Peer-to-Peer

Watch your hotel remotely

Hotel Kuber has deployed a software that can revolutionize the way hotel owners can manage their properties and control pilferage, even while located in a different continent, writes Malabika Sarkar

Pilferage is an inherent problem in any business where the business owner is not actively involved in the day-to-day operations. It is in fact very common in the hotel industry in India. About 83% of the hotels in the country are small establishments, with majority of the owners not involved full-time in the everyday operations. As a result, they have to rely on the management and support staff of the hotel for their business’s key financials and operations. The latter often indulge in activities, which result in wasteful utilization of resources, leading to heavy costs incurred by hotel owners. Realizing this gap, Direct Technologies came up with the Integriti software to cater to this specific market, something that has not been explored anywhere else in the world.

Direct Technologies is a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider focusing on the hospitality industry. Their product, Integriti, is an on-demand Property Management and Central Reservation and Remote Monitoring solution, which eliminates up-front costs and technical staff requirements and allows customers to focus on “hospitality”.

Kuber Sharma, Investor and Board Member, Direct Technologies, talked about the different aspects of Integriti, and its deployment at Hotel Kuber, Sonipat, Haryana.

Revealing how the first thought of implementing a 24x7 monitoring device in a hotel came about, Sharma said, “The software Integriti stands as a testament to the commitment of our organization to revolutionize the way property owners manage their properties and control pilferage even while located in a different continent. Integriti’s lineup of features, which include, remote monitoring of room booking, kitchen control, inventory management and accurately manage key financials, enable the property owners to be at their property and have virtually 100% control even when they are far away from it.”

Giving a quick picture on how the whole project started, Sharma averred, “I met Ashok Sharma, owner, Hotel Kuber last year, and gave him a demonstration of our product. Sharma being a visionary himself, could easily relate to our vision and thus after only a few discussions we could pen a contract with him. After getting the list of unique challenges we would face in India, we sat down and penned our deployment document. We chose to implement our solution in a phased approach, where we would initially consult Hotel Kuber, in setting up the necessary infrastructure at its premises.”

In order to implement this plan, Ashok Sharma soon arrived in India to do the pilot testing of the product at his property, Hotel Kuber. His enthusiasm and penchant for technology, helped in getting support from the hotel’s management to implement the solution seamlessly.

Stages of deployment

The deployment in the hotel started in mid-April 2008, and took one month to complete. As the company’s service offering included a turnkey consultancy, therefore they chose the best Internet connection solution by adopting a WAN solution. Later, they set up a LAN in the hotel premises so that individual computers in the hotel could communicate with each other. After this, the hardware for locks were imported from partners in China and computerized locks were set up.

He further added, “After, we had set up the necessary hardware infrastructure at the hotel, we installed the software and trained the hotel staff in using it. If we encountered any changes in the software, our team of engineers would accommodate immediately and deliver the solution. Then we set up the monitoring cameras in the hotel and integrated it with our solution, so that the hotel owner could see activities in his hotel from anywhere in the world.”

Common obstacles

Selling this new technology to potential customers has not been easy. Taking about the obstacles faced by the company, Sharma explained “The primary issue we faced in deployment of Integriti was the hesitation on adopting an IT solution to control pilferage at the properties. Till now, computer-based solutions had only been deployed at 5-star luxury properties (hotels) in India, and these have been very expensive with heavy costs incurred on deployment/training to the employees. Additionally, apart from Hotel Kuber, the property owners were not convinced that a computer-based solution could cater to their unique problems. However, with time and an extensive demo of the product, we were able to convince the property owners of the impending advantages.”

He further added that the second major hurdle was the network latency in the Indian context. They had to considerably alter the product architecture to accommodate the low bandwidth networks in India, particularly in smaller cities.

Training of the hotel staff presented a big challenge to the analysts. In most hotels the staff have little knowledge about the usage of computers, and the analysts have had to work outside their service measure to train them.

Benefits following the deployment

The deployment at Hotel Kuber was completed in May 2008. This deployment has been one of the greatest learning experiences for the professionals at Direct Technologies. Not only have they understood the psychology of Indian customers, but also made some productive enhancements to the product line. Regarding this, Sharma said, “Our state-of-the-art solution and the extremely personalized after-sales service has satisfied our client completely. So much so that we have been recommended by them to other property owners in the region. We hope to leverage our strong business relationship with our first customer and continue to embark on this journey of controlling pilferage across several hotels in India.”

As Integriti has a modular architecture, it has as whole range of integrated modules to cover every aspect of property management. Clients can select and pick features according to their preference. Features can be added and removed anytime by customers.

Describing how Integriti will justify the return on investment for Hotel Kuber, Sharma said that since they are a startup company and have just completed their first deployment with more to come in the next few months, it would be too early to comment on the ROI. “However, we can see a great enthusiasm in the team. The experience of the first deployment has been a good learning experience for them,” he added.

Regarding other projects across the globe, Sharma revealed, “We are in the final stages of deployment at another hotel in Durham, US. Also, we are in later stages of discussions with several customers, both in India and the US, and we would soon tread on our journey of making a pan Asia-Pacific presence.”

Direct Technologies aspires to use the power of information technology to address global challenges and control pilferage in existing business processes. It also helps businesses and governments to control costs and utilize their resource pool to the maximum with minimum wastage.

malabika.sarkar@expressindia.com