Avenue9 worked closely with Redefine|BDL Hotels’ management team to fully understand the company’s aims, objectives and expectations for IT within the overall business strategy, before drawing up with the company a detailed IT strategy document that identified the key functionality needs – namely: general ledger, budgeting and forecasting, and business intelligence.
Hospitality IT solutions specialists, Avenue9, is delighted to announce that it has been engaged by the UK’s leading independent hotel management company, Redefine|BDL Hotels, to provide IT solutions across the group’s 69 hotels to help sustain the business’s exceptional track record in developing and managing a diverse collection of branded and private label hotel properties throughout the UK.
“It is very exciting to be working with such a dynamic, fast expanding group such as Redefine|BDL Hotels, which works in partnership with such prestigious hotel brands as InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), Hilton, Starwood Hotels & Resorts (now Marriott International), Accor Hotels and Wyndham,” said Avenue9 Managing Director Kevin Edwards. “Redefine|BDL Hotels – with a UK hotel portfolio ranging from the new 240-bedroom Courtyard by Marriott in Edinburgh, due to open in 2016; and the 136-bedroom Holiday Inn Express London at Southwark, to the 165-bedroom Ramada Encore – Belfast City Centre – had been employing an ageing accounting system, with an over-dependence on complex spreadsheets for budgeting and forecasting.
“Avenue9’s brief has been to address this problem, whilst reducing the paper-based reporting, by replacing the existing systems with cutting edge IT solutions that best suit Redefine|BDL Hotels and its aims and objectives. The new suite of applications needed to be deployed over the web, to ensure accessibility to each hotel within the group – regardless of whether the property is owned, managed or franchised.”
To achieve this, Avenue9 worked closely with Redefine|BDL Hotels’ management team to fully understand the company’s aims, objectives and expectations for IT within the overall business strategy, before drawing up with the company a detailed IT strategy document that identified the key functionality needs – namely: general ledger, budgeting and forecasting, and business intelligence.
“In a nutshell, our main objective for Redefine|BDL Hotels’ new managed service,” explained Kevin Edwards, “has been to enhance significantly the technological efficiency and the accuracy of data received by the ‘Owners Lounge’ at head office, where the data from each property is published. When it was set up two years earlier, its accounting system relied heavily on paper reporting; and it was our brief to reduce this, whilst at the same time enabling infinitely more accurate and wide-ranging data from each hotel to be instantly available for owner and management scrutiny, which in turn would help maximise profitability.”
As an independent organisation, not aligned to any particular product or vendor, Avenue9 has been in an ideal position to advise and assist Redefine|BDL Hotels in selecting a suite of IT hospitality systems that will work best together – to service the company, maximise its potential, and support its future plans for growth as efficiently and as effectively as possible. This was achieved through employing an unbiased blind scoring of potential software vendors, which resulted in the selection of two preferred vendors and software: Castle Computer Services which delivered SunSystems, a leading provider of financial and business software, using Sun version 6 for general ledger, which went live in December 2014; and Barrachd (an IBM Business Analytics partner) which delivered Cognos TM1 software for planning, budgeting, and forecasting, which went live in March 2015, and Cognos BI (Business Intelligence) which went live in August 2015.
Avenue9 has been responsible for the programme management, whilst Castle Computer Services, Barrachd and Redefine|BDL took charge of the implementation of the selected software. In July/August 2015, Redefine|BDL Hotels’s new Cognos Property Management System (PMS) feeds went live.
“We are delighted with the success to date of the project,” said Kevin Edwards. “It has enabled Redefine|BDL Hotels to gather accurate daily results and business intelligence for all its hotels, improving the consistency of information uploaded to their ‘Owners Lounge’ which, in turn, is boosting every aspect of the business – from significantly enhanced business forecasting ability and a much greater understanding of guest behaviour, to a tighter control on payroll and security, and maximising profitability within every department of each of the company’s hotels.”
Redefine|BDL Hotels joins the ever growing portfolio of Avenue9 clients – that currently includes major brands such as: The Gleneagles Hotel, The Hotel Collection, SACO (The Serviced Apartment Company), Generator Hostels, and Bourne Leisure and Watergate Bay Hotel in Cornwall.
Photo caption: Avenue9 Managing Director Kevin Edwards.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
