ORACLE
for them. It’s not about being overly complex, it’s all about simplification. We are taking a full-on process and automating it to one click. The other way you can think about AI is you’re gathering a lot of guest data at a property. We can apply AI and create insights on profiles. You know the guest’s transactions, where they have been, you can categorise that profile and explain what that customer likes to do. Those insights can be visible within the system, but it’s all about the ecosystem and the integrations. It’s more important that we provide those insights and intelligence to a loyalty system or a CRM where it can be utilised fully.
CI: Looking at the Cloud side further, and how technology has developed there – why do you think the Cloud has evolved so, and is taking over the way operations work so fully? And where will it lead? LC: We really don’t think much any more about siloed solutions. Everyone is looking at the ecosystem, and that has evolved. What other solutions are around the core systems? We have contactless booming; new command centre applications people want to implement… We deal a lot with all of these vendors trying to innovate in hospitality. We spend a lot of time with them to integrate our solutions, because the more choice we can give them, the better it is for everyone. The trend we are seeing is the explosion of the ecosystem.
The reality is that we have very savvy digital guests that will expect more and more. You can do so much at home now, it’s almost ridiculous that you have to go to the front desk with some requests – but you could do everything from your phone. The pressure comes from the consumer, though. Hoteliers and casinos are feeling pressure to implement
more and more digital solutions. If you’re not in the Cloud and enjoying this integration layer, like a complete open system that all of these solutions can plug into and offer everything, and make it cost effective to have them, well, you’re just not going to make it. It’s that important. It’s a living ecosystem and it’s not going to break the bank
for hoteliers and casinos. With the introduction of Cloud, there is a complete upside-down business model being implemented in terms of how you execute integrations. In the past, each integration would cost you something and it would be a lot of effort. If you have to do a hundred things, it’s hard. With Cloud solutions and new integration platforms, it opens up what I call the gold mine, which is really getting to the capabilities, the APIs to do whatever you need to do, quickly, robustly and effectively. The business model is changing from the customer having to pay for each of those integrations, to the partner is consuming some sort of API bandwidth and the partner pays per consumption. If I’m going to consume a lot of your platform, I will pay a little bit more, but if it’s just a little I will pay a little. This allows our customers to innovate more, to try things out without worrying if they’re going to have to add 50 more solutions. SL: The speed of integration is another benefit here. When you’re running a legacy on-premises solution in a large casino environment, the upgrade schedule is once every three years, possibly longer. That means you’re only leveraging three-year- old technology and that’s about the best you can do until your next upgrade. The speed of innovation right now is as slow as it’s ever going to be, it is only going to get faster from here. For those who want to keep up, they’re not going to be
able to wait three or four years to upgrade a solution to get that latest technology. When you have the Cloud implementation where you are doing iterative updates say once a quarter, potentially rising to once a week in the future, customers on that platform will get the immediate advantage of the innovation taking place. Those that don’t move will really be handicapped, and those that can move faster will, 12 months from now, will be in a much better competitive position. That digital experience allows you to differentiate yourself and customers demand it. When you’re talking to C-level executives and they’re
wondering how they can compete, the digital experience is important and who knows what will be next? This year it was all about touchless and who could adapt quickest. LC: That’s true. What we learned with this pandemic is that change is here to stay. We expect it ongoing, whether it’s a pandemic or a political situation. We are dealing with so much in the world, therefore customers in hospitality have to think about how to be agile at all times. How can I move and change next month if I need to? Our systems have flexibility built in. If we update them every few months, it will be with something relevant in the world. For example, in our next release, we have the ability to use guest rooms as office space and meeting rooms. If you have small meetings with 2-3 people, as a hotel you can offer this smaller space to accommodate this growing trend and we give you the functionality to see its availability in the calendar, like it’s an additional function room. Hotels on our Cloud solution can implement that, the ones that are not, can’t. It’s about taking advantage of everything that’s being put in the core system.
The other thing is the marketplace; on the partner side, all
these integrations that are happening right now – and we have hundreds of vendors coming to us asking to integrate to our partners – we are creating a marketplace from that. This means our customers can say, I want contactless; let me see who’s integrated to Oracle Hospitality. They can then see a list and the capabilities of those partners, and it gives our customers the ability to discover solutions. They don’t necessarily know all of the options available to them, it simplifies a very complex process. And from there of course, we can implement very quickly.
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nenetus/Adobe Stock
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