This article summarized the advantages and disadvantages of using human resource information system. An HRIS is used for employment actions such as applicant tracking, performance management, attendance, compensation and benefits management, work force analyses, and scheduling. A very popular use of HRIS is employee self-service. There are a lot of advantages of HRIS, such as it is monitored by qualified specialists who know technology and HR functional and tactical processes can manage compliance with federal and state laws, streamline processes for recruitment and selection, and produce analyses, data and reports for internal and external use. What's more, it is easy to use for qualification computer technology specialists, accuracy of information and the ability to perform HR audits using any combination of parameters. It saves a lot of time. The disadvantages included that HRIS may involve human error during information input, costly technology to update the system and malfunctions or insufficient applications to support the human resources needs. There should be a qualified specialist with human resources functional area knowledge to manage this system. The cost to hire an HRIS specialist may be far above the average salary for a computer technology specialist.

There are a lot of different kinds of event planning technology software nowadays. This article introduced the way to use online event planning software in details. Online event planning software vary in scope and features, but their primary goal is the same, that is, to consolidate all the tasks needed to plan a trade show, conference, or other event, so the process runs more smoothly. According to this article, five tips for audiences to learn in using online event planning software. They are on the parts of creating an event page, sending out Invitations, enabling online registration, getting involved, and evaluating. Firstly, most online event planning software programs allow consumers to create a page. That doesn't mean the consumer has to use their service exclusively to advertise the event. Secondly, planners usually send electronic invitations to people they want to attend. This way can save time, paper, and postage, so they would focus on planning the best possible event. Thirdly, to set up online registration and to collect data in one convenient place so that all the information the planner needed from each registrant are collected and kept. Fourthly, to get involved with other people on the site by spreading the word about other events, chatting with attendees, and sharing useful information. The last but not the least, to evaluate after using online event planning software, determine whether the experience was positive or negative.

This article summarized smart hotelier's top ten digital marketing resolutions of the year 2012 and the author analyzed each resolution's situation as well as the action plan in details with an improved outlook for the industry, technological advances, and the usage of mobile devices growing exponentially, opportunities for incremental revenues abound. The top five ones are I will bring social, local and mobile marketing initiatives to the forefront of my hotel digital marketing plans this year, I understand this industry is complex and will work to make sense of a very convoluted digital space/online marketplace, I will continue to account for the continued shift from offline to online, and engage the hyper-interactive travel consumer via multi-channel marketing efforts, I will take advantage of the Mobile Channel, especially in this marketplace where my competitors are behind the times, and Now that I know social media is a customer engagement channel and not a distribution channel in hospitality, I will use Social Media correctly to create "buzz" around my hotel, target receptive audiences, provide customer service and enhance customer experiences. This will ultimately stimulate hotel website visits, interactions and conversions on the hotel website. The sixth to the tenth ones are I will rise to the challenge imposed by the recent Google Panda and 'Freshness' updates, I will decrease dependence on the OTAs this year, adding thousands of dollars in incremental revenues to my hotel's bottom line, I will NOT resort to desperate measures and use social buying and flash sales sites in 2012, I will focus on determining the effectiveness and ROI of my digital marketing campaigns and make smarter use of analytics technology to determine true ROI and campaign effectiveness, as well as test, test, test to achieve better results, and I will partner with savvy digital marketers who know it all and can guide me through this process, so I can drive the most re

This article is an introduction of the VingCard Elsafe that is the worldwide provider of hotel security. There are more than 39,000 properties worldwide and excess of 6.5 million hotel rooms being secured by VingCard Elsafe. VingCard Elsafe includes four main kinds of products. They are electronic locking systems, hotel safe series, energy management system, and software-based integrated room control dashboard. The e-locking system includes traditional magnetic-stripe, smartcard systems and the latest radio frequency technology (RFID) contact-less electronic locks compatible, near field communication (NFC), and the most reliable and widely spread wireless RF-online solutions. The hotel safe series provide the only UL-listed hotel safe series on the market today in keypad and RFID/RF-online models and it can also be offered with an internal power outlet. The energy management system provides an intelligent solution to reduce energy cost, while ensuring guest comfort and contributes to enhance green initiatives. The software-based integrated room control dashboard has interactive and user-friendly dashboard that for the first time integrates electronic systems and status to allow hotel properties in managing subsystems remotely over the hotel LAN or web-based connection. According to the introduction, VingCard Elsafe would be very practical to provide local sales, service and support the security management in hospitality industry even it may cost a lot on installation and maintenance.

This article concluded the advantages of IT in hospitality industry. Information technology becomes more concerned about by hotel managers, but they spend relatively little of their budget on technology. Much knowledge of technology in the hotel sector resides at corporate level, with data released to select recipients at specific times, such as budget planning. Much knowledge of technology in the hotel sector resides at corporate level. IT benchmarking helps to understand where an individual property ranks in comparison with other hotels in its competitive sets. The author talks about it on Research design, key benchmarks, and comments on results three aspects. several reasons of why the hospitality sector spend so little on IT, including that IT employees can be ineffective at internal marketing and competing for a share of the budget, the hotel industry is high-touch rather than high-tech and upscale properties are more likely to employ extra staff than additional technology, IT is not considered a core competency, hotels have no need to be innovative with technology, IT budget decisions are frequently taken by owners rather than operators or managers, and IT is viewed as a cost rather than an investment.

This article introduces that 5 hotels used Aptech, Execuvue Business Intelligence (BI), and Profitvue and Webvue Enterprise as their accounting systems. The Profitvue and Webvue enterprise are accounting solutions which mainly used to centralize back office accounting and reporting system and also used in their other multi-property operations which interface with PMS. In addition, Aptech will create systems that are easy to use and provide managers with the flexibility to generate reports quickly and helps them make proactive decisions that support higher profit margins for their properties. Profitvue system incorporates accounts payable, general ledger, statistics, and financials. gives users open database compliance (ODBC) within a scalable, client/server, open systems architecture. Webvue is for limited service hotels and it enables properties to quickly and easily send and access financial and statistical data and generate reports through its Internet or Intranet site. And Execuvue is a also web-based enterprise business intelligence application for large and small hotel companies which coordinates data from various systems.

This article shows us the result of VSR Magazine's first annual "2012 POS Study". The result indicated some developments and some worries of end users. 28% current POS were not well integrated into other IT systems, the POS is not ready to grow with their company, and it is difficult to add additional modules or functionalities to the current POS. But it also indicated negative perceptions of wireless POS have given way to a more positive outlook. Most of them wanted mobile POS capabilities to be the top technology features for next POS solutions because of three reasons. Firstly, mobile POS is vary from improving the customer experience. Secondly, mobile POS providing associates with better tools. In addition, it speeding up checkout and providing a more mobile workforce. Most of them wanted E-wallet payment in the next POS. some others were interested in near-field communication payment, while very few people want future POS to recognize near-field communication coupons.

This article indicated the importance of PMS and then pointed out two aspects for hotel management to get more benefits from PMS. According to the first paragraph, PMS plays a role of key technology for most hotels, even though hotels use other software like EPOS or CRS, PMS is still the central infrastructure of hotels. But the result of one recently research shows that the functionalities and data used by PMS are not always 'visible' or available for cross-functional activities and require a higher level of investment with in-house websites and third party distribution websites. So the author pointed how to get more from PMS by analyzing two aspects. The first one is functionality solutions, which means to change the traditional structure to differentiate product offerings structure. Many hotels in US changed the structure and more customers are willing to pay for the exceptional experience. Another research showed that not all functionalities of the PMS are used by the properties. The reason was summarized as the lack of training or lack of access to other data. The second one is to raise PSM awareness, which means to provide more explicit training in the functionalities when the PMS is installed and thereafter, or just purchase the modules and applications that are core to the functions of the specific hotel operations.

This article shows us that Hilton New York installs a green roof system which installed with a Cogeneration (Combined Heat & Power) System. The whole system was designed to reduce the hotel's overall carbon usage so that to promote the hotel's sustainable development. This kind of green roof system was located on the hotel's fifth floor rooftop and it represents a major investment by Hilton New York. They want to benefit from the carbon capture, energy conservation, and reduction the Urban Heat Island effect. According to the article, this green roof will support the local farming industries by using the locally grown plants come from an upstate farm in New York. These plants are well able to absorb airborne pollutants, and then to prevent lots of CO2 releasing. In addition, the solar radiation and the thermal load have been deflected and the energy previously expended in cooling the property would be reduced. These effects will be resulted in reducing the Urban Heat Island effect. The hotel also will install a highly-efficient, environmentally-friendly Cogeneration system that will provide more electrical power by using less resource. It will use clean and efficient natural gas as the new energy. All of these system are environmental friendly and doing well in sustainable development of hospitality industry.

I like this article which related to the development of Chinese hospitality industry. This news showed that Pegasus Solutions and TravelSky Technology Limited had connected with China's state-owned global distribution system (GDS). In China, there are at most 1.2 billion potential customers, the hospitality market there is really attractive. This connection will allowing more and more Chinese people to book different hotels anywhere in the world even though when they at home. I believe this connection is a effective and successful choice. After that connection, it makes nearly 100,000 hotels of Pegasus' global hotel available for booking in China. Pegasus' has more than 1,000 hotels under nine brands. The first Pegasus customer to go live on the connection is Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Hoteliers recognized that there will be a lot hospitality business opportunity in China, so that they decided to take these opportunities and continue to get benefit from domestic and inbound travel by cooperating with Pegasus/TravelSky, in order to expand their businesses. This cooperation is indeed a win-win deal. Firstly, it let Starwood properties available to the 7,000 travel agents who work with TravelSky managing the increasing domestic and international Chinese travelers' growing demand. While, TravelSky has long-dominated the airline market in China, and it becomes both the second largest travel market in the Asia-Pacific region and the world's second largest economy. The new connection with Pegasus offers more accessibility to the collection of ebookable hotels.

This news tells us that the hotel management corporation upgrades online booking system. Oriens Travel & Hotel Management Corp., is an International Boutique Hotel Brand Operator operating hotels world-wide. On September 6th, it announced they had completed to upgrade its Online Booking System. As all we know, online booking system is an easy to use, web-based internet reservation system used internationally by a diverse range of accommodation providers. The upgrades included payment gateways for processing credit cards, PayPal payment solutions, Google Payment Solution, 128bit security encryption, and a more user-friendly backend platform being used by hotel revenue managers on a daily basis. What's more, the mobile App is being integrated into the system. These upgrades will make the booking progress more seamless and easier.

This article focuses on the topics of POS Software Trends 2012 in hospitality industry. In the past several years, the POS has been changed from hard-wired, all-in-one units to a variety of mobile devices. Hoteliers are looking for the POS which is industry-tailored and affordable. According to the annual POS Software Trends report, enhancements and plans has been pointed out. In 2011, social media, cloud computing and mobile solutions are the main R&D aspects. They plan to pay more attention to Vendor Innovations & Predictions in 2012. HT has also pointed out the trends from the POS Software Reader survey. Firstly, from the POS features in demand, the top three are online ordering, mobile phone-based POS applications, and interesting innovation. What's more, mobile phone-based POS would be possibly replaced the tableside ordering devices. Secondly, from the POS purchasing plans aspect, more investment will be occurred in the next year. But in fact, hoteliers reported far less POS investment plans. The top three plans are to add new functionality and features to the current POS software, to expand the installation base of the POS software they currently use, and to develop and/or deploy a POS for use on a mobile device.