Articles

Los Angeles, California: — Hospitality technology veteran and HFTP Hall of Fame member, Dave Berkus, has joined Les Spielman’s Hospitality Automation Consultants as partner, the newly formed partnership announced today.

Hospitality Automation Consultants has been an active force in providing services and advice to the industry for twenty five years, serving many of North America’s and the world’s chains and management companies, specializing in telecom and information technology issues, integration, vendor selection and project management. With the addition of Berkus as partner, the firm now boasts deep knowledge in technology marketing, business process management, central reservations and GDS issues, and advanced property systems technology development and deployment.

Berkus, an active angel investor and valued coach to managers and entrepreneurs in many areas of technology, is credited with many “firsts” in hospitality technology, including creation of the industry’s first multi-property management systems, first menu analysis links between POS and back office systems, first wireless check-in systems and first cellular phones linked to hotel guest room extensions. He is also credited with designing and creating the first property-based yield management system using artificial intelligence, and has been called the “father of open systems” in the industry, having been the first to force vendors to adopt UNIX and the PC in an age of proprietary systems and terminal-based workstations.

Berkus was founder and CEO of Computerized Lodging Systems (CLS) and of Hotelware Corporation, and has served or serves on the boards of a number of hospitality technology companies.

As consultant to AremiSoft, Berkus introduced the company into the United States. Later as consultant to Sulcus Hospitality Technologies and to Rio Systems, Inc., Berkus helped engineer the acquisition of Sulcus by Eltrax and Eltrax by AremiSoft, then the acquisition of Rio Systems by AremiSoft (now SoftBrands). In the back office systems world, Berkus consulted to and negotiated the sale of Unisolve to Great Plains Software (now Microsoft). Berkus introduced Multi Systems (MSI) to Jonas, resulting in the acquisition of MSI in 2016.  He has consulted with a number of the industry’s technology firms regarding marketing, strategic planning for growth, technology renewal and market expansion.

He is author of fourteen books on entrepreneurism including the BERKONOMICS series of three books. His weekly emails and blogs are distributed to one hundred thousand CxOs and entrepreneurs. His TEDx talk is available on YouTube, and he tours the world giving keynotes to entrepreneurs, hoteliers, and angel-VC investors on best practices.  His TV show, “The Berkus Report,” is carried over TWC and other affiliated cable channels.  He was named “Tech Leader of the Year” by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and “Director of the Year” by the Forum for Corporate Directors.

By Dave Berkus

 

So, what do you think is more important? The quality of your management team, or the plan you execute toward success?

Checking with professional investors from angels to VC’s, the answer appears to be near unanimous: the quality of the proposed or actual management team comes in a strong first, before the attractiveness of the business plan itself.  The quest for a great management team is not a fluke, but rather a result of backward looks at the failure rate from past investments by those same angel investors and venture capitalists.

If you read last week’s analysis of statistics for startups and early stage businesses, you have learned the truth that at least half of the businesses backed by professional early stage investors will die within three years or less. That reality is a tough one for the professional investor, almost as tough as for those entrepreneurs who lose their businesses.  The latter can start new businesses, flush with the experiences gained from the previous effort and much the better for it.  But the investor’s cash is lost forever – and the experience gained usually is just another notch in their investor belt.

[Email readers, continue here…]  Here is the conclusion: It is the management team, most often led by a passionate entrepreneur with experience in the industry, which makes the biggest difference between success and failure, even for businesses built upon less than sterling basic ideas.  Among professional investors, almost all would rather back a great team with an average idea before a great idea and inexperienced team.  It comes back to coachability and flexibility, our insight from several weeks ago.

As a reminder of that conclusion: Great teams are flexible and have the advantage of experience in seeing the pitfalls before them from their past.  They are coachable in that they have taken advantage of the vast experience of others in overcoming obstacles and finding ways to speed a product to market faster or create a service whose quality exceeds that of the competition.

None of this is to say that an inexperienced entrepreneur cannot lead a great new business.  But it would be foolish to try without surrounding himself with as many experienced co-leaders as possible from the outset.   As a start, that smart entrepreneur will soon “know what he (she) doesn’t know”, an important qualifier for success in any business endeavor, when combined with the willingness to fill gaps in knowledge with help from those who have the experience to do so.

Even if you are not considering taking in money from professional investors, this advice would serve you well in protecting your own monetary investment.

By Dave Berkus

Allowing small problems to escalate into big ones is simple.  Just ignore the signs for long enough and the job is done.  It takes far more energy to review regularly the key performance indicators you’ve established for each individual and yourself.  But a small excursion caught early and corrected saves massive corrective resources later.

Take for example the manufacturing company with a small quality problem in one component, resulting in a test failure rate above the norm.  You can just reject the components, especially if coming from an outside supplier, or you can get to the root of the problem by examining the cause and re-engineering the process or product quickly, saving you and perhaps your supplier time and cost.  Such a culture of quality engineering has an additional benefit in creating a higher bar for all to see, making the public statement that quality is a top priority.

The same careful management applies to virtually everyperson and process in the organization.  If there are ways to measure successful output or execution, find them and use them regularly.  If one person or department is not pulling its weight, others notice and if no action is taken, often others are discouraged because of the lack of management interest and control.  The variant of “one bad apple” holds true in corporate cultures that to a degree entrepreneurial managers and young CEOs rarely credit – until a late correction is made and a collective sigh of relief can be heard company-wide.