News

myDigitalOffice (MDO), the world’s fastest growing hotel performance management platform, announced the acquisition of Datavision Technologies, an industry leader in hotel data analytics and business intelligence for luxury resorts.

Click here to learn more.

Volume 6, July 2022

All About Trains

Author: SUDHARSHAN CHARY

In India, we have a parable about a little train that was doing daily runs to a beautiful hidden valley. The train was fast and efficient, and people loved riding the train over the hills and dales. As time went on, more and more people wanted to ride the train, so they kept adding carriages until the train was starting to slow down. On a parallel track was a larger train with more engines that was going mainly to big cities. The bigger train really wanted to go to all the beautiful places that the little train was going to. And the little train wanted to be big and powerful like the larger train.

One day, the two engineers were having coffee together and had the brilliant idea to combine the two trains. So they did and ended up with one big powerful train that could go everywhere, and everyone was happy. Actually, there is no train parable. I made the whole thing up. But I would like to take the opportunity to announce that Datavision was acquired byMyDigitalOffice, and we are now part of a globally-dispersed company with 250 people and 3000+installations in big cities and beautiful hidden valleys. We are now a big powerful train that can go anywhere and get there fast! How did this happen, you ask? We need to roll the calendar back to 2020 when the entire travel industry was wobbling. But then something interesting happened. Toward the end of 2020, as the industry was still reeling, Datavision started adding new customers. This carried over into 2021 and we were signing new customers at a very fast clip. We realized that we would need to start growing really quickly to keep up with demand. Sherry and I had a meeting over coffee and decided that we should probably explore the idea of joining forces with a larger organization with an established infrastructure to fast-track our growth.Enter MyDigitalOffice. They checked every one of the boxes that we had set up – big, but not too big. Check. Preferably another BI company. Check. Someone that is rapidly growing as well, so we can grow together. Check. Last, but not least, someone with nice people that would be a good cultural fit for Datavision customers.Double check. After a year-long search, we found our perfect fit! Needless to say, the entire Datavision team is very excited to start the next chapter in our growth. We hope you are as well! Please do not hesitate to contact Sherry or me or anyone else in Datavision if you have any questions at all.

“We’re thrilled towelcome Datavisioninto the MDO familyand couldn’t be moreexcited for ouramazing customers.”-Ali MolooFounder and CEO of MyDigitalOffice

Upgrades

JAY CHARY

Still on SQL 2012?

Datavision supports you on many versions of MS SQL server. Microsoft’s end of life is approaching for SQL 2012. And Microsoft announced a way to purchase now and plan more time to plan for a move later in 2022 or 2023. Read More here on End of Support

New Features in Datavision

Datavision provides the ability to track some miscellaneous statistics in the Resortcube. This is designed for data not found in the current source systems. (PMS, POS, GL, etc) This can be entered daily or once a week for the past 7 or 30 days. The data can be used in the BI cubes or Power BI views. The data elements are defined by the property and set up by Datavision.

Sample Metrics

• Electricity used atTesla or other EVCharging Station per day/month
• Monthly water bill costs
• Daily electric metersat different location around the property(Hotel, Golf, Outlets)
• Hotel shuttle trip counts and miles
• Engineering ticket counts by day
• Monthly pounds of fertilizer being used for the golf greens

Steps to Implement

1. Decide what metrics need to be manually input
2. Decide the frequency
3. Datavision can help build the sheets for entry

Data Culture Club

SHERRY MAREK

If you are reading this, you are part of a special club. We won’t start singing“Karma Chameleon” or “Do you really want to Hurt Me”. We are talking about data. Lots of data. Hotels have been enjoying the ability to collect data starting with PMS installations in the 1970s! Alas, sometimes, there were not a lot of people looking at the data. Many companies still have today, GIGO or problems with data quality (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Today, we are happy to work and provide robust and easy-to-use data warehouses for your reporting needs (self-service!!) There are many steps on a data culture journey. You need to create standards, and checks to confirm the team understands and follows the standards, and, of course, uses the data collected.

Hope you enjoy your data journey.

The Datavision data set continues to grow as we connect more systems and continue to evolve the data warehouse/data lake. The end goal is to put data in the hands of all people who need it in all roles of a property or corporate office, enabling more ‘data citizens’ in customer locations around the world! Thank you for being part of the Datavision family and growing with us!

Series of articles from Microsoft

• Power BI adoption roadmap overview
• Do you have a ‘Center of Excellence

Upcoming Events

Datavision University to be revealed at an upcoming date and location. Keep an eye out within the next couple of weeks.

Book Club

It’s a great time to grab a book and spend some time diving into a different world! You may be interested in Fiction, Sci-Fi, Romance, Self-Help, Non-Fiction, Historical Fiction, or maybe just the user manual for your remote control.

We asked the DV Team to suggest a good book they read in 2022:

• ‘The Wave’ by Sonali Deraniyagala(Sudharshan Chary)
• ‘The Kaiju Preservation Society’ by John Scalzi (Chuck O’Halloran)
• ‘Footloose: Twisted Travels across Asia, From Australia to Azerbaijan’ byMark Walters (Sherry Marek)
• ‘Then She Was Gone’ by Lisa Jewell(Sherie Pillis)
• ‘Coach Wooden and Me’ by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Jay Chary)

Need more ideas? Here are more choices for new reads below to take on your vacation or staycation!
Read: https://bit.ly/3zuwz1m
Read: https://bit.ly/3O1F5Jg

Dash Joke!
Q: What’s the difference between someone poorly dressed on a bicycle and someone nicely dressed on a bike?
A: A tire!

Introducing: PIE

NEEL CHARY (REPUBLISHED FROM LAST NEWSLETTER)

Microsoft Excel has been the mainstay of reporting for many years and will continue to be. But if you are ready to add more interactivity and visual excitement to your analytics, get ready for MicrosoftPower BI!

So, what is Power BI, you ask? It is a service from Microsoft that is designed to provide users with highly interactive visuals and new ways to look at their data. Power BI consists of two main parts –Power BI Desktop (to design dashboards) and the web portal hosted in the Microsoft cloud (where users view the finished product). The Desktop application lets users create brand new dashboards and play with data in new ways. Since Microsoft is constantly updating Power BI with new content and visuals, there is always a new and exciting way to slice and dice your data.

Datavision has now fully integrated Power BI into our reporting platform and even given it a new name – Datavision Pie. Pie is our suite of reports built out specifically to take advantage of everything Microsoft has to offer in Power BI. Similar to regular Datavision, Pie allows you to combine data from multiple sources – PMS, POS, Sales & Catering, Spa, Golf, Labor, Back Office, Comp Set, social media, Web Analytics, etc. – and deliver information in ways you never knew existed.

The best part of all this? Microsoft makes collaboration and sharing a breeze. Once all the users have signed up for a Power BI Pro account within their organization, all they have to do is click a link and they will be taken directly to their customized suite of reports, all packaged together nicely in ourDatavision Pie web app. The data automatically updates every single morning, so you don’t have to worry about looking at outdated data. Interested in learning more aboutDatavision Pie? Send a quick email over to our support team(suppport@DatavisionTech.com) to let us know you want to learn more about our Power BI reports, and we’ll provide information to show you exactly how powerful this tool can be for you to change the way you run your daily and weekly meetings.