A step forward for Service Providers in the hospitality market.

Introducing a new feature, application, or partnership is always an exciting moment.

True story. That’s why the announcement made during the Cisco Live 2018, held last week in Orlando, made the event even more special this time.

Today, indeed, the partnership with Cisco, Imagicle, and Kurmi make Cisco HCS Shared Architecture + Imagicle Hotel Services + Kurmi Management Platform an exclusive end-to-end solution, seamless for Customers and streamlined for Service Providers.

Let me break it down for you.

Hospitality industry.

The hospitality industry is undergoing a technology-driven transformation, and guests’ demands are changing in relation to that.

Nowadays, mobility, geo, and smart content services, as well as new guests targets (like millennials) are challenges hotel owners must face. Moreover, they have to keep up to date their communications solutions in order to grant high-level services and quality.

It’s out of doubt that calling platforms are a requirement for any hotel, but, they are no longer a great source of income. Consequently, huge investments in solutions with a CAPEX model definitely don’t fit financial needs of small and medium hotels.

An OPEX model with a simple subscription, that can always grant updated services, could be the right choice in order to maintain hotel performances as well as respond to an increasingly high competition.

All of this opens up a greenfield opportunity especially for Service Providers, now able to offer a real value UCaaS proposition to hotels from a few to thousands of rooms and hotel chains. That way, they can easily centralize communications platform and PMS.

It’s not a trivial matter. Many are the challenges Service Providers must take into consideration for introducing their UCaaS for the hospitality market:

1. Features on room phones
   Check-in/out, wake-up calls, maid service, call billing
2. PMS Integration
   wide compatibility with existing PMS’ and room phones services triggered by Hotel PMS workflows
3. Existing hotel phones along new phones provisioningAnalog or 3rdparty SIP phones support is the key in order to avoid total replacements at day 0§
4. Cost reductionThrough consolidation and streamlined operations

While Cisco HCS grants…

• Comprehensive Collaboration As-a-ServiceWith Desktop and mobile collaboration apps available, to always be in touch with guests via chats or audio/video calls
• Video ConferencingExecutive suites, business centers, and meeting rooms can be empowered with Cisco Video endpoint DX, SX, WebexBoard, and other video room systems
• Dial PlansPossibility for service providers to offer hotels trunk for PSTN access

…Imagicle Hotel Services enables…

Cisco HCS – and other Cisco Calling platform, to be adopted in the hospitality market by providing all the missing features.

The solution can enable room phones setting guest name at check-in time, execute wake-up calls, manage voicemail, provide call billing, set room status and lock the phones at check-out.

Concierge and Receptionists will simply use their preferred Property Management Systems (PMS) to get their job done, nothing to learn, as Imagicle Hotel Services will work behind the scenes offering a total integration with the PMS and the calling platform.

At the moment, in fact, we support 100+ of PMS’s (Oracle Hospitality OPERA PMS Fidelio Infor, Protel, Galaxy, etc.).

Last but not least, Imagicle, besides mandatory guest services, can provide value-added services, such as a fax server, attendant console, and call recording to facilitate concierges’ and booking teams’ work.

…And Kurmi does the rest.

With Kurmi Software, service providers will have a simple, intuitive solution for automated deployment and administration of HCS Shared Architecture. Service providers could save up to 80% of the time it usually takes to deploy a hotel’s telephone system.

Unique hotel onboarding portal for Service Providers.

An accurate and intuitive tool that provides:

• SIMPLE Input Dedicated Hotel form with PMS info
• MAGIC Outputs, Hotel and guests provisioning in Imagicle LDAP
• Cisco UCM configuration, specific dial plan, and devices registration
• Imagicle new hotel configuration with PMS info via API

What does it mean? Simple. Seamless hotel integration. Concierges can keep working with their existing PMS and guests have all the expected features on room phones. Which, in turn, means service providers can create a standout offer that meets all of the hospitality market’s cost-control challenges, to stay competitive while providing them with quality services for their calling needs.

In day-to-day life, this translated into better management and hospitality services.

Our Experience.

Being involved from Cisco BU in the development of mandatory services to enable Cisco HCS Shared Architecture, Imagicle has a huge experience with HCS and Service Providers UCaaS offering. Also, it supports the Over The Top – public internet access, recommended deployment model.

For its part, Kurmi has an equally great experience in automating provisioning and management of the platform.

Obviously, our experience is not limited to HCS SA, but, as well as our solutions, HCS DI instances fit any platform, and with the same suite Service Providers can offer different services.

Available on Cisco GPL together with the other Imagicle apps.

Imagicle Hotel Services can be ordered via Cisco GPL through the Solutions Plus program, together with other 6 Imagicle apps: Attendant Console with Advanced Queueing and Auto Attendant, Call Analytics, Contact Manager, and Digital Fax.

Either you are a family business or a large enterprise and are compatible with Cisco UCM, BE6000-BE7000 and HCS, this solution will perfectly fit your needs.

It’s a real chance to improve the way you work. Go and make the best of it!

Find out how to order on cisco.imagicle.com.

Read or hear more.

You can listen to the dedicated podcast realized by Telecom Reseller. They interviewed me and Pascal Moindrot, COO & North America Managing Director of Kurmi Software during the last Cisco Live.

Stay up to date on the coolest things. We’ll keep doing them.

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