Casino Enterprise Management

No matter the size of the operation—be it a single-property hotel and casino with various point-of-sale (POS) needs or a vast enterprise incorporating gaming, hospitality, retail and other entities—every business can realize the bottom-line benefits of integration and efficiencies. With a wide variety of POS and hospitality applications, MICROS Systems Inc. has a solution for every enterprise, from the smallest of the small operations to an entire empire of properties spread across the globe. With a history of innovation and a reputation for outstanding service, MICROS can integrate the front-end and back-end operations of any size enterprise seamlessly.

OPERA: The Omnibus Hospitality Management Tool
Just how versatile and scalable is OPERA, the property management solution from MICROS? Here’s the tale of the tape: The smallest operator using OPERA is a two-room property in Europe. The largest operator is a Las Vegas casino resort with almost 4,000 rooms. As for enterprise operations, there is an operator with four hotels and 694 rooms that it manages with OPERA, while another major casino operator manages its 38,000 rooms on one central OPERA database that covers all 14 of its properties. And then there’s Europe’s second-largest hotel group, which has 850 hotels and 63,000 rooms, all managed by OPERA. In total, more than 13,000 hotels in more than 140 countries use OPERA to manage their operations.

What makes OPERA so versatile? According to Ed Chapel, vice president of National Accounts and the Hotel Casino Division for MICROS, the various OPERA packages offer a solution for any operation. From OPERA Xpress, designed for smaller to medium-sized customers, to OPERA Full Service for higher-end customers who need more sophisticated operation tools, there’s a match for everyone. “Our clientele comes from every range in the lodging industry,” Chapel says, “from small family-run inns, over business motels and hotels, branded and chain hotel properties, luxurious resort properties, major hotel casinos, universities, cruise ships, vacation ownership properties and condo hotels.”

OPERA’s bells and whistles vary by version, but its basic applications include the powerful hospitality management functions every operation requires—and in the case of the OPERA Hotel Edition, all in a single database. OPERA Hotel Edition includes database support for Property Management, Sales & Catering, Condo and Vacation Ownership Management, Revenue Management, Web Booking Engine, Gaming Integration, Self-Service Kiosk, and Activity Schedulers based on HTNG standards. With hundreds of standard reports, an additional simple report writer for customization, more than 500 certified interfaces to third-party systems, and software development kits for additional integration options, property management can configure OPERA to meet its operational needs.

OPERA Enterprise Edition takes the OPERA Hotel Edition to the next level, allowing operators to manage all of their properties with one application. OPERA Enterprise Edition includes the management tools of OPERA Hotel Edition but adds applications such as Central Reservation System, CRM and Data Warehousing in the form of Customer Information System, Sales Force Automation and Business Intelligence.

One of the features of OPERA that is specifically tailored to hotel and casino operators is OPERA Gaming. Integrating with all industry-standard player-tracking applications, OPERA Gaming enables quick, fact-based management decisions and highly targeted guest services—all based on a hotel guest’s play in the casino. With this seamless application, hotel management can request and award comps, monitor and control comp expenses, enroll hotel guests into the casino system, look up existing players, and provide secure access to the latest guest expenditures, stay history, gaming statistics and guest preferences. And all that information isn’t just useful in determining player comps on the hospitality side of the operation, but it can also be integrated into the hotel and casino’s marketing strategy, giving specific and detailed information about the entirety of a guest’s activities at the property.

If an operation doesn’t need of all of those high-end bells and whistles, MICROS also offers its latest application, Operetta. This “ultra-light” PMS arrives as an out-of-the-box solution that includes hardware, pre-configured software, Web connectors, selected interfaces and minimal training requirements for operators with basic operating requirements. “This is a highly cost-effective solution for small properties that need to address basic hotel operation needs,” Chapel says. “Think OPERA ‘Mini-Me,’ which will surely impact the economy market with a highly affordable solution at a very small footprint.”

Other new features include the addition of text messaging to OPERA and a new resort dashboard that debuted in March. The dashboard allows a user to book activities like hotel rooms, golf, spa and restaurant tables from a single screen. And just on the horizon for OPERA is what Chapel calls “Generation Y” functionality, allowing interface with handheld devices and consumer websites.

Although OPERA features a robust lineup of applications, it won’t take a team of technicians to get an operation’s employees up and running on the software. “The OPERA front end is extremely user-friendly, with an intuitive graphic interface that offers drop-down menus listing all possible values,” Chapel says. “Users don’t need to memorize anything, as the workflow and data entry options can be recalled via function keys at any time.” And with OPERA’s customization options, each property can have its own tailor-made OPERA, where the screens follow the specific business process flow, and users only see the features and options they really use.

At the Point-of-Sale
Aside from offering solutions for hotel management, MICROS also helps businesses bring their peripheral offerings under the same umbrella, offering seamless integration of a property’s hotel, restaurants, clubs and retail operations. With a wide range of products designed for operations of any shape and size, MICROS has a solution for every property with a POS need. And just how does MICROS evaluate those needs? “Each MICROS product line is developed with the guidance of industry leaders through our MICROS Steering Committee,” says Chapel. “Each product is developed to help create operational efficiencies to the market for which it is developed.” That’s where MICROS finds the impetus for new products and features—straight from the horse’s mouth.

Some of the diverse POS offerings from MICROS include 9700 HMS, MICROS RES (Restaurant Enterprise System), MICROS e7 Series POS system and Simphony. Each application is targeted to a specific set of needs an operator may have.

MICROS’s 9700 HMS is a scalable POS system that offers reservation and table management, food and beverage catering, and Web-based reporting. This application lays the foundation for true enterprise functionality, providing an immediate impact on the overall costs associated with POS implementation, as well as the costs associated with ongoing management and maintenance. With open database architecture, 9700 HMS is flexible, scalable and resilient. Typical customers operating 9700 HMS include casinos, high-volume nightclubs, stadiums, leisure and entertainment venues, cruise ships, and hotel chains—and that broad appeal is why 9700 HMS is the most widely used restaurant POS software in the industry.

For businesses that operate only restaurants, MICROS offers its targeted RES system, which includes the MICROS 3700 POS. This robust, multi-unit POS system is a fully integrated enterprise software solution that covers not only POS, but also back office, guest experience, restaurant operations and all the hardware components needed to keep the business running. MICROS’s 3700 is an SQL-based POS solution that can be integrated with any OPOS-compliant hardware. Found in both independent restaurants and multi-unit operations like Burger King, IHOP and Ruby Tuesdays, MICROS RES allows the independent operator to utilize state-of-the-art functionality and allows big chains to implement a similar look and feel across multiple stores.

For smaller operations, MICROS offers its MICROS e7 Series POS system, combining the reputation and reliability of MICROS hospitality technology with a price suitable for table service and quick service restaurants, delis, sandwich shops, nightclub and bar establishments, and more. MICROS e7 combines an all-in-one MICROS Workstation 4 (WS4 LX) with a powerful embedded software application based on the Microsoft Windows CE .NET operating system. The MICROS e7 system is typically used by operations that do less than $1 million in annual revenues.

Simphony is MICROS’s true next-generation enterprise-class hospitality POS product, capable of being customer-hosted or maintained and managed by MICROS’s world-class hosting services. Designed and built for scalability and flexible deployment, Simphony employs a modern Services Oriented Architecture that is capable of supporting thousands of workstations and generating terabytes of sales data. Simphony’s reporting solution is Web-based, minimizing the technology footprint on the property. Simphony can support either SQL Server 2005 or Oracle.

With resiliency against temporary network outages, minimizing the impact of network problems on daily operations, Simphony has been designed from the beginning with security in mind. And although it can be scaled up to handle multi-property POS installations consisting of thousands of workstations, Simphony can also scale down to smaller installations as well.

And installation doesn’t have to be a headache. “Our extensive experienced implementation teams make executing on deliverables a smooth process,” Chapel says. No matter what the need, MICROS offers a real solution, made simple.

MICROS is the largest provider of open POS solutions to the hospitality industry, and there’s good reason why the industry leader has carved out such a big role in the industry. It doesn’t matter what the specifics of an operation are—its size, its specific offerings, its specific needs—MICROS has a solution to streamline any operation and provide real savings at the bottom line.

Michael Shirek is the Multimedia Editor at Casino Enterprise Management. He can be reached at (701) 293-7775 or editor3@aceme.org.