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OTMS has done a lot of custom development work for the hospitality industry over the years.  We like hearing unique ideas for addressing your business needs with technology and can advise you based on decades of experience doing this type of work.

Below we’ve highlighted some of the more interesting custom development projects we’ve done in the past.
 

1.Stock Exchange - Real time stock market style operation for bars.  This was a unique project at the time, a theme bar that looked like a trading floor of a stock exchange.  The system drove a number of displays showing price charts and pricing movements along with LED ticket bars that showed price changes.  The system monitored POS sales in real time and adjusted pricing in the system based on actual demand, within a defined range so that there were minimums each item could be sold for.

2.Room Key Payments - Developed a custom room charge interface for a resort that allowed using their RFID room keys to make room charges on their Simphony POS system, eliminating the need to ask guest names and room numbers and improve guest security.

3.Event Ticketing - A high volume ticketing operation wanted to do away with the need for printed ticket stock for their general admission events.  We developed a system to print TicketMaster ticket barcodes on the POS receipt printers which could be scanned by the TicketMaster gate devices, saving the company 10's of thousands of dollars annually for printing and managing the ticket inventory.

4.Waitlist Texting - Developed a system integrated with the POS waitlist feature to allow storing the guest mobile phone number in the system and provide options to send a "your table is ready" text from the system on demand.

5. Predictive Pizza Ordering System - This project was an interesting one from a technical perspective, being developed before the current Artificial Intelligence gold rush.  In essence the system tracked the most frequently ordered pizzas during times of peak demand and an expert system was developed using this data that could be configured to predict the pizzas likely to sell based on past patterns.  It then fired orders to the kitchen for those pizzas and allowed the pizzas to be claimed out of the oven via tablets in the restaurants or through their online ordering options.

6. Store Credit Cards - Developed a custom payment interface for private label credit cards used by a major department store chain so that restaurant charges could be paid with their store credit card.

7. Location Aware Payment System - We developed a couple variations on this theme.  A mobile payment app with location awareness would expose the clients with this app to an API call from the POS system, so you could retrieve a list of the app users currently in the restaurant and open a check with the guest information from the application.  The system allowed for closing the check to the payment application either by user action or automatically if the system detected that the patron had left the building.

8. Tip Tracking Enhancements - Allows servers to enter their tip outs to other employees in the POS system for tracking, other employees are notified at clock in/out what tip outs have been assigned to them.  This allowed a clean, validated solution for payroll reporting.

9. Corky's BBQ Shipping - Integrated the POS system with FedEx Shipping services to allow restaurant terminals to be used for shipping BBQ.  This was an entry level shipping option that exploded in popularity.  Initially just operating within the restaurant, shipping grew to include more than a dozen operators taking phone orders at peak times of the year, online ordering integration, warehouse shipping operations and a smart packaging system developed with assistance from relational database expert and author Joe Celko.

10. Rottnest Island Lottery - While it’s changed dramatically since this project was developed, Rottnest Island off the coast of Western Australia (home of the quokka pictured above) came to OTMS with a unique problem years ago.  Part of the State Reserve system, the island was a hot item for vacation rentals and camping spots during various times of the year.  To make it fair OTMS developed a lottery system for who got reservations in a national park during peak periods which integrated with the Opera Property Management System to create reservations and notify the winners via email.