SageNet, a Tulsa-based managed network, digital experience and security services provider, has appointed industry veteran IV Dickson as its new Chief Innovation Officer (CIVO). Dickson previously served as SageNet’s VP of Digital Experience.

In the newly created CIVO position, Dickson will be responsible for driving innovation and fostering a culture of forward thinking and creativity that anticipates and solves customer challenges. As CIVO, he will be focused on helping both SageNet and its customers recognize emerging trends and identify opportunities for improved productivity and growth.

“SageNet enjoys a 25-year track record of innovation. The CIVO position recognizes the growing importance of innovation in this hyper-accelerated environment of technological and cultural change,” said Brad Wise, SageNet’s CEO. “IV truly understands the customer is the heart of our business, and the key to success goes beyond providing outstanding support today. It anticipates the needs and opportunities of tomorrow and provides the leadership to help the customer arrive and thrive.”

As CIVO, Dickson will also collaborate with the broader SageNet organization – including R&D, engineering, operations, product, sales and marketing – to ensure SageNet’s innovation initiatives are aligned with the company’s overarching business strategies. This includes investigating new product and service offerings, evaluating new business methodologies, and exploring ways to improve existing processes.

“This role is really all about listening, outside-the-box thinking, and teamwork with partners, customers and colleagues,” said Dickson. “During the pandemic, we witnessed an acceleration in the confluence of digital and physical experience never witnessed before. “My entire career is built on the confluence of the digital and physical world. I’ve always been fascinated with finding new ways to use connectivity, creativity and technology to help customers build innovative and highly sustainable brand experiences, whether that’s AI, IoT or something else entirely.

“This is not about invention. It’s about collaboration and implementation. It’s about taking great ideas and turning them into something better, whether that’s an improved customer experience, service or physical product. That’s what drives me, and all of us at SageNet,” concluded Dickson.

Dickson enters this position with more than 20 years of experience in digital engagement hardware, software, integration and solutions, to bring with him a deep understanding of how to harness physical-digital convergence to create business objective-driven customer engagement platforms.

Arch Amenities Group, a full-service, global provider of wellness, amenity management and meeting services for commercial and residential properties, hotels, private clubs and pools, announced the launch of its proprietary survey and salary benchmarking tool, Wage Insights^sm.

Wage Insights obtains and leverages data across the hospitality and wellness sectors to enable hotels and wellness centers to better formulate their employee compensation and growth strategies.

Barry Goldstein, Arch Amenities Group chief executive officer, called the Wage Insights survey and reporting tools “some of the most defined and confident ways companies can inform their hiring strategies and react quickly to today’s dynamic labor market using current market data that is both internally equitable and externally competitive.”

Wage Insights surveys are conducted, certified and interpreted by secure, third-party partners to capture and collate national, regional and state-level data from across the hospitality and wellness industries. All subscribers, from C-suite leaders to general managers, can select from several tiers of subscription-based continual reports or choose individual reports via one-time downloads.

Wage Insights reports include comprehensive visual tools to support the budgeting and forecasting process. Reports are generated as spreadsheets and data fields in PDF format, providing wage benchmarking information specific to job type, category and location.

Goldstein credited Michael G. Tompkins, managing director of Hutchinson: An Arch Company, with conceiving the benchmarking survey and insights tool. “With fast-changing economic shifts and the post-pandemic hiring climate, the ability to leverage hyper-current survey data to benchmark salaries and wages is a game-changer for businesses looking to maximize efficiencies for growth,” Goldstein said.

Tompkins added that as demand for wellness services and amenities increases, “we know that more informed recruiting practices lead to better talent acquisition and propel business forward,” adding: “The Wage Insights benchmarking tool helps employers zero in on hiring the best talent in the market, ultimately leading to longer-lasting, more engaged teams.”

MCOMS announced that it signed a global agreement with Accor to provide guest facing solutions and services. This partnership marks a significant milestone for MCOMS and reflects its commitment to delivering innovative and reliable technology solutions to the hospitality industry.

According to MCOMS' CSO Dimitris Petinos, "We are thrilled to partner with Accor and become a certified partner for guest facing solutions and services. This partnership not only demonstrates our strong dedication to the hospitality industry but also highlights our capabilities and expertise in providing exceptional guest experiences."

MCOMS is a provider of technology solutions for the hospitality industry, offering a wide range of services such as IPTV, VOD, Cast, Mobile, Internet and Digital Signage. Its solutions are designed to enhance the guest experience, improve operational efficiency and drive revenue for its clients.

LG Business Solutions USA has introduced a new high-brightness 4K UHD laser projector featuring 21:9 aspect ratio support, maximizing visibility for conferencing apps and presentations in commercial environments where demand is growing for ultra-wide conferencing options. The new 6,000 ANSI lumen LG ProBeam BU60PSM offers a bright, ultra-wide picture that provides more than enough space for hybrid workplace conferences, and it is ideal for today’s most advanced conferencing apps, including Microsoft® Teams Front Row.  

“We increasingly live and work in a world of hybrid spaces, making virtual conferences and presentations more important than ever, and our new 21:9 aspect ratio laser projector enables employees and executives to leverage the latest software tools with full visibility while simplifying side-by-side comparisons and multi-document viewing,” said Tom Carroll, Sales Director at LG Business Solutions. “The ultra-bright picture capabilities and 285-inch diagonal maximum screen size make this new projector ideal for sunlit conference rooms, huddle rooms, board rooms or group meeting spaces.”

The LG ProBeam BU60PSM is capable of presenting a true 4K UHD picture with a 3,840 x 2,160 resolution and a 16:9 aspect ratio, while the user-selectable 21:9 configuration utilizes a 2,560 x 1,080 resolution. Details and text are clear thanks to a 3,000,000:1 contrast ratio. The laser light source is rated to provide up to 20,000 hours of superior performance. 

The LG ProBeam BU60PSM is designed for simple installation with vertical and horizontal lens shift. It has dual 5-watt speakers, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability to satisfy various setups, and offers simple wireless options. It includes two HDMI inputs, two USB inputs, two RJ45 ports, HDBaseT support, RS-232 control and a 3.5mm audio out port to ensure connectivity with existing peripherals and control systems.  

The latest generation of conferencing apps are adding features such as multiple live views, in the new Front Row feature in Microsoft Teams. With the ProBeam BU60PSM’s 21:9 ultra-wide picture, attendees can enjoy an intuitive experience where virtual participants are all shown simultaneously across the bottom of the screen, below the main presenter’s image. This can enable greater freedom to showcase documents or images alongside live video, as well as ensuring future compatibility and maximized utilization of new software features.

Chowly, launches its Smart Pricing solution designed to help small and medium-sized (SMB) restaurants maximize digital ordering profitability, allowing them to compete more effectively in the digital ordering and third-party delivery marketplace.

The Right Price at the Right Time

Chowly's Smart Pricing solution equips restaurants of all sizes with the ability to optimize their off-premise ordering and streamline incoming orders with a single click. The solution can look at a multitude of factors, like peak or slow periods as well as weather and holidays, using AI and machine learning to ensure the right price at the right time. These pricing strategies can be focused on specific platforms, like third-party marketplaces, or can be all inclusive of one’s off-premise ordering channels.

As part of the six-month beta testing phase for the Smart Pricing technology, Chowly has restaurant brands seeing a daily increase of 9.4 percent in sales and an increased basket size of $1.11, which represents a 38 percent increase in profit for each order. Since this solution enables restaurant brands to implement the optimal pricing strategy at the right time, one of the restaurant brands is on track to generate an increased annual profit of almost $10K for each store.

SalesAndCatering.com andVisrez, a hotel and venue sales tool used to bring event spaces to life, have strengthened their long-standing partnership by debuting an enhanced integration between Visrez’s Floor Plan Builder and STS Cloud.

Visrez Floor Plan Builder software produces superb photorealistic 3D event plans using exact replicas

of event spaces, furniture, and prop tools. With this enhanced integration, users will automatically generate a 3D Event Plan in Visrez whenever they create a BEO in STS Cloud, with updates automatically reflected to ensure continuity and streamline the event planning process. Planners and sales teams can easily toggle between proposals, contracts, menus, venue maps, and any other element of an upcoming event via a singular Event Dashboard.

“Visrez is a highly respected leader in 3D visualization and has become a valued partner to the

SalesAndCatering.com team since we first joined forces in 2019,” shares Ryan Hamilton, CEO and Co-Founder of SalesAndCatering.com. “Early on, we recognized the value our clients would derive from integrating our products, as 3D room diagramming was not formerly available within the STS

Cloud platform. Now, by licensing SCDC to become an authorized reseller, we can give our customers a more seamless buying experience when purchasing Visrez's Floor Plan Builder as a part of their STS Cloud enhancements.”

The evolution of the partnership between SalesAndCatering.com and Visrez will have a meaningful

impact on the industry standards informing the event and meeting planning process. Using Visrez’s innovative 3D visualization technology, hotel and venue brands can create stunning 3D event and meeting plans using exact replicas of their event spaces and furniture. When combined with STS Cloud, our next-generation, cloud-based Sales and Catering platform, hospitality brands unlock an unparalleled event sales tool in its functionality and ease of use for sales teams and planners alike.

Ryan adds, “People buy what they can see and understand; they don’t buy what they don’t understand. Putting together attractive, thoughtfully laid out proposals with unique and immersive 3D elements ensures planners can truly visualize what their event will look like at your hotel or venue space and better connect with your property and sales team. This integration is a game-changer for hotels and venue spaces eager to win more group business.”

A powerful, multi-property management solution known for its advanced functionality and intuitive

user interface, STS Cloud takes care of all CRM functions, catering needs, document workflows, booking management, lead management, reporting, and so much more. The addition of Visrez to the STS Cloud suite builds upon our platform’s existing suite of powerful features that help hospitality sales teams create more engaging and immersive presentations that convert leads into happy, loyal customers.

“The integration between Visrez and STS Cloud has been a game-changer for our properties,” shares

Dirk Beck, Director of Group Sales & Catering at The Loren Hotels. “Offering guests a truly luxurious, memorable, and immersive experience is a core part of our offering and brand promise. With that in mind, having a sales tool that can seamlessly create immersive, photorealistic event plans has helped us ‘wow’ prospective clients and win more business.”

This integration comes at a perfect time, as hospitality brands seek new ways to engage with

planners effectively in the post-pandemic world. With more businesses skipping site visits in favor of a more cost-conscious and streamlined event planning process, hotels and venues require tools and strategies that help them wow prospective clients from afar.

“Visrez solves the problem of capturing visual assets on-site without needing on-site visits, room

set-ups, or professional photoshoots,” explains Nicky Morrogh, founder of Visrez. “Each account comes with the Visrez library, which contains over seven thousand unique 3D event furniture models. Additional items can be requested through Visrez support, and all new objects are made available to all Visrez users. Our goal is to make the Visrez the industry’s largest 3D event resource of its kind.”

Visrez serves over twelve hundred properties worldwide, with over 10,000 spaces built and a library

of over 7,000 unique event furniture objects which are available to all users. Current STS Cloud and Visrez customers can immediately take advantage of this enhanced integration.