Take the Pain Out of Picking Your Next POS/PMS

There may be as many point-of-sale (POS) and property management systems (PMS) suppliers as there are hotels on the planet. What’s the trick to finding the best supplier, so you can get the best system?

According to the experts, there is no best system (and no trick to finding one), although with some hard work—and guidance from our experts—we hope you will find the supplier and system that’s right for your company’s needs.

Southern Hospitality Magazine™ interviewed hospitality-side leaders and surveyed supplier-side experts to guide you through the search process for the best POS or PMS for your organization.

We start with the hotel side, and in the second half of the article, we provide a survey of product features for three major players: Agilysys (with its 2007 takeover of InfoGenesis), MICROS and PAR Springer-Miller.

Hotel Side

Omni Hotels
“It is true that there are numerous suppliers in the marketplace, but not all of them are well suited to every company’s needs,” advises the Omni Hotels’ Tom Walker, vice president of revenue management.

Assess your needs:
Walker recently managed the upgrade of the Omni Hotels’ existing POS and PMS systems. He says there is no one supplier that can meet everyone’s needs. Instead, he suggests to “carefully define your needs and then investigate suppliers using those requirements as decision criteria.”

Talk to clients:
Walker recommends contacting current clients to find out about their experiences with the supplier. “It’s important to talk to clients of the suppliers to verify what they say they do. The best way to do that is you pick who you want to talk to from their client list, instead of who they want you to talk to.”

Technology consultants:
Additionally, there are consultants who specialize in investigating these systems. “Anyone needing additional, objective advice can secure the services of technology consultants whose business is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of different available offerings,” Walker explains.

How do you find such a consultant? Use your network, says Walker. “For that role, we were able to find someone we knew. That’s true throughout the industry.”

The Omni Hotels’ system needed to accommodate diverse customers’ needs at diverse locations, which is the case in most major cities in the United States and throughout Mexico and Canada.

Walker, with the help of a technology consultant, defined the Omni Hotels’ needs as follows: “We needed a system that is flexible to accommodate diverse markets, expandable to permit growth and accessible to the range of people needing real-time access to information the system contains. As important, the system would have to support customer service requirements consistent with upscale and luxury hotels, and offer control mechanisms that would enable hotel staff to ensure that rooms would be consistently available to our best customers in accord with their travel patterns.”

The Omni Hotels belongs to the Global Hotel Alliance, which allows its guests to book with international hotels on par with its luxury service throughout the world. The entire alliance uses MICROS technology, which also factored into Walker’s decision.

Walker strongly urges you to do your homework: “Vendors will inevitably paint the most appealing picture possible of their capabilities. Due diligence to validate claims, which means interviewing a vendor’s customers (ideally a selection of your choosing from the entire portfolio of customers), scouring trade information and verifying financial stability, at the very least, are a buyer’s responsibility. Diligent pre-work to determine realistic expectations, and contractual protections, will save buyers immeasurable heartburn and money.”

Supplier-side corporate realignment:
What does Walker suggest to do to safeguard against a merger/acquisition? “Contract language ensuring performance regardless of any such change ought to supplement management’s judgment of a supplier’s reliability.”

Omni Hotels recently chose to use MICROS-Fidelios’ OPERA Hotel and Enterprise System. That system suited the needs of the Omni Hotels.

West Paces Hotel Group
For Atlanta-based West Paces Hotel Group, integration of systems and maintaining great working relationships with their suppliers were both key.

Scott Rohm, senior vice president, director of operations for West Paces Hotel Group, along with his operations team, identified their needs. “We’ve worked throughout the years with these products, and this was an opportunity to get caught up with vendors and their options and which might fit in best with our day-to-day operations.”

Rohm emphasizes the importance of maintaining the supplier relationship, even after a system is installed. “We’re always on the phone with them with new installations, rollouts, staff.”

Suppliers:
“MICROS-Fidelio is the most widely used,” Rohm says. “Otherwise, smaller companies are good to use as long as they offer what you need and can integrate your information. There are companies that offer a suite of products—MICROS-Fidelios offers a one-stop product that has integration between the two. There are other companies that have just PMS, and you’d have to go to another vendor to make it work with food and beverage systems.

“We currently manage properties with both PAR Springer-Miller Systems and Fidelio Opera. Our opening hotels are installing Springer-Miller Systems based on how we want to provide customized guest experiences,” Rohm says.

West Paces Hotel Group also employs InfoGenesis (bought out by Agilysys in June 2007) for its food and beverage POS.

Supplier Side

Product Review
Self serve, integration and reliability are all abuzz among the surveyed suppliers: PAR Springer-Miller, MICROS-Fidelio and Agilysys.