IQware Solves Needs of SKY Resort Management

IQware's Property Management System built by people who understand the business

• 
  SAVE
• 
  SHARE
• 
  TEXT SIZE
• 
  PRINT
• 
  COMMENT
• 
  PDF

. April 21, 2009

APRIL 21, 2009 - Back in June 2007, SKY Resort Management converted its properties to IQware in just 60 days. Today, even with expansion, all but one SKY property uses the IQware Global Property Management System, and the firm plans to install IQware at another 890-unit property soon.

One of the biggest reasons SKY Resort Management selected IQware was its back end hotel accounting functionality.

'A lot of systems do the front office, but IQware also does the back end equally well,' says Randy Steinbeck, Vice President, SKY Resort Management. 'For us, the big challenge was handling condominium-hotel accounting really well. We found IQware to have the most new and innovative approaches to dealing with condominium-hotel's technology needs.'

Condo-hotels are a very specific market that needs a lot of functionality, and IQware offers a unique set of industry-specific tools and features to help operators with a variety of issues, including room rotation and balancing room revenue among unit owners. The system integrates condo ownership, owners' fulfillment and property-management applications, and IQware is constantly adding new functionality proactively to address the needs of its users.

Built by Hoteliers for Hoteliers

'What truly makes IQware unique is our willingness to provide ongoing customized development to clients with unique requirements,' emphasizes David Perkins, President of Deerfield Beach-based IQware. 'It is this ongoing R&D development that has positioned us as one of the most feature-rich Global Hospitality Software Solutions in the world today.'

It is a key fact that all of the IQware systems and add-on modules are truly customer engineered, because IQware customers help engineer the new features with their feedback. A constant focus on improving the user experience and incorporating ongoing feedback has helped shape the uniquely user-friendly, intuitive IQware systems.

'IQware software is built by people who understand this business, and is for people who are in this business,' notes Steinbeck. 'The condominium-hotel business requires a very robust, very scalable and a very flexible system. There is no cookie-cutter approach that works. With IQware, we had the flexibility to customize the system to work with the condominium owners so we could provide them with exactly the services they expect from us. That was a critical plus with IQware.'

Many of the R&D staff at IQware have worked in various facets of the hotel and lodging business, so they have experienced first-hand what it takes to make things really work and turn a bigger profit. They have made a point of putting their hotelier experience into IQware's software. That is why IQware can handle the business functionality needed to operate in all the different lodging types, including business hotels, condominium hotels, timeshare, vacation club and fractional. This sets IQware apart from all the other solutions available in the marketplace.

Five-Star Service

Steinbeck deals with a lot of complex issues on a daily basis. When something comes up that needs to be addressed, he appreciates the access he has to everyone at IQware.

'When we say we need a change or to have something new added to the system, we get it remarkably quickly with IQware,' he adds.

'IQware has the willingness and talent to be flexible, rather than just saying, 'Here is our stuff and you have to live with it until we get around to changing it,'' says Steinbeck. 'They will consistently keep working, modifying and doing what we need, sometimes even on the fly in a very short amount of time to give us exactly what we need to be more successful in what we do.'

While IQware works hard to manage the process of issuing new versions and updates or patches, IQware realizes it has to be flexible and responsive to accommodate customer needs when issues arise.

'What it really comes down to is responding quickly and knowledgeably,' says Perkins. 'We know it is vitally important that everyone work together and be on the same page because our software is at the core of all of our customers' operations - it's what they live or die by. Since we started out in hospitality 25 years ago, every decision we've made has kept foremost in mind that our success depends upon our customers' success.'

Feedback & Followup

When SKY Resort Management puts in a system, they rely on the experience of IQware to get it done efficiently. This lets them stay focused on their unique business needs, doing what they do best, and letting IQware drive business process improvements.

'The more efficiently we can do things and with less errors, the better the financial benefit to us,' observes Steinbeck. 'Since this software system is the primary basis of everything we do, being able to have it do what we need it to do is critical to our financial success.'

Since IQware has its software installed in numerous hospitality properties across two dozen countries, it brings a vast body of business and technical expertise to the table. Even so, IQware is constantly asking end users how it can enhance its system.

'It is a tremendous help to be able to meet as often as needed with IQware's executive staff, all the way up to David Perkins, the president, about our needs.' Steinbeck points out, 'We have complete access to them and the ability to have extensive two-way discussions about what we need to do differently and what we need customized to fit our needs.'

And IQware truly recognizes the benefit of doing this. Many of the challenges their customers come up with allow IQware to improve its software and present new and useful features to other users, to the benefit of everyone.

New Generation Features Drive Business Growth

Steinbeck explains that SKY Resort Management recently needed a significant change to the condo-hotel module. SKY asked for the flexibility to change what were system-wide settings for generating condominium unit owner statements to individual settings.

'This change was critical, eliminating a lot of manual work we otherwise had to do, and IQware really worked with us to make it happen,' Steinbeck adds. 'We told them what we needed and and they involved everyone in R&D to make it happen quickly and smoothly.'

'We know constant development is absolutely necessary for condo-hotels to meet individual client requests, unique condo laws, and stay competitive in the ever-changing business landscape,' points out Perkins.

SKY recently started really beginning to try and use the full functionality of the system's four-tier yield management and expects this to help optimize occupancies, rates, RevPAR and margins. SKY is finding that IQware's ability to interface to ecommerce sites and to automate many otherwise-manual processes to be quite beneficial. SKY also has installed the new IQware POS module at its four properties with food-and-beverage, mini-mart and gift shop operations. With it, SKY gets 100% real-time synchronization of the POS into the PMS. Since IQware is based on the latest Microsoft technologies, it scales well and is robust. It is a SQL-based database system, so it provides easy access to all of the data for unique reporting purposes. SKY also makes use of other ease-of-use features integral to the system that allow management to remotely access all of their properties from their central offices. This makes it much easier and faster for them to manage, update and report on their properties.

'It's important to us that we have a partner like IQware,' says Steinbeck. 'Of all the systems we have used in the past, this is the one where we have enjoyed the most flexibility - we actually get the results we want with IQware.'