Inventory Management and Procurement for Hotels

Using AI-enhanced features, the solution helps reduce buying and management costs by 10%.

The company and product

Avisio is a supply management platform that allows restaurants and hotels to achieve more control in their purchasing, inventory, and warehousing operations. In turn, they can reduce their buying and management costs by 10% and limit their waste, with AI-based advice and actionable insights combined into real-time reports.

They also offer integrations with hospitality management tools such as ASA Hotel Software, EUCASOFT, and Naramis.

Client’s feedback

Matthias Depenbusch

CO-FOUNDER, AVISIO

Minding the business perspective

I really appreciate how Monterail is able to dig into a project from the business angle. Starting with the very first conversations, we found in Monterail a partner we could discuss our product goals with and bounce off ideas for our first MVP. Currently, I’m very happy how everyone on the team, from the project manager to the backend developer, actively has our users in mind while building our application.

The Challenge

The founders of Avisio realized that the hospitality industry has a problem with efficient management of inventory and purchasing orders.

They came up with a solution that would allow them to digitize and simplify the chaotic and outdated process of keeping inventory and purchasing food, beverages, and supplies.

A comprehensive inventory management software tailored to hospitality needs would allow hoteliers to lower procurement costs and keep track of their inventory by automatically updating purchase volumes based on sold and bought products. This would grant hoteliers drastically improved insight into their inventory, help them predict future needs, save time, and make informed decisions.

Key challenging areas:

Building a functional MVP in four months.
Improving usability to take away the complexity from the user.
Creating a purchasing software that is able to visualize price comparisons and send orders to suppliers.
Developing an inventory management suite that includes stocktaking, delivery check-ins, and stock take-out functionalities.
Establishing a complex inventory database to facilitate analysis and decision making.
Accessing a partner company’s master data through a WebService.

The Process

The app had to be functional for both hoteliers managing inventory and suppliers providing the platform with their data.

Moreover, it had to be ready for future iterations and new features, including integrations with Property Management Systems that manage hotel bookings.

After analyzing the client's needs it was decided that React.js would be used for the frontend because of its versatility and flexibility. It's also easy to combine with Typescript and allows for fast implementation of new features.

For backend development— Python and the Django Web framework for their consistency and the rapid MVP development capabilities they offer. PostgreSQL was selected as the database of choice.

Elasticsearch, with its fast and complex full-text search capability, powers the search functionality in the app.

Core efforts included:

Building an MVP in 4 months, using primarily React.js and Python.
Building a user-friendly, intuitive Web interface with React and making it responsive on tablets.
Creating a functional supplier tool.

Team’s voice

Olgierd Gawroński

Senior Project Manager

Digitizing the process

The biggest challenge we faced was building a tool that would digitize the procurement processes in hotels and, at the same time, make it user-friendly for hotel employees who are used to more traditional, paper-based workflows.

The Outcome

The development process resulted in a completely functional MVP, ready for testing by end users and ultimately the market introduction.

The Web app is also responsive on tablet devices.

Future plans include expanding the analytical side of the app and introducing additional features with the help of machine learning.

Avisio is about to be released for its pilot customers and introduced to the European market later this year, where it will hopefully revolutionize inventory management and procurement in the hospitality industry.

The success of this project hinged on the following factors:

The app offers hoteliers complete control over food, beverage, and supply inventory.
It also enables property owners to purchase goods directly from suppliers and easily find the best deals.
It’s user-friendly and provides a comprehensive inventory overview for both individual hotels and big hotel chains.