no longer has to be the case. By combining rich CRM profile data with email marketing tools, you can segment your entire database by multiple criteria such as stay patterns, guest preferences, survey results, demographics data, spend history and others. You can then create highly targeted email campaigns that will have a high chance of striking home with their intended recipients.

You can also engage in direct, one-on-one communications with your customers, responding to their particular reservation details, stay requirements and profile preferences. If you know that your guest is arriving tomorrow, why not send him or her an upgrade invitation or an email describing local points of interest and attractions? If the guest has just departed, wouldn’t you want to get their feedback on how the stay went? And if your property is hosting a wine festival, why not invite all your past guests who you know are wine enthusiasts (captured through the preference tracking feature in Libra OnDemand) to come and stay at your property during that event?

Our team has been working hard on integrating CRM with email marketing for the past weeks, and we are happy to announce the release of email marketing functionality as part of the Libra OnDemand CRM application. We have teamed up with Vertical Response to create a tight integration between VR email marketing platform (using very robust VR APIs) and the Libra OnDemand application and its underlying force.com platform.

One of the key components of this new feature is the ability to create and manage email marketing lists directly in Libra OnDemand, using Reservation and Contact profiles and any other related objects. For example, you can create a list of all your customers that stayed in your hotel in the past year and booked a spa package. Email lists are compiled using all of the available profile data as criteria. You no longer have to deal with manual queries, data exports or file uploads.

Another great feature is the ability to create Dynamic lists that compile based on reservations and guest profile data at the time when the mailing is sent out. Dynamic lists, along with the scheduling capabilities of email campaigns, are the basis for pre-arrival and post-departure email messages.

Since we now have the ability to use every aspect of the guest stay in email marketing communications, dynamic email capabilities have several interesting use cases. For example, consider sending out an automatic email to every guest who filled out a post-stay survey with a satisfaction score of say 90% and higher. This campaign can contain an invitation for the guest to review their stay on TripAdvisor and, since you already know that the guest was satisfied, great ratings are guaranteed!

CRM Technology for Travel: Where is the Center of Your CRM?

2009-09-30T18:44:23Z

www.yourhotel.com. It’s your website. Everyone has one. But what is its purpose? Does your organization use it primarily as a marketing tool or as a revenue channel? Many organizations have spent thousands (including some spending tens of thousands) on developing an effective website to communicate to their prospective and current customers. The website, while incorporating the hotel’s branding and identity, typically lists the amenities, room information, dining room menus, location, directions, etc. Most websites, and surprisingly not all, even have the capability to book a future room reservation, meeting or even a dining reservation.

I fully subscribe to the business strategy that hotels should “drive” their customers to their website. Once deployed, it provides a minimal manpower consuming way to provide extensive information about the property, and is typically the least expensive distribution channel for reservations. However, that is typically where the relationship with the customer ends. Other than the Internet booking engine component, self-service options for hotels guests and customers are a rarity. Why haven’t more hospitality organizations embraced the website as the center of their CRM philosophy?

Your customers already expect this type of online experience. The airlines have done it for years. Social Media sites have it. The large, international chains gather information about their guests online, and allow them to update phone numbers, email addresses, and preferences. Why don’t the smaller chains, hotel groups and independents have this type of functionality?

Consumers are hesitant today to turn their personal information over to reservation agents or front desk staff in fear of identity theft or worse, and therefore hotels are not easily able to obtain true guest profile and preference data. Instead, hotel marketing managers send surveys to try to capture that information, but most of the queries are based solely on post-stay statistics.

Today’s technologies allow websites, regardless of the hotel company’s size, to feature CRM capabilities by seamlessly integrating “www.yourhotel.com” with your customer relationship management application. Customers can take the initiative to manage their personal information, update preferences and track rewards in a safe, secure environment that they control.

Your website should also be the source for stay-specific applications. Instead of using your website as your high-speed Internet access (HSIA) landing page, hotels should provide a property-specific portal that allows in-house guests to learn more about the hotel and its amenities, along with local attractions, weather and maps or even order room service.

After the stay, your website should also be the primary source for your customers to review past stay information and guest folios, sign up for email offers, post travel reviews and update their stay preferences for future visits. In addition, loyal customers should have the ability to view and manage their membership data online, redeem reward points, purchase gift certificates and request room upgrades.

It’s time to upgrade your website. Hoteliers looking for a better way to manage their guest history data for improved marketing need to give control over to their guests and make their website the center of their CRM.