| This section is intended to help you answer any questions you may have regarding the following: |
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| Services Questions
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| How to Get Started Questions
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| Security Questions
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| FAQ Answers |
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| Q. What is included with the innCenter service?
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| Designed specifically for independent hotels, one low subscription fee includes all of the following: |
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- innCenter, our full-featured Property Management System (PMS)
- Booking engine to take reservations directly from your own website
- Automatic distribution of your inventory to any/all innRoad partners
- Automatic upgrades
- Training for all of your staff
- Ongoing customer care and support
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| Q. How can innCenter bring me new business? |
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| With innCenter, you get two new channels for business you never had before. First, you can book reservations from your own website for no additional fee. Second, you can choose to distribute your inventory to any of our distribution partners. innRoad is constantly building new relationships with companies in the business of selling destination based and travel services, providing a constantly growing source of potential customers for your business. |
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| Q. I'm a General Manager. How can I benefit from using innCenter? |
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| With innCenter, you get all of the tools necessary to manage the most essential aspects of the hotel business, using a single entry point. Because every department shares the same database, our clients benefit from the improved flow of information between reservations, front desk, marketing, housekeeping, and management; in fact, the entire company. The single image inventory that innCenter provides, not only lowers the cost of managing data in multiple channels, but optimizes revenue because every channel gets access to the last room, maximizing RevPAR. innCenter also provides a financial benefit for your company that cant be matched by any other full-featured Property Management System: subscription pricing. Subscription pricing means there are no upfront costs and no long periods of time before you see a return on your investment. You pay at the end of each month, according to how many room nights your guests actually consume, improving your overall cash flow. innCenter allows you to focus on the hospitality business, leaving the job of implementing, upgrading, and maintaining technology to the experts. |
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| Q. I work for a property management company. How can I benefit from using innCenter? |
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| innCenter was designed from the ground up to empower the entire organization to easily share information with each other, providing the benefits of a completely integrated system. That holds doubly true for extended enterprises such as management or holding companies. The key benefit of innCenter is a centralized database, allowing the formation of a Virtual ChainSM. innCenter enables the management and reporting of data from multiple properties, regardless of the brand, centrally and in real-time. Furthermore, reservations can be centralized into a call center without integrating with a central reservations system (CRS), or alternatively, individual properties can easily book guests at sister properties when they dont have availability themselves. Security, user permissions, and data visibility are easily managed within innCenter, limiting each user within the Virtual Chain to see and manage only the information you want them to. Ultimately, innCenter maximizes the economies of scale for management companies, improving the sales and operations of the properties they manage, and providing them with a competitive advantage. |
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| Q. My company uses a representation company to market our inventory. Can they access innCenter, too? |
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| Yes, innRoad has two ways in which your partners can have access to your inventory. First, because innCenter is accessed via the Internet, anyone you setup as a user can access innCenter securely from any Internet connection. You can set them up with any level of privileges your relationship warrants. By extending innCenter to external partners, your organization can easily share inventory, and keep on top of all your reservations from outside channels. Additionally, your representation company can access your data via a two-way interface, directly with innCenter. Contact your Account Manager to learn more information about creating real-time interfaces to third parties. |
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| Q. How does innCenter work? |
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| innCenter is a Web site hosted in a secure data center. In the same way you would log on to your favorite Web site, you can connect to innCenter. If you have a Web browser and an Internet connection, you are ready to start using innCenter. |
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| Q. What is an Application Service Provider? |
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| Application Service Providers take advantage of the internet by installing and maintaining the applications at our data center while our customers access them with an Internet browser. This way, we can share fundamental economies of scale with our customers while offering more robust, timely and complete services than most companies can provide internally. With application hosting: |
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- The programs and data are installed and maintained at our secure Data Center facilities
- Our IT experts build and maintain the computing infrastructure hardware, software, and networking
- All the customer needs is a web browser for each user
- Customers can access the application from anywhere: home, airports, or remote and multiple management sites
- We handle all the maintenance, including backups, disaster recovery and upgrades
- We proactively monitor systems for availability and performance--identifying and correcting potential problems before they happen
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| Q. How does innCenter differ from traditional hospitality software? |
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| Traditional Software |
innCenter |
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| Software and hardware must be purchased and/or financed, including possible additional per user charges and annual maintenance costs. |
Software and hardware must be purchased and/or financed, including possible additional per user charges and annual maintenance costs. |
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| Requires software installation, typically on all user desktops and centralized servers, requiring additional lead time and technical resources to configure. |
Nothing to install. If you have a browser, you are ready to use innCenter immediately. |
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| Companies will need to establish an internal support team for software and hardware maintenance, security and capacity management. |
Nothing to maintain. The programs and data are installed and maintained at our secure Data Center facilities. Our IT experts maintain and monitor all computing infrastructure. We proactively monitor systems for availability and performance--identifying and correcting potential problems before they happen. |
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| Periodic upgrades require technical resources and may include purchasing new hardware and/or software. |
Upgrades happen transparently and automatically provide all customers with new features without any additional effort or cost. |
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| Remote access, or multi-site installations require implementation of additional specialized hardware and software. |
Authorized users can access the application from anywhere: external vendor, home, while traveling, or from remote offices. |
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| Multi-site disaster recovery scenarios are expensive and require technical expertise usually not available at small companies. |
innCenter is deployed across completely redundant infrastructure at every layer, including across two datacenters, in the event of a site-wide outage and is accessible from any web browser, providing a complete business continuity solution. |
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| Q. How do I get upgrades to innCenter? |
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| Because innCenter is a Web site, any time we add a new feature, you will have access to it immediately the next time you visit the Web site. There is no need to download any software or make system adjustments. Also, all upgrades are included in your monthly subscription charges, so there are never additional costs for upgrades. |
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| Q. What future products and services are planned by innRoad? |
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| innRoad will continue to deliver new features, functionality, and additional modules that complement the core competency of innCenter, and make it easier for hotels to maximize their occupancy and provide better customer service. Specifically, we are currently working on adding additional Property Management functionality and developing technology to interface to the many other systems found inside hotels such as Point-of-Sale (POS), telephone, security, entertainment, energy, and others, allowing full-service hotels to benefit from innCenter as well. Additionally, innRoad is always working to add new distribution channels to our existing network of distribution partners. |
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| Q. Can I integrate innCenter with other applications such as my phone system or financial application? |
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| innCenter was built using the latest technology from Microsoft, known as .Net. .Net was specifically designed to allow disparate systems to talk to one another using common open standards such as XML. Data can be imported and exported easily between innCenter and your other systems. However, communication between your PMS and your other systems is important, which likely dont use Internet technologies, so we are currently building interfaces to many of the most popular systems found inside hotels. While we aim for universal connectivity between innCenter and any other system, it is impossible for us to create interfaces for the thousands of different systems in the market today. We work with our clients as we constantly add interfaces to our library, so the costs are affordable, and can be integrated into your transaction fee. Contact an innRoad representative today, to discuss possible solutions for your property(ies). |
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| Q. How do I get access to innCenter? |
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| Its quick and easy to sign up, just sign up online and you can begin using innCenter within 24 hours. Its simple to setup, and its free for 30 Days. |
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| Q. How much does innCenter cost? |
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| After your free 30 day trial is over, innCenter pricing is simple: a flat fee of $10 monthly per room or $1 per room night booked, which ever is lower. In addition, our Distribution Partners charge commissions, typically between (5-10% of room revenue) for rooms sold through them. Distributing your inventory to partners is optional and not required to benefit from the other features of innCenter. Our transactional pricing eliminates the need for software, hardware, IT, ongoing maintenance, and upgrades. For a fraction of the cost of traditional PMS software, innCenter is priced to maximize your return on investmentenabling your hotel to run more efficiently and increase occupancyregardless of your size. |
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| Q. How do I pay? |
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| You are invoiced monthly and may use a corporate credit card or set up a purchase order.
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| Q. Is any training required to learn to use innCenter? |
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| innCenter is designed to be easy to learn and can be used immediately. Our customers find that using innCenter is similar to using other Web sites - extremely intuitive and user friendly. If you know how to use the Web, you will know how to use innCenter. |
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| Q. Is there training available if I need it? |
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| While training is not required, we offer free training for users and administrators of the innCenter service. The sessions run less than one hour and cover typical usage by a user and administrator. |
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| Q. What involvement is required from my company's IT department? |
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| Usually, none. innCenter is accessed through the Internet via a Web browser and requires no modifications or upgrades to your existing environment. All you need is Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 5.5 or higher) and you are ready to use innCenter. If your company uses a pop-up blocker, you will need to add innCenter to its list. However, if you have internal systems which you would like to integrate with innCenter, your System Administrator will need to work with us to setup the integration. Otherwise, there is no hardware, software, or network equipment to purchase, and the application is accessed through a standard Web browser, so your IT department will not need to implement or maintain innCenter.
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| Q. How quickly can my property(ies) be up and running? |
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| With innRoad you can be up and running immediately. It typically takes less than 1-3 business days, depending on the size and complexity of your property(ies) to set up and customize your innCenter application.
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| Q. What security does innRoad provide? |
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| innRoad utilizes some of the most advanced technology for Internet security available today. When you access innCenter using Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 5.5 or higher), Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology protects your information using both server authentication and data encryption, ensuring that your data is safe, secure, and available only to registered users in your organization. Your data is completely inaccessible to anyone inside or outside your organization unless you have created a user account. In addition, innCenter is hosted in a secure server environment, which uses a firewall and other advanced technology to prevent interference or access from outside intruders. Our servers are physically located off our business premises in a secure facility accessible only to a small number of authorized personnel.
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| Q. Do I have the ability to control who sees my data? |
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| Your administrator controls access to your data. You can set users up with any level of privileges their business function within your company warrants. Setting up predefined roles makes it easier to centrally manage user privileges. |
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| Q. How can I be assured my data will be kept private? |
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| innRoad is committed to keeping your business data private and secure. To this end, innRoad has expressly stated how we will handle your private data. For a greater understanding of the legal obligations innRoad adheres to regarding data privacy, please refer to the innRoad Privacy Policy as well as the innRoad Terms of Use agreement. |
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| Q. Does innRoad use my data for internal usage? |
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| No. As stated in the innRoad Privacy Policy, we will not review, share, distribute, print, or reference any such Data except as provided in the innRoad Terms of Use, or as may be required by law. Individual records may at times be viewed or accessed only for the purpose of resolving a problem, support issue, or suspected violation of the Terms of Use, or as may be required by law. Of course, customers are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality and security of their User IDs and passwords. |
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| Q. Can I house a backup of my innCenter data at my own company? |
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| In order to keep your administration and overall total cost of ownership down, innRoad handles all the backup and storage of all of your data for you. However, we do provide additional services, for a fee, in which we can provide you with physical copies of your data on a Daily, Weekly, or Monthly basis. |
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