By: Angela McMinn, Sr Hotel Implementation Consultant
So you’ve had OPERA for a while now and you’ve mastered the art of checking in and checking out. You’ve even managed to figure out how to set up rates, maybe run some reports to file and hopefully balanced OPERA financials. That’s the day to day operation stuff – it should do that. Let’s remember though that I told you before that you bought the top of the line model…well it should perform that way too!
I can pretty much guarantee your trainer showed you all the functionality that OPERA had to offer…that is unless you went with an abbreviated schedule. One of several things were going on at the time that stopped you from remembering what they taught you; either you were running your hotel, you were just opening the hotel from scratch, you’ve had remote upgrades but not had a resource on site to review or activate new functionality, or we were just teaching you so much new information during your initial installation that you just couldn’t retain it all – INFORMATION OVERLOAD!!!
So now, how do you make OPERA SING! No it doesn’t mean I’ll come sing Mozart’s “Voi Che Sapete” for you, although I am trained to. It’s kind of like when you upgrade to that custom set of rims on the car or that custom engraved jewelry you’ve always wanted. This is where my colleagues and I get to suddenly see you go from thinking you have a great system to seeing your eyes light up and tell us “I didn’t know OPERA could do that!”
So what is this OPERA training service that I am getting? It’s a System Utilization Review or SUR – no not the Big Sur either. An Implementation Consultant for PMS and/or S&C comes in for 5 days and sits with each of the departments and reviews your operations. During this time we ask a lot of questions and I do mean a lot. We observe how your staff is using OPERA and review what functionality is activated and more importantly what functionality is NOT active. The question, “Why are you doing that,” is repeated more times than I can count, but it’s to both understand your business and to force you to ask yourself why as well. Many times we find that the answer is, “because we have always done it that way,” and it’s important to understand that just as software changes with time – so should operations in some areas to keep you competitive and in order to take advantage of new technology. At the end of the visit a comprehensive review is discussed and a roadmap for future visits is outlined if necessary.
So how do you sign up for a System Utilization Review? Contact your Sales Manager, Customer Care Manager, Account Manager or even your Project Specialist and they will be more than happy to assist you with this.
Now aren’t you ready to make OPERA sing??
Find out more about what MICROS can do for you! For more information contact us at info@micros.com Phone: 866.287.4736 (US and Canada)









