Hotel chain taps Symphony Services' CMG to locate savings opportunities, control telecommunications costs
Palo Alto, CA — March 8, 2004 — Hotel chain La Quinta has selected Symphony Services CMG to analyze and manage the company's telecommunications expenses in a bid to locate savings opportunities and control telecom costs.
In related news, CMG also announced the release of the latest version of its Communications Manager hosted call accounting solutions, updating the technology platform to Oracle9i Application Server. CMG is a unit of Symphony Services Corp., a provider of technology-based business transformation outsourcing services.
Dallas-based La Quinta operates or franchises more than 370 hotels in 33 states. The company has tapped CMG to serve as the lead project manager for implementing new local telephone service at La Quinta hotels.
CMG said it would manage this project through implementation and then ensure that the billing and the anticipated cost savings are realized. In addition, CMG said it would help La Quinta formulate a new company-wide cellular strategy, including analysis of current plans and traffic patterns.
"We appreciate the value-added service from CMG through their inventory control capability, invoice and billing review and contract negotiation support," said John Novak, senior vice president and chief information officer of La Quinta. "CMG allows us to focus our internal resources on critical tasks while also helping identify cost savings opportunities."
Mark Blasing, La Quinta director of voice and data communications, said that he views CMG as an extension of his own staff. "They review all of our telecommunications invoices for accuracy using their computer systems, and we are then able to analyze the information on-line using their Invoice Manager tool." Blasing explained. "CMG not only detects issues with our invoices, but they go a step further and work with the carriers to correct any billing issues identified and follow through to make sure we receive credit."
Meanwhile, CMG has released the latest iteration of Communications Manager, its hosted call accounting solution. The latest release updates the technology platform to Oracle9i Application Server.
CMG said that Oracle9i Application Server's reliability and track record of supporting the performance and scalability requirements of large, multinational corporations met Symphony Service's need to process, on a monthly basis, hundreds of millions of records for large financial institutions and manufacturing enterprises.
"Communications Manager provides greater flexibility for CMG to tailor its solution to meet the unique needs of widely differing clients and gives those clients more tools to analyze voice and data transactions," CMG said in a statement.
The new version offers an updated interface that CMG said is more intuitive and that can be personalized to meet the business intelligence and information access needs of different users. Centralized user provisioning allows data access rights to be set by user at the field level. Reports can be viewed in a variety of formats, such as HTML, PDF, and Microsoft Excel, and users can schedule reports for secure distribution to any destination.
Communications Manager collects information on voice and data transactions, applies cost elements to each transaction, charges the cost back to the appropriate internal or external department/group, and provides Web-based access to business operation and telecom infrastructure analysis. Pricing is based on the number of records processed on a monthly basis.
The latest version of Communications Manager is available immediately.
