Success stories:
Hotel Going Paperless and Printer-less
FourPoints Sydney digitises heavily paper-based processes, saves 2.5m yearly prints and $1.5m over 5 years
Our client is the exclusive 5-star FourPoints Darlington Harbour hotel in Sydney, receiving hundreds of bookings and enquiries every day. Reservations, invoices & other documents used to be printed for distribution to various departments, resulting in over 3 million prints every year. In addition to inefficiencies, this was amounting to significant operational costs.
Challenges
- Complex paper trail: Reservations & invoices, often received via email, were printed, signed off, photocopied & faxed, distributed to various departments, then stored.
- Tedious paper work: in addition to time-consuming printing and handling, Front Desk staff had to step away to handle documents. Occasionally documents were lost, resulting in extra work and customer inconvenience.
- Heavy paper logistics: invoices were shuttled to Accounting via courier on a daily basis. Storage was a logistical headache, with Finance & HR documents legally required to be stored for 7 to 21 years.
- High paper costs: printing over 3m pages every year, at a cost of 10 cents per page over the lifetime of the document – a cost of over $300,000 per annum. Not to mention high overheads for long-term printer/copier contracts!
Our solution
Experienced DocMX consultants collaborated with the client to identify process inefficiencies across different departments. Rather than simply replicating and digitising the paper-based processes, their suggestions resulted in leaner ways of working adopted by the hotel management.
With DocMX, incoming reservations, invoices and other documents get directly scanned into the system, or automatically captured from PDF and other electronic sources. AWS-powered AI and smart algorithms ensure optical recognition, correct categorisation and digitisation of documents. They are then distributed to various departments via an automated workflow for approval or other actions; employees collaborate directly on the system.
Documents are safely stored in the highest-security AWS storage infrastructure, for the duration required by local legislation. They can be easily retrieved on the system anytime, by all authorised personnel.
Benefits
Saving $1,500,000 in printing costs over 5 years:
- The new process resulted in reducing printing volumes by an estimated 2.5 million pages per year. At a cost of 10 cents per page (incl. stationary, storage, archiving…) the hotel thus saved $1,250,000 over 5 years.
- Furthermore, the client was able to cut from 13 to 3 printers-copiers, saving an estimated $200,000+ over the typical 5-year copier lease with a monthly cost of $350.
- The new process also virtually eliminated faxing expenditure, especially to high-cost international numbers.
- Management was satisfied that the investment in the new system paid off within just a few months.
A more efficient, nimble & environmentally-friendly hotel:
- Staff saved valuable time with reduced manual input, paperwork handling, physical shipping and storage. The Front Desk and offices were de-cluttered with no need for filing cabinets.
- Improved communication: with one central information repository, all departments are able to collaborate efficiently. The guest experience improved as reservations or invoices can now be instantly retrieved & emailed.
- Saving an estimated 1500 trees over 5 years, the hotel also significantly improved its environmental footprint, as well as reams of toxic ink cartridges.
More robust data security & privacy powered by Amazon AWS technology:
- High-performing & reliable Cloud solution: with reliable hosting in the nearest Amazon data centre in Australia, the system and the documents were always accessible, on a click and with no time lags.
- Data and network security: the hotel benefited from latest data security, encryption, back-up and recovery features from AWS – with no extra work required from in-house IT teams.
- Auditable & traceable: data access was limited to relevant personnel, system actions and documents logged, in compliance with ISO standards for data security.
This is just one example of digitisation with DocMX. Learn more about our Hospitality solutions,
or contact us for a demo.
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