Virtual Office Resource

Unified communications is all about improving workflows to enhance productivity. But different types of businesses have various kinds of workflows. So some UC solutions providers deliver specialized offerings to meet the needs of specific industry verticals.

Hospitality is one of the target verticals for BroadSoft (News - Alert), which Cisco today announced plans to acquire. In fact, BroadSoft Hospitality is already in use by more than 1,500 hotels across 40 countries. BroadSoft Hospitality offers BroadSoft Business, which features cloud-based contact center, PBX (News - Alert), team collaboration, and unified communications functionality.

And today BroadSoft announced it has enhanced its BroadSoft Hospitality solution with new UC-One mobile features.

“The mobile integration allows front desk hotel staff to move throughout the property while still being able to access, respond to, and act on guest requests in real time,” BroadSoft explained. “Not only can hotel employees now provide an improved level of guest satisfaction and responsiveness, hoteliers can reduce costs by eliminating outdated devices they’ve traditionally required to move around the property, such as two-way radios and walkie-talkies. The UC-One mobile client provides employees all of this access via smartphones, and integrates communications and collaboration into everyday business processes and workstreams.”

During his presentation this morning at BroadSoft Connections in Arizona, BroadSoft CTO and co-founder Scott Hoffpauir also talked about how the company’s UC-One offering now has an app landing page through which businesses can deliver specialized user experiences.

He demonstrated how a mobile app could present a hotel’s housekeeping department with list of rooms that need to be cleaned. A staff member in housekeeping could then use the interface to click on the room they are going to clean. And that staff member would be presented with information about the guest, such as whether that individual had been racking up minibar charges. That could signal to the staff member that the minibar needs to be restocked. And the staff member could use the same system to message a supervisor to send more scotch to the room to refill the minibar.