Sea Island Resorts — Photo by Amadeus

When you have 520 guestrooms and operate several outlets, including a beach-front resort, lodge, cottages, golf club, spa, multiple dining and lounge facilities, tennis center, beach club, shooting school, boating and fishing operation and camp cloister, managing the inventory and purchasing process can be challenging – especially when that process is not automated. That was the quandary for Sea Island (Ga.) Resorts before the company integrated the Hotel Inventory & Purchasing module with its existing Hotel Service Optimization System (HotSOS, pronounced Hot Sauce) from MTech.

HIP was designed to help hotel operators manage budgets, purchasing and perpetual inventory. For Troy Spannuth, administrative assistant to the engineering director and responsible for storeroom management at the Mobil five-star Cloister at Sea Island and Mobil five-star and AAA five-diamond Lodge at Sea Island Golf Club, HIP eliminates mounds of purchasing paperwork and streamlines record-keeping for immediate time and cost savings. When integrated with MTech’s HotSOS – a solution that streamlines guest-services processes, such as guest-request and incident reporting, rapid-response workflow and preventive-maintenance workflow – HIP generates cost reports for service orders that will include labor and parts costs automatically.

“Orchestrating the inventory and purchasing process for the various outlets on Sea Island was a real nail- biter before we got ‘hip’ to the automated Hotel Inventory & Purchasing system from MTech,” Spannuth said. “This centralized, computerized system makes maintaining storeroom control easy and extremely efficient. Before, all requisitions were hand written and the paper forms were kept in file cabinets in various locations. With HIP, all requisitions are now digital. That means, anyone with access to HIP on their computer can check on the status of order to determine if parts have been received and identify which work orders the ordered parts were allocated to. It’s nothing short of amazing.

“In addition, HIP has cut down on any guess work as to which parts were ordered,” he said. “Previously when we would fax hand-written orders to our purchasing agents, they often complained that they couldn’t read what was written due to poor handwriting or inferior print quality of the fax machine. The digital requisition eliminates any confusion, and therefore the ordering process is quick and error free. This is really important, especially when we need to allocate costs/charges across multiple outlets and/or departments.”

‘SaaSy’ Solution
HIP, like HotSOS, is offered by MTech over the Internet as a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution. It can be integrated with HotSOS or used as a stand-alone module.

“HIP is ideal for the Sea Island properties because of their large engineering and housekeeping inventories and the cross-departmental/multi-outlet billing,” said Luis Segredo, President and Co-Founder of Miami-based MTech. “HIP not only has eliminated a good deal of the paperwork, but its helping Sea Island Resorts to stay on budget by allowing quick, easy references that provide information on how much funding has been committed at any one time in a certain area. HIP offers up-to-the-purchase-order data on committed funds, thus making it easier to stay on or under budget. And, when used in conjunction with HotSOS, HIP will improve service-order costing as well.”

HIP also provides:

  • Budget management
  • Purchase-order management, including back-order management
  • Vendor management
  • Inventory management that includes multi-warehouse support, barcode-label generation and inter-warehouse transfer support
  • International currency support
  • Configurable per-year periods
  • Suite of reports

“HotSOS automatically builds labor charges and allows the user to enter any service recovery as well as adding parts costs to an order,” he said. “With the HIP module, the user immediately sees the part cost and the inventory is automatically reduced in the appropriate storeroom. In other words, HIP provides managers with accurate, real-time cost numbers.”

Spannuth said the support provided by the MTech team has been stellar.

“Anyone running a storeroom manually today needs to get with it – and that means getting HIP,” Spannuth said. “It’s a simple checkbook style accounting system for getting things done right and having a digital paper trail of the process without the actual paper. Hotels that are fortunate enough to have HotSOS can really benefit from the integration because it makes ordering and billing a snap. But even without HotSOS, HIP is the coolest inventory and purchasing tool on the market – and its backed by the best support team in the industry.”

For more information on HIP, HotSOS and other MTech solutions, please visit the MTech Web site at .

About MTech | Since 1993, MTech has developed and installed solutions to help hotels work smarter — not harder. The company serves more than 1,800 hotels in over 40 countries. Focused on improving guest service by improving efficiency, MTech offers HotSOS, PMWorks, REX and now Libra OnDemand. All MTech solutions today are enterprise level, SaaS solutions that offer maximum value with limited investment. MTech also provides consulting and training services to help customers achieve maximum value from their investments. It serves its customers from data centers in Miami, Las Vegas and Hong Kong, and its company headquarters are in Miami. For more information on the company, please visit .

About Sea Island Resorts | A private resort and real estate development company founded in 1928, Sea Island Company today owns and operates Sea Island Resorts, featuring two of the world’s most coveted destinations: The Mobil Five-Star Cloister at Sea Island and The Lodge at Sea Island Golf Club, a Mobil Five-Star and AAA Five-Diamond property. Sea Island Golf Club features two 18-hole championship courses and a renowned Golf Learning Center, the only facility in America with three of Golf Digest’s top 50 instructors. The Learning Center offers a unique approach to instruction for both trained professionals and aspiring amateurs, focusing on the physical, mental and technical aspects of the game. Other amenities of Sea Island include the Mobil Five-Star Georgian Room restaurant, Camp Cloister, the Tennis Club, Equestrian Center, Yacht Club, Shooting School and Mobil Five-Star Cloister Spa and Fitness Center. A recent transformation of the resort has married the company’s storied history with unparalleled 21st century amenities. Sea Island has received numerous honors and accolades, including recognition on the Travel + Leisure list of the Top 100 Hotels in the World and “top golf community” in the U.S. by Travel + Leisure Golf in 2007 and 2008. .

Luis Segredo
President
(305) 256-0429

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