Buffalo Lodging Associates Adopts ProfitSword Data Management Suite

ProfitSword, a developer of business intelligence and data integration software for the hospitality industry, was selected by Buffalo Lodging Associates, an award-winning hotel management and development company, to maximize its operational decision-making abilities via seamless access to real-time performance data. With a portfolio consisting of 47 limited service and select service branded properties that are located throughout New England, New York, Florida, Ohio and Canada, Buffalo Lodging Associates has further opted to adopt the full suite of ProfitSword data management solutions to streamline the data-gathering process across the breadth of its organization.

With a reputation for developing and managing award-winning hotels that maintain above average profits through exceptional guest service and superior management, Buffalo Lodging Associates initially compared several providers in order to ensure that it could implement a solution fully capable of meeting its data analysis needs. Company leadership ultimately selected ProfitSword due to its ability to meet its demands for instant and real time access to data from individual properties, specific regions as well as from across the organization as a whole. This is achieved via ProfitSword solutions being able to seamlessly integrate and retrieve data from disparate hotel systems, as well as facilitating the ability to export data to the accounting platform used by Buffalo Lodging Associates. 

"As someone who oversees our organization's digital marketing team, ProfitSword streamlines our ability to create sales and marketing plans, with hotel teams, regional teams and corporate teams able to access and share both current performance and projected performance along with commentary on what that performance may mean and what should be the areas of focus," said Sean Clancey, director, digital and IT strategy at Buffalo Lodging Associates. "By pulling these plans, we are able to quickly determine who needs help and where, which before would have involved hours of conversation with hotels in order to find out what their needs are."

Initially implementing ProfitSage at all of its properties, the hotel management company credits the solution with saving hours of manual data entry per month. This is accomplished using ProfitSage's ability to automatically compile and segment all performance data which is then exported to their accounting system and shared via customized reports. Such reports can include details on financial performance, labor statistics, guest service scores and STR data; all accessible on a daily basis and allowing both hoteliers and corporate leadership to gain immediate insight into matters relevant to their specific responsibilities and interests.

"Since partnering with ProfitSword our team has been able to significantly streamline our data management and business intelligence processes," said Nick Lamparelli, vice president of finance at Buffalo Lodging Associates. "We are now able to benefit from a level of detailed analysis that ensures each of our properties operate with even greater efficiency and with an ability to enhance their revenue streams even further than before. The time-savings involved also mean that hotel staff members are able to focus more on their guest-facing responsibilities, such as greeting those arriving in the lobby and ensuring that they are fully satisfied with their experience. This not only aids in strengthening a hotel's overall reputation, but also increases an employee's ability to live up to our company's commitment of exceeding guest expectations."

Buffalo Lodging Associates chose to implement ProfitSword's full suite of applications which includes ProfitSage, ProfitPlan, ProfitPace, and ProfitWizard. With the addition of ProfitSage, Buffalo Lodging Associates gains the ability to automatically integrate data from disparate hotel systems into one centralized data warehouse. ProfitSage provides a window into all the data needed to operate successfully. The end user can use that data to create their own customized dashboards or access reports such as daily revenue, daily labor analysis, cash handling and profit and loss statements all in one platform.

With ProfitPlan, Buffalo Lodging Associates gains the ability to have customized, web-based reporting such as annual business plans and monthly and weekly performance reports that automatically update with relevant data to allow for commentary and strategy that improves communication and transparency across the entire organization. The ProfitPace solution automatically gathers future on the books data across multiple sales platforms and standardizes individual and multi-property pace and productivity reporting. ProfitPace helps the company automate, integrate, and visualize their sales performance data. With the inclusion of ProfitWizard, Buffalo Lodging Associates can further combine business intelligence, decision support, performance management and ad-hoc reporting for an even greater in-depth analysis of data.

"Combining the power of automated data gathering with a web based user interface that is customized to your needs allows a company to remove data silos and become efficient and productive with their data," says Paul Bennie, director of business development at ProfitSword. "We have found that companies quickly find a return on their investment with ProfitSword's partnership in many ways. Their ability to manage their business and improve the bottom line is greatly enhanced with our full suite of applications. We are thrilled to participate in Buffalo Lodging Associate's ongoing success."