In Blent your data is gathered from various systems at your property. Not only does Blent allow you to define the way you want to read that data, but it also permits you to mix it in reports and calculations to streamline your analysis.
Typically, a forecast report is where this practice can be observed at its most efficient.
Below, we will review how a forecast report can incorporate data from PMS, POS, HR, Accounting, and a Forecasting Tool, and then, with the addition of manual estimations, be turned into your next year's budget.
The actual figures in a forecast report are being supplied 100% automatically into the report in the following way:
- Rooms sold and Room Revenue are sourced from the PMS system
- Nb of hours worked by Housekeeping (HK) is sourced from the HR system
- Total HK variable cost is sourced from the Accounting System
- F&B revenue is sourced from POS system
Then the forecasted figures can be partially sourced from a forecasting integration (such as Duetto, for example), partially automatically calculated based on the previous year's performance, and partially estimated manually based on internal analytics.
This image is an example that combines a very generalized representation of some of the Rooms and F&B department reports' lines purely for the sake of demonstration.
1. First, all the figures that are sourced from an integration like Duetto are automatically appearing in your report and are refreshed each day - like Rooms Sold and ADR in Version 1 (see image above). (In Version 2, you are free to add your own estimations.)
2. Some of the costs can be automatically calculated from last year's figures or copied from current actual performance (e.g. fixed cost). In our example, we are taking the variable cost - HK hourly rate - from the previous year and adjusting it to inflation. Blent will automatically take the number from the last year same date and multiply it by the multiplier you define.
3. Some figures you can estimate manually by entering numbers into the fields or doing a mass-upload.
4. And the rest of the lines such as Occupancy, Room Revenue, HK total cost, and F&B revenue from the hotel guests, will be calculated automatically using the formulas you define and the values from the previous three steps.
For example, these lines will automatically be calculated in your forecast:
- Accommodation Revenue = Rooms Sold (from integration) * ADR (from integration)
- Housekeeping Total Variable Cost = HK hourly rate (from last year adjusted to inflation) * (HK hours per room (from last year or your manual estimation) * Rooms Sold (from forecasting integration))
- F&B revenue from hotel guests = F&B upsell per guest (from last year's data or manual input) * (Nb of guests per room (from last year or your manual estimation) * Rooms Sold (from forecasting integration))
Numbers from each forecast version are stored separately, thus allowing for an easy creation of multiple independent versions. Even if the first version is sourcing the data from an external integration, e.g. Duetto, the other versions can store your own numbers.
You can learn more detailed technical information regarding Forecast in this article from our Knowledge Base.
Blent is constantly working on enhancing and pushing the limits of our Forecast tool to increase its convenience and efficiency.
If you want to see the forecast module in more detail or test-drive this modue for your account(s), please write to us on support@blent.io.