Introducing technology to the processes of the Hospitality sector will be essential to streamline internal management and recover business activity. The challenges for the sector will imply digitization, automation and process standardization, especially for the back-office departments.
This is what RIU Hotels&Resorts, DINO and Barceló Hotel Group agreed on during the last session of the baVel Digital Summit, held last Tuesday, June 30. Experts agreed on the digitization of internal processes being key to raise competitivity and increase resources optimization. Two key aspects that will play an important role during the sector’s crisis.
Benefits of the digitization
According to Inés Fernández, Responsible for Financial Processes and Digital Transformation at Barceló Hotel Group, the main challenge the company is facing is adding value to the employee’s side: “We want to minimise manual tasks so that employees can focus on more valuable work and design innovative and efficient solutions”. At the moment, thanks to the baVel platform, the group is issuing electronic invoices to their providers and their final objective is to “have 0 paper invoicing” in the near future.
On this line, Javier de los Santos, Administrative Development Corporate Director at RIU Hotels&Resorts, reassured the importance of digitization of back-office processes to eliminate manual intervention and redirect employees effort. According to De los Santos, “at the moment baVel is our corporate technology partner”. RIU has digitized its supply chain (issuing orders, reception and reconciliation of invoices) and connect automatically with its purchasing suppliers through baVel.
DINO’s Key Accounts Supervisor, David Vilà, offered the distributor point of view on this matter. He highlighted the importance of efficient billing procedures that allow invoicing the customer, but also improve communication between partners and the purchase centre. “Thanks to the automatic reconciliation and faster invoice reception of the electronic invoicing platform baVel, we have shortened the average payment term between 6 and 12 days”, assured Vilà.
Future expectations: adaptability
Lastly, panellists emphasised the adoption of the electronic delivery note as a solution that will allow making processes more efficient, but also minimise the physical contact among employees. “It helps us to eliminate duplicate work”, said DINO.
To Barceló Hotel Group, the priority now is “to apply technology where is needed”. At the same time, RIU Hotels&Resorts is working on introducing BI tools to optimise the administration of supplies purchases.
Companies of the Hospitality sector will have to make an effort to digitize and adopt new technologies that will help streamline internal processes. At the same time, adaptability and change management will play a key role in facing the current situation and challenges.
