The Situation
Armadillo Hotels Group was formed with the idea of creating a different type of hotel chain—one that would better support needs for company bookings and billing for multiple rooms and long-term stays, all at an affordable price. The original idea was based on a major service gap in the Permian Basin region in Texas. As part of the mid-continent oil-producing region, workers on oil rigs for months at a time needed a home base that could be billed directly to the oil companies for large numbers of rooms.
Armadillo’s vision was a layered and relational software system that could support operations for all aspects of a hotel, for a system that was secure, robust and flexible. The cost savings associated with a single platform would allow Armadillo the ability to address its main goal of offering quality stays at an affordable price point.
The Challenge
As an outsider, a hotel’s operation appears to be simple—it sells lodging along with food and beverages. But a hotel is a highly complex operation where many departments must function, coordinate and interact together to ensure smooth day-to-day operations.
These departments include the front office, housekeeping, food and beverage, accounts and credits, human services, engineering and maintenance, plus sales and marketing. The systems required to support all these functions create a high degree of complexity and integration. This is why, in almost every instance, hotels operate with multiple, disparate systems that do not “talk” to each other, which leads to inefficiencies, errors, customer dissatisfaction and reduced profitability.
Building a comprehensive hospitality management system that would address all these areas for multiple hotels within the Armadillo Hotels chain, built to scale, with integration to Expedia.com along with secure payment processing, was the challenge for Armadillo—and Envative.
The Envative Solution
This was a 12-month development project that started with Envative’s time-tested prototyping phase to ensure that the team understood the features and functionality Armadillo wanted and make sure their expectations would be met. Envative's web, mobile and IoT development teams all came together to map out the appropriate architecture for scalability and extensibility of Armadillo’s vision.
The teams planned their software delivery phases to include Minimum Viable Product features that could be launched first and then quickly followed by additional functionality in phases. While the teams took a “divide and conquer” approach to the massive project, they didn’t work in a vacuum.
Envative’s strength in technical project management, communication and additional prototyping ensured the teams worked cohesively toward the end goal. In addition, the company’s agile development process allowed each team member to respond to and incorporate feature-scope change requests along the way.
The result is a comprehensive, multi-tenanted system that was launched in 2021. The system had been thoroughly tested and was deployed with flawless execution.
Armadillo Hotel Group’s management system’s features currently include:
- Room booking
- Check-in via kiosk to reduce face-to-face interactions
- IoT-enabled, mobile keyless entry
- Hotel administration of staff schedules
- Camera monitoring for security
- Housekeeping requests
- Room service for food and drink
- Billing and payment processing
The system was also built to allow for white-label licensing to other interested hotel group conglomerates. Envative’s partnership with Armadillo Hotel Group continues today with enhancements and plans for additional roll-outs.
