No matter the latest technology trends, what’s unwaveringly crucial to hotel success is technology that streamlines operations, improves productivity and profitability, and elevates the guest stay – and this never goes out of style.
Leveraging sophisticated end-to-end e-procurement technology is a game-changing way to gain an operational advantage while realizing significant savings that can be reinvested into a hotel, benefitting guests and staff alike. Since there are abundant e-procurement platforms on the market, it’s important to know where to spend your money – so, what should hoteliers consider when examining these types of solutions?
Purchasing Smarter Without Compromising Quality
Not all e-procurement solutions are created equal. An e-procurement solution that effectively reduces transaction time and money spent on purchasing allows hotels to make smarter purchasing decisions without sacrificing product quality. This type of solution dramatically improves the purchasing process from orders, requisitions and fast-approved workflows to delivery of purchase orders, receiving interfaces, and spend analytics. As an added bonus, rebates generated through the system provide a new, important revenue stream.
BirchStreet Systems offers a cloud-based e-procurement solution that automates the entire purchasing cycle, improves spend visibility, and delivers meaningful savings to a hotel’s bottom line. According to BirchStreet, automated purchasing improves productivity gains 10-30% and drives purchasing compliance to more than 80%. The positive impact of an automated platform is swift – typically, it takes 3-9 months for hotels to start realizing the minimum ROI as a result of automation.
For further benefit, being cloud-based means staff can access systems from anywhere on-property or from home, providing team members with greater flexibility in doing their jobs and an important labor solution for hotels.
The Value of Recipe Management
Menu management is sometimes overlooked in the conversation about e-procurement, but it is an essential part of a successful solution for hotels. With an e-procurement solution that emphasizes recipe management, hotels can purchase the ideal amount of goods at the best price, which helps reduce food waste and optimize inventory, while also developing stronger supplier relationships.
The recipe management solution from BirchStreet Systems is packed with capabilities including recipe creation, recipe scaling and costing, POS integration for menu engineering and cost-control integration with suppliers, complying with FDA nutrition requirements in order to provide healthy snacks and help facilitate guest wellness, and the entire process from recipe to requisition to inventory. For better cost control, the system can notify a hotel when a menu item’s cost exceeds a pre-determined threshold. Driving menu consistency, chefs can easily replicate dishes thanks to directions, images and instructional videos published for shared recipes.
Accurate food cost visibility is invaluable as is delivering consistent, high-quality dining experiences across properties. Building recipe consistency across properties results in controlled costs, a savings of 8-12% annually, according to BirchStreet. There is also greater efficiency with a reduction in cycle time of approximately 50-70% and a 20% drop in administrative costs.
Inventory Management That Saves Money & Bolsters Efficiency
Real-time inventory tracking and on-demand access to inventory knowledge. Accurate food and beverage replenishment. Decreased high-inventory carry cost, spoilage and shrinkage. With powerful e-inventory management software, this trio of goals generates significant food cost savings, productivity gains, and increased profitability.
Powered by automation, electronic invoicing fully automates the three-way process where purchase order, receiving document and invoice are matched, effectively streamlining invoice management across hotel departments and hotel management chains. Prioritizing strengthened data privacy and security, BirchStreet Systems acts as the single source of e-invoice integrity and is responsible for data transmission.
Consider the numbers – 80% or more of invoices are touchless with BirchStreet Systems; there is a 50% reduction in labor costs and a 58% average reduction in invoice process costs; and the average time to process invoices goes from 5-7 days manually to 1-3 day electronically. Fast and accurate count management with mobile barcode scanners (by AccuBar) improves productivity by 30%.
Additionally, electronic payment options reduce payment errors (instead of relying on manual checks), and e-invoices improve environmental impact by drastically reducing the use of paper.
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Robust end-to-end e-procurement and inventory management software empowers hoteliers to transform operations, lower costs, and enhance profitability. Not all solutions deliver the same advanced functionality and heightened efficiency, so it is crucial for hotels to consider which ones provide a real competitive advantage. Contact BirchStreet Systems for more information about the company’s e-procurement and inventory management solutions.