Focus on Efficiencies Through Back Office Software Keeps MCR Hotels Ahead

MCR is one of the largest hotel owner-operators in the United States, with around 150 hotels across 37 states. Led by Chairman and CEO Tyler Morse, who founded the company in 2006, MCR differentiates itself by both owning and managing its hotels, which Morse says helps the management teams stay acutely focused on success.

Part of that success is the rapid adoption of technology to stay ahead. In August of 2020, MCR acquired Stayntouch, part of a wave of modern, cloud-based Property Management Systems that focus on more user-friendly interfaces and open APIs. The company has made a number of other software investments, and Morse continually pushes for a more modern hotel tech stack than exists today.

MCR chose MDO’s myDocs solution, which digitizes the night audit process, in November 2021 to make property-level teams more efficient by removing many manual tasks and to keep leadership informed of property-level activity in real time.

In May 2022, MCR appointed Kyle McCaig as Director of Technology Service Delivery. McCaig brings a passion for problem solving, and he looks at the future of hospitality with a unique angle on technology adoption. He’s shaping the way MCR approaches its tech stack accordingly.

Challenge #1: Manual Processes Lead to Inefficiencies

The manual nature of a hotel back office today is problematic in that it presents distractions from running a guest-centric operation. When managers are dealing with technology issues or manually collating data to build reports, that’s less time spent shaping exceptional guest experiences.

There are departments filled with people whose entire jobs are to do a lot of this manual data crunching and these manual processes, McCaig says. Partnering with MDO for myDocs solved a pretty large problem. We had maybe 80-85% success in terms of getting the right reports to the right people every day from our properties, but we needed to be better. To be honest that number is a guess, we couldn’t actually track even that.

Solution: myDocs for Property-Level Efficiencies

An overarching goal for MCR is to take many of the time-consuming burdens away from property-level staff and empower them to drive more value by enhancing guest experiences. Automating back-office tasks like entering data from one system into another, emailing reports to individual stakeholders, and reconciling balance sheets has freed up line-level employees. In some cases, this meant restructuring organizational roles so regional leaders were more equipped to execute these functions.

Partnering with MDO has solved a pretty large problem in terms of getting the right reports to the right people every day from our properties. Not removing the human nature of it, but improving the processes and allowing our account managers and our accountants to get the data and then do their actual job rather than spend their entire day chasing the data, McCaig says.

Results

Digitizing night audit and reporting processes has not only made team members more efficient, it has led to more sustainable operations and reduced MCR’s environmental footprint. Sustainability has become a core value at MCR, and McCaig says it’s important for hoteliers to understand that sustainability, more often than not, goes hand-in-hand with saving money.

Yes, we save a lot of trees by not printing all this paper, and that’s great for MCR, McCaig says. It also saves us money because we're not using paper or ink. Paperless night audit was a really important step because we saw pretty immediately at a property that cost went down, paper use went down, and we had centralized information.

Challenge #2: GMs Spread Thin

With all of the manual tasks at hand, McCaig says General Managers tend to become jack of all trades, master of none – a role MCR aimed to transform.

That just doesn't make sense, McCaig says. The most important thing GMs should be focusing on is managing their hotel, managing their staff, training, making sure they’re providing good guest experiences – the core fundamentals that you would be doing if you opened your own boutique hotel.

By adopting automated solutions to take manual work away from the property level, MCR was able to allow GMs to spend less time at their desks and more time in the lobby or interacting with guests.

Solution: myDocs for Automated Processes

McCaig says MCR has implemented automated software solutions such as MDO and others, not to reduce the number of staff on property, but to arm current team members with the necessary tools to be more productive in their day-to-day jobs.

We're trying to see where those pain points are – things that are having to be done manually, things that are emailed, things that are printed, things that are stored on one computer and hopefully find their way to the right place – and automate all of those pieces, he says. So, it's solving the problems with technology and automation, as opposed to replacing people with technology and automation.

Results

Since adopting myDocs, MCR has moved from around 80-85% daily document compliance to 98% or 99% most days, with the outliers being power or internet outages that would prevent properties from sending data, or outages from the brands. We’ve been above 95% across our portfolio for over eight months in a row now, McCaig says.

Besides ensuring the right information is available for various team members throughout operations, document compliance also eases the burden of both internal and government audits. MCR can provide auditors with online access to the right reports in minutes, and auditors can search within documents to find the specific line items in question.

When we used to do audits in the past, we would ask for 30 days just to gather the information, because we were talking about printed reports put in a box in a corner somewhere, or we were paying thousands of dollars a month for someone to store it for us and we didn’t even know where it was, McCaig says. Taking away both the overhead cost of that, as well as the stress and the worry about finding where this stuff is, has been critical.

Challenge #3: Disparate Data

With 150 properties operating across eight different PMSs, it’s common to have inconsistencies among datasets and within information shared between the properties and corporate. MCR went looking for a system to keep everyone aligned and working from the same data, eliminating the desire to make decisions on gut instinct. This would help leaders become more proactive rather than reactive.

That's something we're always trying to consolidate and bring down as much as possible, McCaig says. We are very focused this year and into 2024 on centralizing data so we can make better decisions.

Solution: myDocs for Report Centralization

By centralizing critical night audit reports and providing access to leadership through automated reporting, department heads across MCR are making aligned decisions off the same sets of data.

Whether it’s our CEO Tyler Morse, me, or an assistant manager at one of our properties, everybody needs various parts of this information — and having it centralized and accessible is one of the core fundamentals of what we're trying to do, McCaig says.

Results

Two years after adopting MDO’s myDocs solution, MCR has seen a transformation in the way data and operations are centralized for increased efficiency at the property level.

Through digital adoption, including the implementation of myDocs for back-office automation, MCR has positioned itself for continued success. With streamlined night audit processes and enhanced property-level automations, MCR will continue to drive efficiency across its growing portfolio.

Learn how myDocs can help you remove manual processes and automate reporting.

Jason Freed
Hospitality Data Evangelist
3302216068
Otelier (formerly myDigitalOffice)

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