Robert K. Weiler, Executive Vice President, Global Business Units From mobile to big data, to cloud, the convergence of digital technologies is impacting every industry driving significant change in the manner in which hotels, food and beverage companies and retailers transact business. Oracle Hospitality, the new global business unit of Oracle, is a dedicated attempt to help the hospitality and retail sectors accelerate the move to the digital economy, which would enable hospitality customers to compete more effectively in a business landscape that has been wholly reshaped by disruptive technologies. “Oracle Hospitality builds on Oracle’s industries strategy of creating dedicated global business units that help our customers solve their most important business challenges, with a combination of best-of-breed technology and extensive industry-specific expertise and experience,” says Bob Weiler, EVP, Global Business Units, Oracle.
Leveraging Oracle’s integrated technology stack and cloud portfolio, Oracle Hospitality delivers a wide range of software, hardware, and related services alongside a rapidly growing portfolio of cloud solutions that enable customers in the hospitality industry to provide superior services that exceed guest expectations. Oracle’s platform for the hospitality industry offers comprehensive and integrated software, modern cloud offerings, and hardware solutions for hotels, casinos, table and quick-service restaurants, sports and entertainment venues, and cruise operations.
Retracing the acquisition of MICROS by Oracle in 2014, the launch of Oracle Hospitality combines the deep domain expertise of MICROS, with the power of Oracle’s scale and innovation, to accelerate development of innovative cloud, mobile, and guest experience technology. With thousands of MICROS systems already deployed in hotels, restaurants, cruise operations, and other venues, Oracle Hospitality is building on the strong foundation and extending MICROS’s commitment to providing fast and reliable service and solutions.
“By combining these two great brands we are creating a portfolio that has never before been seen in the hospitality industry,” says Mike Webster, SVP and GM, Oracle Retail and Hospitality. With more than two decades of retail industry experience working with hundreds of retailers in more than 30 countries, Webster affirms, “We have assembled a strong team of industry veterans focused on the ways to help our hospitality customers succeed in providing their guests a great experience.”
Oracle Hospitality and Oracle Retail’s deep, industry-specific domain expertise helps deliver mission-critical solutions that aid customers in realizing their most important business initiatives.
Oracle MICROS Workstation 6 is a guest engagement device with its design leveraging modern technologies to help improve guest transactions, streamline business operations, and enhance guest loyalty
In response to fast-changing guest expectations, Oracle Hospitality’s comprehensive, scalable, and globally deployable cloud solutions enable the hospitality sector to accelerate its move to the cloud. By eliminating the cost and complexity of managing on-premises applications, hospitality organizations can focus on their guests and their business, delivering a consistent experience across venues and remain competitive in a rapidly evolving industry. Likewise, catering to the influx of mobile, a catalyst behind the transformative changes sweeping the hospitality industry, Oracle Hospitality delivers fully integrated mobile solutions. With the upsurge in guest expectations, the staff can easily conduct transactions and have informed engagement with guests anywhere onsite, not necessarily from behind a counter.
Oracle MICROS Workstation 6
Given the fact that hotels and restaurants nowadays employ mobile, social and informational tools to interact with guests, a new type of “engagement” device at the point of service (POS) is becoming a necessity. Oracle’s recently introduced MICROS Workstation 6 caters to the hospitality and retail company’s requirement to elicit much more from their POS devices, helping companies transition confidently into a digital world.
MICROS Workstation 6, a next-generation digital engagement device facilitates service and workforce innovation across the hospitality and retail industries. The point-of-service terminal with its modern design, works in tandem with mobile, cloud and social media to deliver consistent, integrated content across multiple sources.
For hospitality businesses, MICROS Workstation 6 is a guest engagement device with its design leveraging modern technologies to help improve guest transactions, streamline business operations, and enhance guest loyalty. The workstation is part of an integrated strategy built around content delivery, transcending well beyond daily transactions to proffer guest recommendations, roll out special promotions and personalize the guest experience.
Designed as a single engagement device, the workstation is an aggregation point to deliver digital content from diverse sources to both staff members and guests.
For instance, a training video can be shared with a new worker while a guest can view a spa package or the special menu being offered. The elegance of the device is particularly meaningful wherein the staff can flip the screen around at a hotel desk to show a guest a train schedule, while also giving employees better access to information they need. And with an embedded operating system, security is ensured.
With technology reshaping the hospitality sector, the focal point is the guest. While guests expect immediate, contextual responses to their questions, the hospitality staff need to be empowered with transparent information access. Businesses can provide the personalized guest experience that customers demand by rebuilding guest experience strategies around technologies like mobile, cloud, and social media, in tandem with systems like Oracle MICROS Workstation 6. Deemed as the vanguard of a new category of devices that serve as centralized content delivery vehicles, the Workstation drives better guest engagement, from a hostess station in a restaurant to the front desk of a hotel to a retail location.
Elegantly built and integrated with mobile, the POS with its rich features is exceptionally reliable and durable with an attractive finish and small footprint. Leveraging select Oracle Hospitality and Oracle Retail applications, the new terminal provides a fluid, intuitive touch screen experience while minimizing the learning curve for new employees. The Workstation runs on the latest Intel Atom processor for high performance and low thermal output, and features a modular, integrated three-track magnetic card reader that is capable of 3DES or AES encryption at the swipe. The six USB ports included in the elegant design allows companies to attach peripherals such as scanners and cash drawers.
The Workstation expands Oracle’s MICROS integrated family of engagement devices, which also includes Oracle’s MICROS E-Series tablets in 8-inch and 11-inch sizes. Additionally, the integrated design and user experiences provide hospitality and retail workers with a consistent content delivery system across multiple access devices, with tablets and workstations specifically designed to withstand the rigors of these environments.
Strategy for the Future
According to Webster, Oracle’s rich tradition of investing in research and development and a strong commitment to innovation translates to a very large global team dedicated to building an innovative guest experience. “At the foundation of that model is our ability to leverage the power of Oracle’s red stack. It’s about leveraging cloud and our implementation best practices to reduce the time it takes to deliver our solutions to market and responding to the market demand for a more flexible, lower-cost solution,” affirms Webster.
The firm’s simple strategy is to build the broadest and deepest portfolio of solutions for the hospitality industry. “We want to deliver that by attracting and developing and retaining the best team in the industry, and finally, by curating a community of customers and partners that is focused on success,” concludes Webster.
