Create IT implements integrated Intranet Solution with collaborative Document Management at Hoti Hotéis Group

The new Intranet allows the Hoti Hotéis Group to respond to the challenges of growth and greater agility in internal communication and knowledge sharing. Based on the DiggSpace solutions from Create IT (Intranet) and Microsoft 365 (Document Management), the Hoti Hotéis Group now has a unique gateway that simplifies access to information and essential features for the daily work of all employees of the Group that operates several hotel units under the Meliá, Tryp, Star Inn, Hotel da Música and Golden Residence brands.

Key Numbers:

17 Hotels
20 department file system spaces
800+ Employees
2TB+ of information

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The Challenge

Hoti Hotéis is a hotel chain with 100% Portuguese capital that is dedicated to the provision of hotel services, in the form of ownership, operation, management or franchising and is responsible for operating a growing set of hotel units. With more than 800 employees and managing several hotel units that are geographically dispersed, the Hoti Hotéis Group is expanding strongly (average growth of 24% from 2014 to 2018). In order to cope with this growth, it became essential to implement a solution that would provide the Group with a space for sharing and agile communication with the entire team and, at the same time, increasing the feeling of belonging.

The major challenges posed to the Create IT team were:

Building a single Intranet site, viewed by all the companies in the Group, and which constituted a gateway to the most important information.
Enabling the Intranet site to make it easier to access the collaborative spaces of hotels and central services
Increasing employee productivity, providing the Group with an agile and accessible Collaboration Solution to work anytime, anywhere, on any device, and that facilitates interaction with internal and external users

According to Henrique Ferreira, Hoti Hotéis Group Director, “The new Intranet site appears to respond to the dimension that the Group has reached and to the new requirements of our customers and suppliers, making it essential to create an agile communication space with all employees and to adapt working methods. The previous system had limitations both in the ability to share documentation and in collaboration. As our teams are at the center of our success, we needed to take this step to improve engagement and simplify processes.”

The Solution

To successfully respond to the needs of the Hoti Hotéis Group, the solution included the implementation of an Intranet site for all users through Create IT's DiggSpace solution, integrated with the Document Management Solution based on Microsoft 365, which becomes the privileged space for collaboration across the Group.

Involving the internal team and partners related to the IT area using the Scrum framework, the Document Management Solution was implemented, migrating the contents previously present in file shares to modern work areas in SharePoint Online, where employees can take advantage of all Office 365 capabilities (such as collaborative document editing) and access information from anywhere or on any device.

According to Miguel Valério, Project Manager at Grupo Hoti Hotéis, “With the new solution, Hoti Hotéis is able to better explore the tools provided by Microsoft 365 from Microsoft. There is now a centralized space for all the Group's documentation and communication, and we are starting to take advantage of features such as conversations and scheduling meetings using Microsoft Teams or project planning with Microsoft Planner, among others. This project went far beyond expectations and we managed to create a collaborative environment that responds to all functional areas, and there are still many features of the Microsoft 365 platform that we may use in the future. Create IT played a decisive role throughout the project, and was always very proactive and available, from advising solutions to implementation. In addition, monitoring the work via the Scrum framework helped ensure that there were perfect transparency and strong commitment from all teams”.

“From the point of view of management and alignment between teams, the digital transformation project of Hoti Hotéis was exemplary. Through the direct participation of the executive management, represented by Henrique Ferreira, Director responsible for the Group's Information Technologies, the project team obtained all the support and autonomy necessary for the success of the project. Users were involved through interviews and training, which resulted in total alignment with the Group's digital transformation strategy. Taking advantage of the Scrum framework, a dynamic work of high proximity, commitment and performance were created with a multidisciplinary team made up of Hoti, Create IT and RSS Infor (partner company responsible for infrastructure). The principles of transparency, inspection and adaptation, which are the pillars of this framework, allowed us to outline more effective processes for monitoring and solving problems, obtaining agility with proven results, with benefit for end-users, but also for all stakeholders in the process”, points out Márcio Antunes, Project Manager at Create IT.

The Results

With the new solution, the Hoti Hotéis Group now has a solution that allows, at the same time, to reinforce the feeling of belonging of the employees of all the hotel units and of the Group central services and to increase productivity and responsiveness with quicker access to information, in a simpler way available anytime, anywhere, on any device.

“The benefits for the Group are clear and linked to the initial goals of the project: streamline information sharing and communication. For us, today it is clear that this was the right path and we feel that our employees have obtained a workspace that gives them the necessary dynamics from the reception to the commercial area, which is able to respond quickly and steadily from any position or working point. We are creating better conditions and an environment that allows our employees to respond more effectively to customers. Today we know that we are more productive and collaborative. This is the victory at the end of the day: knowing that teams really have space where information flows naturally and safely”, concludes Miguel Valério.

The new Intranet site appears to respond to the dimension that the Group has reached and to the new requirements of our customers and suppliers, making it essential to create an agile communication space with all employees and to adapt working methods.
Henrique Ferreira - Director at Hoti Hotéis Group

Today we know that we are more productive and collaborative. This is the victory at the end of the day: knowing that teams really have a space where information flows naturally and safely.
Miguel Valério - Project Manager at Hoti Hotéis Group

Our teams are fully available for any information and/or meeting.