Cost control is the practice of identifying and reducing a business’s expenses to increase profits and start with the budgeting process. Given the current context in which the Hospitality industry has been one of the most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the management of the company must have the appropriate instruments to equate the actual financial performance of the company with the estimates of the budget and whether the real expenses are greater than expected. Management still wants details in real-time to take steps that will save the organization.
“One of a hotel’s constant concerns is costs minimization. Obviously, without monitoring them, cost savings must not impact efficiency and cannot be done without supervision. Thus, the need for such an electronic control infrastructure to capture, compile and make it accessible to all information from all sources. In this way, we ensure that decision-makers have access to proper information.” – David Aron, Business Development Manager at Hotel Alpin.
Solution: Development of a Cost Control software application for Cost Analysis that offers managers a real-time view of sales, expenditures and budgets.
Results
Implementing activity procedure – achieving a complete digital flow for managing sales, expenditures and budgets on the BackOffice platform (WEBCON BPS);
Mobility – accessing the mobile application provides access to information and the freedom of movement to the management department;
Real-time information – tracking revenue, costs and budgets at any time;
Decision speed – having an overview and updated data you can make decisions “in time”, no need to wait to receive monthly / quarterly / half-yearly financial reports;
Operational simplification – managing the cost and budget situation from a single platform, receiving notifications, generating documents and KPI reports.
Future perspective
A dynamic mechanism that involves both the internal and external processes of a corporation is the implementation and distribution of technologies in hotel industry organizations. Digitization and automation lead to growing workforce productivity, substantial cost savings, quality and market share growth, and customer service creation and enhancement.
By embracing modern technologies to help streamline business and business growth, ALPIN Hotel aligns with developments by removing errors that can be created by individuals by developing a complete image of the company’s progression at all times.
The management of the organization has regular access to relevant reports, such as the one in the picture below, as a result of the introduction of the solution integrated alongside PowerBI.
About Alpin Hotel
The hotel is located in the resort of Poiana Brasov and offers magnificent mountain views with comfortably furnished rooms. The resort consists of 3 linked buildings: Hotel Alpin, Casa Alpin and Aparthotel Alpin. The complex has a large spa, 4 restaurants, 2 terraces and summer gardens, as well as 41 conference and event rooms with a capacity of 10 to 700 people. Other facilities include bars, a nightclub and 3 branded shops.
Challenges
- Implementing the cost control activities procedure;
- Reading up to date the financial data for the current month;
- Centralization of financial information, having quick access to it;
- Supply control and order management in real time.
Solution in detail
- Recording expenses, budgets and revenues in the BackOffice platform (WEBCON BPS), according to internal procedures;
- Control of expenses that go through an approval flow;
- Monitoring through reports and indicators such as: sales / costs, detailed budget / cost type; Business Intelligence reports have been integrated, in a unitary way, in the application dashboard;
- Grouping data from multiple sources to obtain interactive dashboards and reports that generate business results;
- Alerts in the application or via e-mail that help the flows continuity and the rapid flow of information.
Conclusion
Until now, effective hotel resource management appeared to be a difficult equation, but when managers turned to the approach established by Encorsa, things changed. As a result, it was better to understand how the company’s money travels and its effectiveness, how to minimize risks, and how to recognize the potential of unused benefit today.
There is no question that innovations for hotels will be an important part of hospitality in the future. Offering unmatched degrees of luxury and versatility, if they wish to retain a strategic edge in an ever more digital marketplace, hotels need to be able to follow these creative approaches.