Choosing new hospitality software – between stability and innovation

brainstorming

March 25, 2021

The prospect of switching hospitality software solutions like a hotel PMS or other essential system can pose a tough and even stressful challenge. Leading decision-makers know that organizations have to be capable of and ready for change to keep pace with constantly shifting market conditions that can change without warning.

Software has to be reliable and familiar to everyone who has to use it every day to do their best work. It also has to provide a basis for innovation as circumstances evolve. Very often, that means stepping outside of everyone’s comfort zones. How do organizations strike a balance between stability and innovation, and use it to guide the decision-making process when shopping for new hospitality software solutions? Let’s take a look at a few areas to help address that question.

A facts-based audit of current hospitality software

When your organization decides to move with the times, it’s best to understand what you’re working with. This means that the tried-and-true solutions you have in place have to rise to new goals and conditions or be replaced. Setting aside brand names and industry reputations, a systems review must be honest and detailed – and even brutal.

In such a review, you may find that your current solutions aren’t broken, but perhaps they are no longer able to scale or adapt as required. As tempting as it may be to let sleeping dogs lie, conducting regular fact-based audits of your current technology – strengths, weaknesses, possibilities, limitations, scalability, security – is not only a good general practice but it can also document your specific rationale for investing in new solutions.

Determining the link between business goals and software capabilities

A great yardstick to measure the value of your current software is to rate how well and easily it helps you attain your business goals. Attaching software capabilities to operational objectives will help answer an essential question: “are we accomplishing the right things?” If you are, and your solutions provide a clear path to your goals, you’re in good shape – for now. But given the unpredictable nature of the industry and the forces that can quickly change the rules of the game, this exercise will lead you to examine what you will need to accomplish later.

Again, this is all about the balance between ensuring day-to-day stability – the activities that keep the lights on – and innovation, the act of envisioning a future beyond the status quo. When you balance these two forces, you will have a solid foundation for decision-making that is more easily communicated to those in the decision-making loop.

Finding your team

Make sure the evaluation team includes and values diverse points of view. You’ll need to gain a greater understanding of goals and priorities across the entire organization to make big decisions. Whatever positive attitudes you have around teamwork, it’s time to invest even further in them to validate your decision-making based on organization-wide benefits.

Finding, working with, and valuing the right people across your organization will help you to more accurately map your current technology to future requirements, and then make your go-forward plan from there. You do that best when you have all of the brainpower of your organization behind that effort. When you assess your technology with diverse perspectives engaged and involved, you’re doing it the right way.

Risk – but not uncalculated

Challenging the status quo is always… a challenge. But once it’s a standard practice in your organization and the next wave of market game-changers comes along, you’ll be better positioned to adapt as needed.

When it comes to judging current solutions and choosing new hospitality software, organizations have to take risks. But as we’ve discovered, those risks don’t have to be uncalculated ones. When you’re armed with facts and specific business goals align to your software requirements, the next steps begin to fall into place.

A partner in your journey

Another aspect of all this of course is engaging with the experts outside of your organization to help you get to where you need to go. Learn how Infor can help you to do that, right here.

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