OTO

Microsoft SharePoint Portal Solution integrates seamlessly with Microsoft® Dynamics SL (formally Microsoft® Business Solutions—Solomon)

OTO Development, LLC is the latest hospitality company launched by H. Wayne Huizenga and George D. Johnson, Jr. The company was established to build premier select-service and extended-stay hotels in certain high-barrier-to-entry U.S. markets. OTO develops the strongest brands offered by Hilton Hotels Corporation and Marriott International. The brands of choice for OTO Development include Hampton Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, Homewood Suites, Residence Inn, Courtyard, and Springhill Suites.

OTO sought a technology solution that would unify its diverse operations through improved collaboration and sharing of a consistent company message, vision, and brand. OTO also wanted to enable employees to better access and share the information that they need to perform their jobs efficiently and best serve their customers. The company developed an employee portal with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server. The intelligent portal connects employees across the broad organization, helping them work more efficiently, putting time-sensitive and important information at their fingertips, and aligning them with a common vision.

“Microsoft SharePoint Portal has provided a solid framework on which to build a robust internal collaboration platform that is tightly integrated into Microsoft® Dynamics SL.”

– Dan Michaels, Innovative Architects

Overview

County or Region: United States
Industry: Hospitality
Customer Profile:
OTO Development, LLC was established to build premier select service and extended stay hotels in certain high barrier to entry markets. Since inception, they have been awarded agreements representing hotel investments in excess of $400 million.
Business Situation:
The growing company set the objective of unifying its geographically diverse operations through both internal operations and a common OTO Development brand.
Solution:
With the help of Innovative Architects and Omnivue, OTO developed an employee portal using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server to enable collaboration, information sharing, and alignment with a common company vision. In addition, the OTO portal is completely integrated with Microsoft® Dynamics SL.
Benefits:
Complete integration with financial systems.
Rapid deployment in less than four weeks.
Enhanced collaboration across divisions.
Better-informed decision making.
Companywide messages shared accurately, on time, and with lower cost.

Case Study

Solution
SharePoint Saves Time and Expense
The OTO technology team chose to deploy Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. Using SharePoint Products and Technologies, OTO developed an intelligent portal that connects employees across the broad organization and provides access to the information they need to do their jobs more productively.

Core Capabilities
SharePoint Server provides OTO Development with the following capabilities:

• A user-friendly interface for access to a centralized repository of information
• Targeted content display customized to individual permissions and specifications
• Simplified access to information using powerful search features
• Document version control and time/date stamp features
• Aggregated reporting capabilities
• Integrated views of Microsoft Dynamics SL data
• Business Portal collaboration
• User-friendly content publishing and administration tools that empower employees to manage content
• Powerful development tools for fast, easy portal creation and maintenance

Portal Organization
The customization capabilities of SharePoint Server enabled OTO to organize the portal in a way that mimics the company’s business structure. The main portal area is open to all employees, while other sites within the portal cater to workgroups and site locations.

Companywide news and announcements are posted on the home page while location and department-specific items are posted under their areas.
Benefits
Since the successful deployment of the solution, OTO is realizing a number of important benefits, including a rapid impact from its investment in the new portal, increased productivity, and better-informed decision making.

Rapid Investment Impact with Adoption of User-Friendly Tools
OTO realized an immediate impact from the investment in the new portal. The simplicity of portal tools empowered employees to publish content and administer their own divisional and departmental sites. The user-friendly interface enabled easy acceptance and adoption by these new content managers. Allowing more employees to author content on the portal enabled wider user acceptance, and use of the portal began to grow into daily work practices.

Integrated Microsoft platform
OTO found that the development process was fast and easy using the portal offering and completely integrated with other Microsoft projects. OTO runs Microsoft® Dynamics SL for financial data and in a matter of minutes, all users had to do is ‘point and click’ to create integration between Dynamics and Sharepoint. With the integration between the applications, OTO found business analyst and non-technical users could create subpages or manage portal content. Finally, even when integration was more complex, OTO created custom webparts which they found “very easy to do.”