How a Hospitality Brand Transformed Hotel Openings with Smarter Procurement
In this client success story, Analytic Vizion partnered with a global hospitality brand to eliminate manual procurement pain points and accelerate hotel openings.
Using existing platforms like Smartsheet and Google Cloud, the team delivered a streamlined, insight-driven solution that empowered franchisees with instant pricing, simplified decisions, and scalable growth, transforming a two-week process into an instant experience. Hear how a bold vision, thoughtful constraints, and people-first design drove real impact.
The Challenge
A globally recognized hospitality brand with an expanding franchise model faced mounting operational pressure as it sought to rapidly open new hotel locations across its portfolio.
- Franchisees faced burdensome manual processes involving spreadsheets, PDFs, and phone calls to manage procurement while maintaining brand standards
- Lack of centralized systems left hotel owners unable to benchmark pricing, access regional insights, or negotiate effectively
- Outdated tools and limited data visibility hindered both franchisees and corporate teams from making informed, efficient decisions
- Time-to-open cycles were unnecessarily long, highlighting the absence of scalable processes and infrastructure to support targeted growth
Our Approach
Analytic Vizion partnered with the client to reimagine the hotel opening process, not by introducing new platforms, but by unlocking greater impact through tools already in use. The team embraced critical constraints: the solution had to work with existing platforms (primarily Smartsheet and Google Cloud) and be implemented rapidly to support aggressive expansion timelines.
Key to the success of the engagement was a focus on people, process, and technology:
- People: Analytic Vizion started by identifying the core stakeholders, hotel owners, procurement staff, and suppliers. Deep empathy interviews helped surface pain points and decision-making friction across each group. This allowed the team to orient the solution around real human needs, not just technical fixes.
- Process: Rather than overhaul the entire system at once, the team broke the desired end-state into achievable stages. They mapped the existing workflow, isolated inefficiencies, and worked backward from the ideal experience, one where hotel owners could make quick, confident, brand-aligned purchasing decisions.
- Technology: With change velocity in mind, Analytic Vizion used Smartsheet and Google Cloud to create a lightweight but powerful solution. This included digitizing procurement submission forms into dynamic, single-page tools that instantly generated pricing estimates. Contextual data, like regional price comparisons and brand standard benchmarks, was embedded directly in the tool to empower faster, smarter decisions.
The approach emphasized iterative development, with constant feedback loops from hotel owners and corporate teams to ensure usability, clarity, and impact.
The How
AV’s solution was engineered with speed, flexibility, and simplicity in mind, using readily available tools:
Smartsheet was the core platform for the dynamic submission form. Analytic Vizion created a customizable, one-page interface that allowed hotel owners to select required items and instantly receive pricing estimates based on preloaded supplier data.
Google Cloud served as the data engine behind the scenes, enabling real-time price calculations and storage of region-specific benchmarks. This created a foundational layer of intelligence that the client had never had access to before.
Custom Reporting Dashboards were layered on top to provide both hotel owners and corporate teams with actionable insights. These included supplier performance comparisons, estimated versus actual cost analytics, and regional purchasing trends.
Iterative User Testing ensured that every improvement, whether it was visual clarity, field labels, or data output, was driven by direct feedback from the people using the system. This people-first approach ensured high adoption and real-world impact.
Critically, Analytic Vizion embraced constraints as a catalyst for innovation. Instead of seeing the lack of new platforms as a limitation, the team used it to deliver a faster, more tailored solution that deeply aligned with the organization’s culture and pace.
The Results
The transformation was immediate and game-changing:
- From Two Weeks to Instant: What once took up to two weeks, receiving initial supplier pricing after form submission, is now instant. Hotel owners can generate real-time estimates as soon as they complete the form.
- Manual Labor Eliminated: Owners no longer spend hours manually comparing PDF documents to spreadsheets or making phone calls to suppliers. The burden of procurement has been dramatically reduced, freeing them to focus on higher-value work.
- Empowered Decision-Making: With access to comparative pricing data across regions, hotel owners now negotiate with confidence. They are no longer operating from a place of uncertainty but are equipped to make faster, insight-driven decisions that align with both budget and brand expectations.
- Corporate Visibility and Leverage: The reporting layer added to the tool enables corporate teams to see which suppliers consistently offer competitive pricing. This allows for more strategic supplier selection and long-term procurement optimization.
- Scalable Growth and Recognized Talent: The initial success of the project helped elevate a key internal champion into a broader leadership role. With a growing team and expanded organizational buy-in, the client is now positioned to scale this system globally.
Key Takeaways
Innovation Thrives Within Constraints
Rather than introducing new platforms, Analytic Vizion maximized impact by building a tailored solution using the client’s existing tools. This accelerated delivery while minimizing change management overhead.
People-First Design Drives Adoption
By starting with stakeholder empathy and focusing on real-world friction points, Analytic Vizion created a user experience that simplified complex decisions and empowered hotel owners to move with confidence.
A Clear Vision Enables Scalable Growth
The project began with a strong belief that “this can be better” and succeeded by breaking that vision into actionable steps. The result was a repeatable model that is now scaling across a global portfolio.
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