hen Steve Enselein, VP of catering and convention services for Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, looked at their globe-spanning hotel operations, he saw cutting-edge technology guiding, driving, and enhancing service and profits for the hotel. Then he looked at the communications and business structure of his own food and beverage territory, and he saw an organization “using the same methods [they] have been using for the last 50 years.”

In a portion of the hospitality industry where prompt, precise communication between several or all service departments is critical, the technological lag stuck out to Enselein as a glaring, nearly neglectful inefficiency. His vision was to maximize the effectiveness and profitability of his department by using the latest technology to manage customer relations, from booking to billing.

Enselein set about defining the customer relations needs for catering. He knew he had no need to improve on Hyatt’s indepth proprietary sales system, so he began exploring solutions to fit the macro and micro requirements of the complex banquets and conventions operations. After nearly a year of research, it became obvious that building the system in-house would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming. Enselein knew the solution lay in searching the growing list of already existing hospitality software products on the market to find the right application or suite of applications to satisfy his needs.

THE RIGHT TOOL
At this point, Newmarket International (www.newmarketinc.com), a Portsmouth, New Hampshirebased company specializing in innovative technology solutions for the hospitality industry, stepped up with an answer. Hyatt had looked at Newmarket’s Delphi® application as a customer relationship management (CRM) system earlier, but the technology provider had recently acquired Daylight®, a customizable catering solution that seemed to meet the requirements on Enselein’s wish list.

Daylight was the tool to consolidate the fine details of event orders, to communicate those particulars quickly and appropriately, and to track revenues individually, annually, or through departments.

FLEXIBILITY
Shawn McGowan, CTO & VP of product development at Newmarket, sees Daylight’s flexibility as the big selling point for Hyatt. “Hyatt had already established a robust sales application, so Daylight could take the catering aspects of the software and marry them seamlessly to the existing proprietary sales unit.” (While Daylight features a full sales module itself, it may be switched off, as may other functions, to streamline the system to the needs of the operation.)

Both McGowan and Enselein cited the scalability—the capacity to handle small functions and to expand to manage larger, more complex operations as necessary—as an important feature for an organization as multifaceted and expansive as Hyatt Hotels. And Enselein has now nodded to the eventual implementation of this system at all North American properties.

TAILORED SYSTEM
After the decision to go with Daylight, another structural choice was necessary to tailor the system to Hyatt’s intended uses. Enselein asked for Daylight to be delivered with Newmarket as an application service provider (ASP) rather than deploying the software through Hyatt’s on-premise network. While Daylight still interfaces with Hyatt’s sales system, the ASP model provides constant service, updating, and troubleshooting of the software by Newmarket and lets Enselein and his directors, chefs, and managers access information remotely and communicate with each other via Daylight. (About 75 percent of Daylight clients choose the ASP option.)

The communication aspect of Daylight is one of the revolutionary qualities Enselein hopes will transform his catering operations into the flawless organization he envisions. The convention services of five decades ago ran the risk of falling into utter chaos with one missed change request to a banquet event order. Daylight’s role-based change order system proactively notifies the appropriate departments in real time and maintains a running log of amendments.

Similarly, the billing application adds and subtracts on the fly, and a scheduling application revises function room requirements in accordance with event attrition. All of these elements of heightened communication have their benefits in both customer satisfaction and a fuller historical and statistical understanding of each event that can be shared and leveraged locally or centrally by Hyatt’s managers.

The data-gathering capabilities of a fully integrated CRM system are not to be undervalued. Hyatt will have the capability to track and quantify the proposed and real needs of groups, compare them, cost them, and manage revenue accordingly. All preferences, quantities, and minutia pertaining to each group inform the system for future sales opportunities and event executions. The pervasive quality of the system lets Hyatt properties evaluate repeat bookings, comparable bookings, or potential bookings and allot resources to more efficiently and economically service clients.

THE BOTTOM LINE
Daylight’s attention to detail will inevitably be a money-saving and money-making resource for Hyatt’s sales system. Given target dates and times, the software has the ability to generate proposals for groups and can help optimize bookings and function scheduling. Daylight provides more than 100 out-of-the-box reports that can track groups, departments, costs, yields, and forecast parameters for future events to help make event inventory, staff, and scheduling decisions.

Enselein plans to have the new system up and running in early 2008. Hyatt and Newmarket’s technicians are working as a single entity to get systems online and in perfect working order as soon as possible. Time will tell if Hyatt will implement the inventory, yield, cost and online booking capabilities of Daylight, but Enselein is concentrating on the nearer future to determine the effectiveness of the integrated technology. As case histories accumulate, Enselein will be able to pinpoint more accurately his costs and revenues for any event and optimize every resource, from individual properties up to the corporate level.

Enselein continues his enthusiasm for the technological endeavor he has undertaken. He sees the nascent system as a powerful tool that will only get sharper with time. Daylight is a proven asset with the likes of Maggiano’s, Dave and Buster’s, and China Grill, and the Hyatt implementation will test the full range of the system. With the complete rollout next year, the catering and convention services group will fast forward through decades of change. Enselein looks forward to the transformation and says, “I am anxious to see if the revolution is all I dreamed it would be.”