News Briefs

FranConnect, a provider of sales, operations, and marketing solutions to franchises and multi-location businesses announced it has acquired RizePoint, a provider of quality management systems (QMS) serving global restaurant, retail, and hospitality brands. This is FranConnect's third acquisition over a four-year period and marks another significant milestone for FranConnect in extending its reach beyond franchise brands to serve the operational needs of the broader ecosystem of multi-unit owners, locations, front-line employees, and suppliers.

The addition of RizePoint to the FranConnect platform brings deep quality management capabilities to FranConnect's already comprehensive franchise management platform. Designed to help organizations effectively manage compliance, maintain quality standards, and streamline operations, RizePoint is known for its industry leading mobile auditing and inspection platform, used for location audits, health and safety checks, and supplier management. Three of the top five global restaurant brands use RizePoint, along with Ecolab, Wendy's, Focus Brands, Dine Brands, L Brands, and Sodexo. More than 2 million audits are conducted annually using RizePoint, with over one million users across 120 countries and translated in over 39 languages.

"The challenge of running a multi-location business gets increasingly complex with expansion and growth, regardless of whether franchised or owned. Brands need to ensure that operators are complying with brand standards, but also adhering to health and safety initiatives and following daily tasks and checklists. As well, the growing challenges to our global supply chain means that auditing suppliers is equally important to compliance against those standards," said Gabby Wong, CEO of FranConnect. "Along with FranConnect's market leading operational platform, our combined solution will enable us to monitor the performance of a brand, end-to-end, from the brand to the operator, location, front-line employees and even the supplier community."

Backed by Baltimore-based Access Holdings, RizePoint is headquartered out of Salt Lake City, Utah, with employees across North America and the UK. Rizepoint's offices and employee base will now be a part of FranConnect's global footprint. With RizePoint's customers, FranConnect's reach will now span over one million locations worldwide.

"The acquisition of RizePoint by FranConnect will greatly benefit our customers and the industry. By uniting forces, we are in a unique position to offer a more robust and comprehensive suite of solutions that will further empower our customers to effectively manage compliance, elevate quality standards, and drive operational excellence. This acquisition will accelerate our ability to innovate, develop, and deploy meaningful advancements to our products and solutions," said Kari Hensien, CEO of RizePoint.

"We are thrilled to welcome RizePoint customers and employees into the FranConnect community," said Wong. "Kari and her team bring deep expertise in QMS that our customers want and need from FranConnect. Further, with this acquisition, we continue to demonstrate that we intend to look across the broader market to provide the best tools and solutions to solve the unique challenges facing multi-location businesses."

Canaccord Genuity LLC acted as exclusive financial advisor to RizePoint for this transaction.

Domino's Pizza Inc. introduces its new and improved loyalty program. 

Domino's Rewards offers loyalty members even more opportunities to earn and redeem points across its corporate and franchise store locations. Domino's enhanced rewards program allows customers to:

• Earn points for less
  • Loyalty members will now earn 10 points on every order of $5 or more
• Redeem points for even more menu items – and earn free Domino's after just two orders
  • Members can redeem a variety of points for more menu items:
    • 20 points: A free dipping cup, a 16-piece order of Parmesan Bread Bites or a 20 oz. drink
    • 40 points: An order of Bread Twists or Stuffed Cheesy Bread
    • 60 points: A medium, two-topping pizza; pasta; Oven-Baked Sandwich; or a 3-piece order of Chocolate Lava Crunch Cakes
• Earn more rewards
  • Loyalty perks are now even better, as members will have exclusive access to member-only deals, special discounts and opportunities to earn bonus points!

"We are thrilled to give the brand's loyal customers additional ways to earn free Domino's items more often," said Mark Messing, Domino's vice president of digital experience and loyalty. "At a time when most brands are scaling back their loyalty programs and making it more difficult to earn and redeem points, Domino's is doing the opposite. We want to make it easier to reward our customers and give them more options so they can get rewarded faster."

Marketing a LTO 

From now until Oct. 22, 2023, rewards members can take advantage of a limited time offer to redeem 20 points for a free order of Domino's new Pepperoni Stuffed Cheesy Bread, which is normally a 40-point redemption, in celebration of the product's recent launch. 

Designed by sustainable tourism experts, Weeva champions continuous improvement actions, backed by consistent data management, to boost efficiency, reduce wastage and, ultimately, support profitability and business resilience within the industry. 

Renowned for establishing partnerships that keep its member hotels ahead of the curve, Design Hotels is currently hosting an ongoing series of online workshops and virtual roundtables to connect its members with partners, industry experts, and each other around actionable insights and forward-thinking ideas and practices. 

The first of these conversations, hosted by Elin Kann, Director Sustainability & Culture at Design Hotels, and moderated by Dr Andrea Ferry, Head of Sustainability at Weeva, focussed on the importance of developing an internal culture of sustainability. A key takeaway was: 

“If ‘vision’ is where you are going, ‘culture’ makes sure you can get there.”

Weeva’s reporting tools can generate tailored Impact Reports for hotels to share with their guests, tour operators and other suppliers. Reports show metrics such as the carbon footprint per bed night or an overall view of a property’s impact. It’s not about being perfect, but rather quantifying goals and showing improvement. Using a system like Weeva helps streamline internal management, sharing the load between departments, from HR employee wellness surveys for to showcasing your community projects. It is also an invaluable data aggregator for those wishing to gain certifications. 

Julie Cheetham, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Weeva commented: 

“We’re so excited to onboard many of the Design Hotels member hotels into our system in 2024, giving them access to all our best-practice educational guides, suggested improvements and easy-to-understand tools and dashboards that track results in real-time. 

The travel industry has long needed affordable, accessible sustainability technology to measure and improve operations for the benefit of profit, people and the planet – so it is wonderful to see our software being adopted by hotels of this calibre globally.”  

Stijn Oyen, Managing Director of Design Hotels, said: 

“We are delighted to collaborate with Weeva to share the exemplary sustainability efforts and successes of our member hotels in transparent, measurable ways. 

By utilizing Weeva’s data-driven, science-backed approach, our aim is to learn more about the impact our hotels have on the planet, and apply these insights to develop new, meaningful initiatives that guide them towards a more conscious, sustainable future.” 

Burger King France is among the hospitality businesses adding electric vehicle (EV) charging.  

The QSR has partnered with Allego N.V. , a pan-European public electric vehicle fast and ultra-fast charging network, to rollout of ultra-fast chargers across Burger King France drive-thru and dine-in locations that are not in co-ownership.

Following Burger King France’s call for tenders, Allego has been chosen as the partner of choice to enable the installation of ultra-fast charging stations at existing and future Burger King France locations over the next three years; the deployment of charging stations will also depend on the agreement of the various landowners. The partnership has the potential to enable the deployment of a large number ultra-fast charge points across the restaurant’s locations in France. The first sites are expected to be operational by Q3 2024 and for easy recognition for the drivers, the chargers will be fitted with both Allego and Burger King branding.

This new partnership is expected to be a significant addition to Allego’s network in France where it currently operates a network of 190 ultra-fast charging locations. The Company is also rolling out a network of 4,000 charging points across 400 Carrefour hypermarket locations, Pathé cinemas, Klepierre shopping center and more throughout the country, which positions Allego to be one of the largest destination charging providers across the French market. 

Mathieu Bonnet, Chief Executive Officer of Allego, said, “To meet the demand of the ever growing EV market in Europe, we must swiftly roll out high power chargers in locations that are most convenient for drivers. This sort of growth cannot be achieved alone, so we must work with like-minded partners to support the considerable change brought by e-mobility. Through this partnership, we can make charging more accessible and enjoyable so drivers can travel with ever greater ease. Allego is reinforcing its position as one of the leading ultra-fast charging networks in France.”

RoomRaccoon, the leading hotel management system for independent hotels, today announced its integration with Zennio, a pioneer in control automation solutions. This is the very first Energy Management System integration available to RoomRaccoon users, empowering hoteliers to enhance guest comfort and reduce energy consumption.

Zennio's energy-saving solutions, when combined with RoomRaccoon, optimize room settings based on occupancy. This smart integration boosts energy efficiency and leads to significant cost savings, with rooms automatically switching to energy-saving mode upon guest check-out in RoomRaccoon’s PMS. 

"Controlling operating expenses is essential for the success of any hotel property.  Given the current market conditions and the constant pressure on the hospitality industry, investing in climate control technology can be a smart move to reduce operational costs. With the addition of Zennio to our marketplace, we are able to offer our hoteliers a comprehensive solution that not only improves guest experiences but also optimizes energy consumption, leading to a significant reduction in operational costs," says Steven Reffin, Head of Partnerships at RoomRaccoon

Other benefits of the integration include: 

Personalized Experience: Hoteliers can enhance guest satisfaction by presenting guest details and preferences directly on Zennio's smart control interface, allowing for customized room settings and amenities throughout their stay.

Efficient Check-Ins: RoomRaccoon's property management system seamlessly syncs with Zennio's smart locks, providing guests with a hassle-free check-in experience.

Enhanced Eco-Friendly Reputation: Hotels leveraging this integration can bolster their reputation as eco-conscious establishments, appealing to environmentally-conscious travelers and gaining a competitive edge in the market.

The RoomRaccoon and Zennio integration is available to hoteliers worldwide. 

To give hotel AP managers, approvers, controllers and CFOs better tools to work through the invoice lifecycle, Aptech has entered into an integration partnership with Ottimate (formerly PlateIQ), a company providing AP automation via AI. Together, Aptech and Ottimate are giving time back to accounting teams by enabling them to upload paper and electronic invoices in bulk and eliminate 90% of vendor invoice processing. Houston-based American Liberty Hospitality is one of the first hotel management and development companies to leverage the joint technology.

“Today with Aptech and Ottimate we are reducing the time it takes to process vendor paperwork, obtain the necessary approvals, and effect payment,” said Charles Poirier, American Liberty Hospitality Chief Financial Officer. “The API integration between Aptech’s PVNG enterprise accounting platform and Ottimate has made that a reality, and without a high degree of difficulty in implementation.

“The intuitiveness of Ottimate has greatly benefited both our properties and corporate office,” Poirier said. “The OCR and AI learning aspect of invoice upload has greatly reduced the time required for property side AP activity, and the speed of the cloud-based platform is far superior to our previous system. Ultimately, we intend to use the Vendor Pay section of the system to reduce the workload on the corporate AP team. We expect this technology to simplify our AP processes throughout the organization and allow us to scale with much less difficulty on the AP and payments side of our business.”

With Aptech + Ottimate, hotel accounting teams receive:

• Invoice Automation: Capture and process invoices, reducing manual data entry and errors.

• Expense Tracking: Gain real-time visibility into expenses to make informed financial decisions.

• Streamlined Approval Workflow: Customize approval workflows to fit unique business processes.

• Vendor Management: Easily manage vendor relationships and negotiate better terms.

AI Automation

“Ottimate AI leverages large language models (LLMs) to support complex AP processing requirements, and it is compatible with PVNG,” said Matthew Wallach, Ottimate Partner Manager. “With zero to minimal training requirements, Ottimate can process large volumes of multi-page invoices, capture custom header and line item fields, and code invoices to multiple custom dimensions, including general ledger, departments, projects, and more.”

Ottimate captures data down to the line item with 99.97% accuracy and pushes the information to PVNG. The solution leverages in-house built AI and machine learning to code invoices to the GL within PVNG. Translating information based on historical data with machine learning and AI enables accountants to auto code specific line items, such as tomatoes, to the GL account.

“Ottimate is learning a hotel’s AP processes and eliminating human error from manual data processing,” Wallach said. “The technology is continuously learning how each hotel processes invoices and enters the data accordingly. It’s an irreplaceable time-saving tool.”

Best-In-Class AP

PVNG – named among the “Best Finance & Accounting Software” of 2024 by Hotel Tech Report – features Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger, Statistics, Financials, Bank Reconciliation, automated invoice processing, a myriad of payment options, and drill-down capabilities in financial statements and reports. It is the first hotel accounting solution to connect to the Plaid Data Network. It can handle single or multi-property accounting and can be deployed as a hosted service.

“Aptech and Ottimate are providing a seamless and efficient solution for hotels seeking best-in-class AP automation,” said Jill Wilder, Aptech President. “This integration partnership signifies a shared commitment to giving hotels end-to-end AP automation for a better day to day. By leveraging the strengths and expertise of both companies, this collaboration will help hotel accounting departments thrive. Through innovative solutions and a customer-centric AP approach, Aptech and Ottimate are making financial processing more streamlined and efficient.”

American Liberty Hospitality’s Poirier said he is thankful for the tech alliance.

“Improving productivity while staying cost competitive is a constant need for hotel operators,” Poirier said. “We appreciate the collaboration of these software providers and encourage both to continue to pursue other such improvements for their customers.”