The unique challenges affecting today’s lodges, casinos, spa resorts, stadiums, and other businesses making up the hospitality industry deserve attention from all relevant departments, even when the connection appears to exist indirectly. For instance, improving the guest experience isn’t just about providing great customer service. Back-end processes, such as asset maintenance and upkeep, can have a huge impact on whether guests enjoy themselves enough to post a stellar review. Therefore, maintenance fits well into service plans.
Continuous improvement strategies should include the periodic assessment of existing maintenance systems in comparison to technology currently available. Analysis of this gap could expose the need for small changes, from the extension of training programs, to significant alterations, like a CMMS Consulting services project to optimize system usage or a total CMMS upgrade.
It Begins with a Strategy
It’s easy to overlook maintenance management as an important part of hospitality operations. After all, maintenance departments are often viewed as cost centers. Maintenance Technology magazine once wrote that the cost center mentality “contains structural disincentives that work against optimization.” A profit center approach, on the other hand, rewards efficiency and justifies proven resources.
“How can maintenance contribute to repeat guest stay goals, and what KPIs will ensure they’re on the right track?”
So how can you fulfill a profit center strategy in your hospitality business? One of the first steps can be the creation (and tracking) of a budget within your CMMS that is in alignment with company-wide and departmental goals. If a company goal is to increase repeat guest stays by 50% next high season, how can maintenance contribute, and what KPIs should be established on your CMMS Dashboard to indicate whether the team is on the right track? The budget function of your CMMS should give you the flexibility to view individual location budgets as well as roll-up budgets across sites, where applicable.
CapEx projects, such as major equipment purchases or renovations, should be managed by maintenance and operations within the CMMS for unified management. With integrations to accounting, ERP, and other systems, modern CMMS stands as a “system of record” for hospitality organizations.
Does maintenance have a major hotel improvement project this year, in an effort to nab those repeat guest stays? Capital expenditure projects should be designated in the CapEx function of the CMMS, with visibility granted to various Specialized Users, such as finance and purchasing/procurement.
Extended Stay in Process Revitalization
Business processes are not a stagnant set of activities – or, at least, they shouldn’t be. When continuous improvement comes into play, nothing is off the table for progress potential. Managers can realize improvements in many areas by evaluating existing processes, including the following:
- Streamlining the maintenance request process: Maintenance isn’t the only one to notice a leak or malfunctioning AC unit. But without a dedicated communication channel to funnel these requests, maintenance is left answering phone calls, texts, radio calls, e-mails, and shuffling through paper notes. Granting requester access to CMMS allows the front desk, food service personnel, housekeeping, and others to submit and check on requests in a consolidated fashion. On the other end, maintenance has one system to reference for new, pending, and completed requests.
- Planning to win: Regular preventive maintenance shifts from an aspiration to a reality when incorporating the job planner function of a robust CMMS. Scheduling room inspections, housekeeping, safety inspections, pool cleaning, and other activities based on labor availability and specialties, and seasonal peaks becomes a drag-and-drop process that is accessible to all types of users throughout the organization. If your HVAC Technician only works first shift 3 days a week, as an example, you can build out your PM schedule for this equipment to accommodate this specific time while balancing other equipment upkeep based on outsourced availability, as appropriate. A mobile CMMS app helps full, requester, and specialized users stay on the same schedule at all times.
Reaching Ideal Performance
Every element of the hospitality experience is part of a whole, and the effects of re-evaluating maintenance processes and related technologies can be as pertinent and impressive as grand-scale initiatives. Organizations that maintain a continuous improvement strategy that includes maintenance management, with employees receiving clear communications, are better equipped to serve their guests effectively. Firms that place these efforts on the back burner, on the other hand, may find themselves trailing one step behind.
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