Integrated software programs are the Derek Jeter of the information-technology (IT) world. Like the five-tool New York Yankee, they do most everything well—managing virtually every department, including ticketing, season passes, sales, access-control, retail, rental, food/beverage, activity management, kiosks, e-Commerce, customer relationship management, etc. But, in certain situations, a particular module from another supplier, or even a piece of non-ski software, may be the better technology choice.

Even so, many resorts are finding that integrated programs help them not only obtain data faster, but enable new programs for customers that drive increased business. The combination of better information and increased sales is a winning proposition, and is encouraging resorts to integrate more and more departments into a central system.

And it’s becoming ever easier for business software holdouts to join the club. “You can buy a computer for $500, so the price barrier is not there any longer. We hope to see a lot of small- to medium-sized resorts that have not automated begin to do so in the near future,” says Comptrol president Charles “Chip” Culp.

Here’s a look at the major players and their claims to fame.


Comptrol

Comptrol offers a full range of ski-related software products (except for food and beverage). Small- and medium-sized areas typically start with lift-ticketing programs, both selling and issuing. That includes season-pass selling with customer pictures affixed to a season pass; a group-selling module for dealing with third-party wholesalers, like travel agents, that require accounts-receivable billing; a lift-access control module, either bar-coding or radio-frequency tags, that handle validation of tickets and passes as skiers board the lift; and a new hotel-reservation system for small- to medium-sized facilities offering 40 to 100 rooms.

“We do not produce a retail system because there are so many on the market,” Culp says. “Rather than try to compete with the good ones, we will simply interface with them if necessary.”

Mission Ridge, Wash., falls in the 100,000 skier-visits category, according to ticket manager Sue Frese. The area has used Comptrol’s Lift Express, Pass Express and Ticket Express for the past six years. All three software packages are networked so mountain personnel can follow use of a ticket or pass throughout the day or season. A scan gun at the lift transmits information about each ticket back to an antenna located atop the ticket-office building where the central system is located. “If a pass has been terminated or replaced, we can tell throughout the day if the lost, stolen or hot pass is being used,” she says.

Comptrol’s technology allowed Mission Ridge to introduce a Direct-to-Lift discount this season. Called the “Bomber Card,” after one of its runs, the card is scanned and the user’s credit card charged for a one-day lift ticket at a discounted rate. “The charge actually goes to the bank at the end of the day, so it in no way slows lift lines,” Frese says. “It is a huge labor savings. In fact, we have another discount card called the ‘3.0 Club’ we issue to students with at least a B average in school who can ski for $25 rather than $40. Both the ‘Bomber Card’ and the ‘3.0 Club’ card are designed to attach to the guest’s credit card so they do not have to stand in line at the ticket office. When the card is scanned at the lift, the information goes into a buffer that is sent to the bank at the end of each day. This is the second year of our direct-to-lift discount card program, and usage has nearly doubled.”


Rentitbiz

Not all resort-related software is of the multiple-module variety. Born in boat- and bike-rental shops, RentitBiz Software moved into the ski-software business at the suggestion of one of its bike- and-ski-rental customers four years ago. Its Ski Speed software provides capabilities for equipment rental, retail and reservations, both in-person and online. “That allows the mom-and-pop operations to become [technologically] competitive at an affordable price,” says president Josh Squire. “It is a touch-screen-based system that employees can learn within 30 minutes.”

Some shops rent skis in the winter and bikes in the summer. Bikes often rent by the hour and skis by the day. “The software needs to accommodate that,” Squire says. “Our software can deal with any type of pricing plan, hourly or daily. If you want to charge members one rate and non-members another, it can also do that.”

Concludes Squire: “We offer an off-the-shelf product which requires no customization. It may meet 95 percent of your needs, which is pretty good.”

Ron Hallam, owner of The Ski Stop rental shop (formerly two shops) in Banff, Alberta, agrees. “Three years ago when we purchased the computer equipment, we needed a program that allowed us to do rentals and returns to either location. Our staff can learn to use it quickly, which is important in a resort area where staff changes happen every year.

“With the bells and whistles that come with it, namely the ability to use scanners and label printers, it became an integral part of our operation. It took us two to three weeks with things like settings for language and naming the printer. But we have been flying ever since.”


ROKPOS

Developed in Australia by the Intouch Technology Group, ROKPOS is a major player in the Southern Hemisphere and a growing force above the equator, according to account manager George Dumont. The software touches all aspects of the ski-resort business from food and beverage to CRM systems, which tie into ski-rental, ski-school and lodging- reservation modules. As of 2007, ROKPOS software is also being packaged with ROKPOS hardware (touch-screen terminals, cash-drawers and receipt and ticket printers) and made available on a rental or sale basis.

Its latest product provides clients the ability to provide passholders with discounts on merchandise purchased in retail shops or meals from resort-owned food and beverage operations.

“With larger clients,” Dumont says, “we have no problem supplying one or all pieces of the ROKPOS puzzle. We can take one piece of our software, say ticketing and lodging, and integrate this with the software solution already being used for food and beverage. It may be beneficial for clients to go with most of our software suite because it allows sales data to be integrated, centrally deposited and reported on, but it is by no means imperative. ROKPOS is sold on a subscription basis, which means a client’s annual license fee is primarily determined by its terminal count rather than the software products it uses.”

Even small resorts can benefit. Campgaw Mountain, N.J., with 25,000 to 30,000 skier-visits annually, uses Intouch’s food and beverage, ticketing, rental and reservation modules. But the area found the web and in-house sales programs particularly valuable, according to operations manager Michael Lynch.

“Since we started using ROKPOS, we have been discovering additional features we want to use and we have been finding them easy to integrate,” Lynch says. “We have been able to customize reports we need when we need them.”


RTP

Resort Technology Partners (RTP) provides complete resort-operation software, except for lodging management and central reservations. It counts many of North America’s major ski and non-ski recreational facilities among its clients, but the company is increasing its penetration into mid-sized operations.

“We offer a number of innovative programs, such as Resort Charge, which allows people to use passes for charging privileges around an entire facility. We also have distribution solutions that allow the guest to have a more seamless experience whether via a kiosk, on-line, or through third party channels,” says Andrew Soulakis, director of operations. “We will not be the cheapest solution. But we deliver a lot of value per dollar because of the depth of the product.”

Speed is a major benefit of using a single system across multiple lines of business, which also means less training for end users and less maintenance. “There are cost benefits associated with having one [software] operation to manage,” Soulakis says.

RTP can integrate with other software packages. For instance, the company offers its own food and beverage point-of-sale system designed to manage the revenue side. But the food and beverage industry traditionally works with a number of leading providers of food-inventory-management systems. “We integrate with Foodtrak,” Soulakis says.

“An example of interfaces we support include posting transactions back to the lodging system if someone wants to make room charges around the resort,” he notes. “We support GL [general ledger] interfaces so you can electronically post all accounting entries into the general ledger without having to key all that information in.”

Boyne USA Resorts, an RTP client, is considering installing RTP’s food and beverage platform to make its “BoyneRewards” loyalty program even more customer friendly, according to Boyne’s director of technology Chris Downing. Points for skiing and retail purchases are easily tabulated and used by customers via vouchers they can print themselves. “The main driver is a customer-centric loyalty system that our management committee realizes has helped customer relations,” Downing says. “We had to create an ad-hoc system on the back end to bring in the points [for food and beverage]. We cannot offer the integrated vouchers. We want people to be able to create vouchers for food and beverage as well.”


Siriusware

Siriusware also provides integrated ticketing, point-of-sale and guest-management software. The company’s core market is small- to medium-sized areas, although among its 90 ski clients are a few larger companies.

“One of the ultimate goals of an integrated solution is to provide the guest with as transparent of an experience as possible,” says Mark Danemann, Siriusware’s president and CEO. “Transparent means guests should pull out their wallet and give their information as few times as possible. That way, once they get to the area, it becomes an experience of skiing rather than one of standing in line.”

Danemann believes that for this goal, an integrated solution works best. “The more disparate solutions they [ski operators] have, the harder it is to get consolidated information. We try to get as many of these sources of information working on our solution so it reduces the amount of gathering they have to do between systems.”

But, Danemann admits, some excellent non-ski software in certain areas—like food/beverage, retail and property management—have worked successfully for many years at ski areas, and operators are hesitant to give them up. While Siriusware can integrate with these systems, it may slow data collection and reporting as opposed to using a single software provider.

“We try to find the best mix of functionalities that clients want,” Danemann says. “Those who want to take it further, we try to help integrate with other solutions to get to the next step. Most small- to medium-sized clients are most interested in streamlining their operations. Having a common platform where the end-of-day close-out procedures are the same for every point of sale is a big advantage for them.”

Perfect North Slopes (PNS), Ind., which records 250,000 snow-sports visits annually between its skiing and tubing operations, has completely switched to Siriusware’s across-the-board software package, according to IT director Jonathan Davis. “The most valuable module is e-commerce that we can plug into our website. That allows us to sell passes 24 hours a day and reduce labor by 75 percent in the preseason. It also decreased our phone calls dramatically.”

PNS has a Siriusware-supplied point-of-sale system allowing customers to buy in-house cards as gifts or special promotions that recipients can use throughout the resort. PNS based several of its marketing promotions around the cards. “For example,” Davis says, “we have a Learn-to-Turn program allowing a guest to purchase a lift ticket, rental and beginner lesson. The beginner lesson is $5 off the original cost. Once they take the lesson and come back inside, we give them a $10 debit card that can be used throughout the resort. More than 50 percent were used for return visits. We believe that has in­creased our beginner base tremendously.”


Sports Rental

Sports Rental is a developer of equipment-rental system programs. In conjunction with Head, Sports Rental has developed a readable/writeable chip technology that is actually more advanced than the readable-only chip being used by most ski manufacturers to store data about sets of rental equipment, according to Bill Hutton, the North American distributor for Sports Rental. While more advanced in terms of collecting and inputting information about individual customers, the Sports Rental chip is compatible with all rental software systems, he adds.

“Our chip is unique in that it works with multiple platforms of various companies as an information reporting and read/writeable chip,” Hutton says. “The standard chip that has become the platform for most everyone [on the other hand] is just a readable, identification chip. Our chip works on the same frequencies as the standard chip. It is more advanced than the one that has become the standard, but is also more expensive, about $1.50 per chip compared to 20 to 30 cents for the standard chip.”

Whatever the size of a resort, there are systems for every ski area. How much an area wants to tie all of its departments together, is simply a matter of preference—the software exists to do it.