Luxury Hotel Brand Deploys Enterprise Scale Procurement Solution
London, February 26, 2008 -BirchStreet Systems is pleased to announce that Hilton Hotels has deployed its online e-Procurement System in Egypt. The first property in Sharm El Sheikh is now live, along with the Central Purchasing Office in the World Trade Centre in Cairo, with the remaining Egyptian properties deploying throughout early 2008.
This announcement comes only a few weeks following the news that the first Hilton Hotel in Paris had deployed BirchStreet Systems online e-Procurement System and that a program was in place to deploy to the other Paris properties. This endorses the fact that the software is really gaining global recognition, with rapid expansion to the client base within mainland Europe and the UK.
“We are proud to be working with Hilton on successfully deploying the very first e-Procurement system in any hotel in Egypt ever,” said Doug Sanborn, president and CEO of BirchStreet Systems. “Our solution is a natural fit for a multi-national hotel brand like Hilton and works seamlessly with the company’s current procurement activities and suppliers. Our success in Egypt, together with the growing interest throughout Europe, demonstrates that the system adds value across a wide range of environments.”
The BirchStreet Application Suite provides Hilton with a single online portal on which to conduct all procurement activity. In addition to streamlining the procure-to-pay cycle, the system and its built-in data warehouse provide real-time visibility and analytics on all procurement activity across all properties, as well as top-down control over product choices, brand standards, supplier contract compliance and purchasing procedures and controls.
BirchStreet provides an ideal procurement solution for hospitality companies, food service organisations, hospitals, universities and other organisations that conduct a mix of food and non-food purchasing activity. The BirchStreet Application Suite can be run as a single-property package or as an enterprise-wide solution to help organisations identify their collective buying power, improve operational execution and lower costs. The software is focused on organisations where food and beverage represents a significant part of purchasing activity and includes numerous features to accommodate the unique needs of the food service industry. Additionally, BirchStreet customers can leverage existing interfaces with thousands of hospitality and food service suppliers and distributors.
“We are happy to continue bringing our portfolio online with Birch Street and we are planning a comprehensive deployment schedule for 2008,” said Steven Henderson, Hilton Hotel’s director of procurement systems. “We plan on running all purchases through BirchStreet, including food and beverage, which represents a significant portion of our total procurement volume. The estate-wide visibility we obtain from the reports generated by the BirchStreet System will help us drive both buyer and supplier compliance. This, along with the time-savings we derive from the automation of our procurement workflows, will have a direct and almost immediate impact on our bottom line.”
About Hilton Hotels
Hilton Hotels Corporation is the leading global hospitality company, with more than 2,900 hotels and 490,000 rooms in 76 countries and territories, including 100,000 team members worldwide.
The company owns, manages or franchises a hotel portfolio of some of the best known and highly regarded brands, including Hilton®, Conrad Hotels & Resorts®, Doubletree®, Embassy Suites Hotels®, Hampton Inn®, Hampton Inn & Suites®, Hilton Garden Inn®, Hilton Grand Vacations™, Homewood Suites by Hilton® and The Waldorf=Astoria Collection®.
The Hilton Family of Hotels adheres to founder Conrad Hilton’s philosophy that, “It has been, and continues to be, our responsibility to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality.” The company put a name to its unique brand of service that has made it the best known and most highly regarded hotel company – be hospitable®. The philosophy is shared by all brands in the Hilton Family of Hotels, and is the inspiration for its overarching message of kindness and generosity.
For more information about our company, please visitwww.hiltonworldwide.com, and to learn more about our be hospitable® philosophy, please visit www.behospitable.com
About BirchStreet
BirchStreet delivers its solution over the Internet, using the “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model, which reduces the total cost of ownership compared with the traditional method of buying and maintaining enterprise software. BirchStreet delivers its on demand eProcurement and back office solutions to some of the world’s leading hospitality companies, including Hilton Hotels Corporation, Hyatt Hotels, Marriott International, Interstate Hotels and Resorts, and The Marcus Corporation. Over 1,300 hotels use the company’s full-featured, full-service procure-to-pay solutions in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The solution combines flexibility, reliability and scalability with the operating advantages of an outsourced service. Multi-lingual and multi-currency capable, BirchStreet’s solutions provide “best of the web” capabilities to mid-tier and global hospitality companies. BirchStreet allows customers to reduce the risk, complexity and cost associated with large-scale procurement and back-office solutions, while empowering business users and delivering unprecedented ROI. The application suite leverages BirchStreet’s network of over 50,000 industry suppliers and includes strong food and beverage features, e-procurement and RFQ; budget tracking and workflow; recipe management and menu engineering; inventory and receiving; AP automation; and capital project management. Headquartered in Newport Beach California, the company is managed by a team of hospitality and enterprise software veterans. For more information, visit www.BirchStreetSystems.com.