CASE STUDY

SDD Communications/Oakwood Worldwide

Seeking a way to increase telephone profits in Oakwood Centralizes an increasingly competitive telecommunica- tions market, Oakwood Worldwide centralized Call Accounting: Slashes tenant communications accounting for Telephone Accounting 20,000 apartment units with help from SDD, a Microsoft Certified Partner whose JAZZ Costs/Boosts Telephone Enterprise software leverages the scalability and interoperability of the Microsoft® Profits Windows® NT® server operating system.

akwood is a leading global provider of corporate housing and serviced Oapartments, with locations through- out North America, Asia and Europe. As a secondary profit center, Oakwood resells telecommunications services to its corporate extended stay tenants. Corporate Housing To manage the billing of tenant phone charges across many of its U.S. properties, Corporate Telecommunications Analyst Oakwood operated 18 independent telephone described the situation like this: “Our call accounting systems. Those 18 DOS- telecommunications billing systems were based systems collected telephone network generic and lacked structures that supported activity from on-property PBX’s. The systems our tenant property managers. Services that posted the financial information related to the were innovative or unique to our corporate telephone activity into Oakwood’s centralized tenant relationships could therefore not easily Los Angeles-based property management be reflected in our telecommunications billing system. This occurred over the company’s systems and system outputs. They required wide area network (WAN). The local systems our on-property staffs to develop and operate retained all detailed information related to the manual support processes. They also created phone activity including costs, surcharges and significant back-end reconciliation work.” profits. Oakwood also wanted its on-property Oakwood’s distributed billing systems staffs to focus more on the flexible delivery of created too many billing, operational and telecom services to tenants and to focus less management failure points. Oakwood on the operational management of an on- believed those limitations detracted from property billing server. McClements further guest experiences and created unnecessary described the drivers behind finding a new effort for on-property management. They had solution: “The logistical challenges of chang- begun to negatively impact Oakwood’s ing a billing or pricing policy and deploying it telecommunications costs, revenues and prof- across our properties and systems limited our its. Larry D. McClements, Jr., Oakwood ability to provide innovative and responsive

Summer 2001 Microsoft Net~Work 25 telephone programs to tenants. Changes in reliable, high-volume, real-time billing with SDD collaborated on training, network instal- billing policy required extensive involvement, widely known and demanding hotel lation and operations planning. negotiation and costs from our prior technol- customers. We believed that SDD had Centrally deployed pricing schemes are ogy vendor. We needed to improve our mastered the Windows platform.” now letting property and account managers flexibility and our speed.” SDD’s ability to customize their applica- react quickly to revenue and profit margin tion to Oakwood’s needs also impressed opportunities that were unachievable with their Getting Centered McClements. “We sought telecom billing previous site-specific solutions. Oakwood’s Oakwood evaluated two alternatives for functionality unique to tenant relationships. corporate account managers now use JAZZ’s taming its communications account chal- SDD had direct experience in providing such revenue modeling and pricing plans to opti- lenges: Implement many new inexpensive capabilities at many notable hospitality prop- mize revenue opportunities across client and limited/functionality call accounting erties. We found that their experience with accounts and properties. The JAZZ application systems, or install one centralized, more these high-volume sophisticated customers now allows Oakwood managers to support ten- sophisticated call accounting system. was useful in two ways. First, their core ant telephone activity in methods consistent Oakwood concluded that the deployment system capabilities were structured properly with their guest or tenant relationship. of multiple installations would not solve many for us and reflected property management The consolidation of Oakwood’s servers of their fundamental operational issues. Dis- best practices. Secondly,when we asked for and JAZZ’s centralized data warehouse now tributed systems required distributed and customizations to support our unique envi- enables on-property,on-demand consolida- network-based support processes. They also ronment, SDD intuitively understood our tions of guest and tenant communications created information management, integration business challenges and responded with revenues, profits and costs. Such roll-ups, and control challenges. Oakwood wanted to strong system designs.” especially when one tenant stays at multiple get away from lots of little islands of informa- He added, “Many telephone call account- properties, had been difficult, time consum- tion scattered around the company. ing systems are directed to generic corporate ing and almost cost prohibitive to execute. applications or to telecom service providers. The JAZZ software architecture is interop- JAZZ-ing Up the System However we believed that a billing technol- erable with most commercially available Oakwood selected JAZZ Enterprise Com- ogy vendor focused on serving property telephone PBX systems, network environ- munications Accounting from Systems managers and tenant relationships would be a ments and property management systems. Design & Development, Inc. (SDD) as its better long-term strategic fit for us.” The network team at Oakwood is also taking centralized solution. advantage of the application’s single-point McClements explained the SDD choice: Single-Point Billing, Price, management console for managing data “We were concerned that with centralization, and Systems Management exchanges, updating software and monitoring telecom accounting system problems would SDD deployed the entire JAZZ solution system health. be amplified across many properties. We for Oakwood, including all software cus- SDD also structured its support services sought stability and scalability. SDD tomization, systems integration, acceptance to meet Oakwood’s approach to customer possessed the experience and a reputation for testing and configuration. Oakwood and support systems. SDD provides level-one

SOLUTION OVERVIEW These distributed billing systems created effective and centralized solution to too many billing, operational and increase revenues while simplifying Company Profile management failure points. Oakwood operations. Oakwood Worldwide is a leading believed those limitations detracted from global provider of corporate housing and guest experiences and created unneces- Benefits serviced apartments, with locations sary effort for on-property management. By installing JAZZ Enterprise, throughout North America, Asia and They had begun to negatively impact Oakwood was able to reduce telecom- Europe. As a secondary profit center, Oakwood’s telecommunications costs, munications call accounting costs by Oakwood resells telecommunications revenues and profits. 75 percent. Meanwhile, the company services to guests at its 20,000 estimates it will increase profits in corporate extended stay apartments. Business Solution 2001 by a half million dollars due to Oakwood deployed JAZZ Enterprise an increased ability to keep pace Situation Communications Accounting from with market opportunities, an activity To manage the billing of phone charges Microsoft Certified Partner, SDD, Inc. facilitated by the software’s across many of its U.S. properties, Built for Microsoft Windows NT server pricing-plan tools and improved Oakwood had to operate 18 independent technology, JAZZ Enterprise gave the communications abilities. telephone call accounting systems. telecommunications reseller a cost

26 Summer 2001 Microsoft Net~Work For more information About Microsoft Call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (800) 563-9048. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft office. For more information about Microsoft-based hospitality solutions, visit the Microsoft hospitality industry home page on the World Wide Web,at http://www.microsoft.com/business/hospitality. About SDD Communications SDD Communications 800-A NW 17th Ave Delray Beach, FL 33445 561-276-7004 561-276-7606 [email protected] www.sddsystems.com SDD develops and markets Internet and telephone billing systems for the owners and managers of commercial properties and facilities. SDD products operate in many of the largest and most Managing Tenant Telecom Revenues in “Real-Time” from a single point. prestigious hotels, convention centers, and tenant properties in the world. SDD products allow property owners, managers (or their third party service providers) to independently bill guests and “super-user” product support directly to Making Communications tenants for their use of Internet and telephone Oakwood’s on-property technology man- Profitable services while on their property. agers. While server and network operations JAZZ was instrumental in making commu- Microsoft Products and Services are managed by Oakwood, direct “super- nications resale more profitable at both large Microsoft Windows NT Server Terminal Server user” support from SDD is available to and small-volume Oakwood properties. Enterprise Edition 4.0 Oakwood on-property staff direct for matters Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 McClements described how JAZZ helped Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server of product usage and best practices. Oakwood expand telecom profitability in an Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional increasingly competitive telecom environ- Microsoft Windows 95 Microsoft Windows 98 Built on Microsoft ment. “In the year and a half since ® Microsoft SQL Server™ 7.0 Enterprise Edition Windows NT Server implementation, the JAZZ Enterprise solu- Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0 JAZZ Enterprise leverages the scalability tion has reduced our cost to operate call Microsoft Office 2000 and stability of the Windows NT architec- Microsoft Internet Explorer™ 5.5 accounting by 75 percent. Meanwhile, the Microsoft FrontPage® ture. JAZZ today processes nearly a million software’s flexibility and functionality is About Oakwood tenant phone calls per month from a single increasing our telephone revenues. In 2001, Oakwood Worldwide is a leading provider of Windows NT server. Those calls originate we estimate that our ability to execute on-the- corporate housing and serviced apartments with from 24 PBX’s supporting 21 properties. fly price plan modifications will increase locations throughout North America, Asia and Europe. For worldwide reservations, call (800) JAZZ is accessible 24x7 to both corporate profits by an estimated half million dollars.” 888-0808, 24 hours a day,7 days a week or visit and on-property staffs. For future growth in Oakwood’s considerable return on invest- our website at www.oakwood.com. system users and increases in Oakwood prop- ment was the result of being able to SDD Software and Services erty holdings, JAZZ processes and workloads consolidate operational monitoring and con- JAZZ Enterprise Communications Accounting can be distributed across multiple Microsoft- trols onto the JAZZ Enterprise server while Server with the SDD Telemanagement Network powered servers. expanding the functionality and tools available Interface (TNI). JAZZ Enterprise’s integration with to Oakwood telecom people. Oakwood peo- Third Party Software and Services Microsoft Windows® NT server and Oak- ple can now leverage on-demand information Progress Software Corporate databases and SDKs. wood’s property management software and customized billing and can focus on better © 2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This document is for informational purposes only. expedited Oakwood’s training of its accounting serving tenants. The centralized data store and MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES,EXPRESS department and property management staff. OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. accounting functions are also supporting a Microsoft, ActiveX, Visual Studio, Windows, and Windows NT The JAZZ interface closely resembles familiar higher-level business planning, an activity are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Windows-based applications with which Oak- Oakwood expects will continue to evolve as The names of actual companies and products mentioned wood employees were already familiar. more properties are added to their portfolio. herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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