The Company

In 2011, Rick Hayduk, a long-time and experienced hotelier, was inspired to open a hotel that employed individuals with intellectual disabilities with the goal in mind of positively impacting the lives of others and giving everyone a chance for forward advancement in the hospitality industry. After learning the ins and outs of the hospitality industry for over three decades and becoming a true hospitality veteran, Hayduk opened The Shepherd Hotel in April of 2022 with the help of Rich Davies, a third-generation real estate developer, and incredibly involved Clemson Alumni. The Shepherd Hotel sits in downtown Clemson, South Carolina. The 67-room state-of-art boutique hotel currently employs over 100 individuals, 30 of whom are individuals with disabilities.

The Right Back-Office Accounting Solution

Shepherd Hotels aims to add thoughtfully designed boutique hotels in or around college campuses that offer Inclusive Post-Secondary Education (IPSES) programs to further their impact on the community at hand. With this in mind, the company was looking to find hotel technology providers that offered the ability to scale easily in future periods of growth, seamless integrations to other technology providers, and solutions that would drive financial performance in order to be able to better fund, manage, and foster the mission of The Shepherd Hotel - to positively impact the lives of others.

As the entry point to the M3 platform, Accounting Core provides a set of easy-to-use modules that streamline accounting functions and the ability to integrate with countless hospitality PMS and POS systems. M3’s Accounting Core allows hotel owners, management teams, and general managers access to an accurate snapshot across multiple properties, improving efficiency and visibility to drive hotel financial performance. Accounting Core was designed by hoteliers, with hoteliers in mind, in order to meet the shifting needs of hotels of all sizes.

When on the look for potential hotel technology solutions, Hayduk was aiming to select vendors that could offer a long-term partnership and a truly seamless, cloud-based, and integrated user interface. When seeing how M3 Accounting Core could simplify the workflow of our back-office processes to be more efficient and its ability to integrate with other key tech providers in the industry, I knew it was the right solution for The Shepherd Hotel. Hayduk continued, I also noticed how M3 would allow us to scale as a company, offering an easy process to add properties to our portfolio. Knowing that M3 would aid in the growth of our portfolio, which in turn would provide more intellectually challenged individuals to have employment and grow their professional skill set, made the decision to go with M3 easy.

Top Industry Hotel Technology Providers Working Together to Foster the Mission

In addition to finding a hotel accounting solution, The Shepherd Hotel also needed to select an internet booking engine, channel management solution, inline revenue management solution, and property management solution. The company opted to use APS’ award-winning and industry-leading all-in-one solution for independent hotels that includes an Internet Booking Engine, GDS, Channel Manager, PMS, and Revenue Management. APS offers the only platform that can evolve seamlessly in response to industry demands, with credit to a microservices architecture that empowers continuous development and refinement.

M3 and APS® (Above Property® Services) worked together to make The Shepherds Hotel’s initial focus of selecting its technology providers seamless, integrated, scalable, and offering a true long-term partnership between all three companies a reality. This was achieved through an effective API integration between M3 and APS. The integration between the two systems was designed to transmit PMS night audit data into financial data, providing the ability to see the financial impact of a day’s operation accurately and instantly.

Aaron Shepherd, CEO & Co-Founder of APS, stated, Based on my experience working with the M3 team to build out the needed integrations for The Shepherd Hotel, I can vouch for the engaged and experienced people behind their company and products. When combining M3 Accounting Core and APS, hoteliers really do have limitless capabilities to drive productivity, efficiency, and revenue.

M3 and APS’ goal was to provide The Shepherd Hotel with the ability to seamlessly automate manual processes throughout its operations, with an easy-to-use, intuitive system such that its unique workforce could participate in as many different roles as possible. The Shepherd Hotel now has all the tools it needs in order to effectively and proactively manage the finance and operations facets of the hotel.

The Shepherd Hotel is sending a message to a strained labor market that with the right tools, individuals with disabilities can be a positive source of employment, shares Hayduk. We stand to have an incredible impact on the employment outcomes for people with disabilities. To make this concept a reality, we knew technology would be the key to success. By streamlining the financial and operational tasks associated with hospitality roles, we are impacting the 70% unemployment rate for people with disabilities.

About M3

Built by hoteliers exclusively for hoteliers^TM, M3 is a robust cloud-based financial platform and services company serving over 8,000+ properties across North America's hospitality industry helping drive cost savings, revenue enhancement, and business insight. With over 25 years in business, M3 touts a 95 percent customer retention rate. Used by over 1,000 management groups and owner-operators and hotels of all sizes, the platform works seamlessly with other key systems and tools in the hospitality industry. It offers robust accounting and financial analysis across entire portfolios with optional operations and time management features. M3's Professional Services team provides on-demand accounting and bookkeeping support for hotels and portfolios of any size by offering a full range of customized accounting solutions that can scale with a hotelier's needs. Privately held and employee-owned, M3 continues to constantly enhance products and services with regular releases and updates. "M3", "CoreSelect", "M3 Concierge", and "Accounting Core" are all trademarks owned by M3; all other marks are owned by their respective owners. For more information, visit www.m3as.com.

Haley Wolf
Marketing and Public Relations Manager
+1 770 533 0545
M3

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