The charming city of Coffeyville, Kansas is a Bradbury novel come to life. From the striped storefront awnings, to the wooden balustrades of its brick buildings, the city’s history literally lines the streets. Formerly a frontier settlement on the Verdigris River, it was an oil and manufacturing town that played a large role in the development of the American Southwest. Today, iconic landmarks like the Condon Bank and Midland Theater are a couple of minutes away from automotive shops and fast food chains. And at the heart of Coffeyville is an unassuming three-story complex that tells a more recent story.

In 2007, the Verdigris River flooded a third of the city and displaced hundreds of its residents. Shortly afterward, a 71-room property was built for the community by more than a dozen individual owners. Known as Sleep Inn and Suites, this cozy and conveniently located hotel is doing its part in modernizing Coffeyville’s hotel industry. Its multiple excellent reviews for cleanliness, comfort, and customer service stand out among several others in the area. We sat down with Sleep Inn’s General Manager, John Chevere, to learn more about their day-to-day operations.

Multitasking with a Former Marine

General Manager John is a former Marine who hasn’t lost his knack for efficiency. In fact, one of the first things he did was to look for a way to run Sleep Inn and Suites better. “What we were running into was a very complex payroll system […] Basically, the payroll system was all manual. We were using time sheets,” he says. “It just wasn’t anything I was used to and it wasn’t something I wanted to get used to. I thought it was kinda ridiculous from, you know, for us to be doing that way. So I started looking for a solution, and ran across Tanda.”

Doing the payroll manually used to take John up to 4 hours. Most managers know that every minute is valuable because of all the moving parts that need supervision. Being stuck in a back office for hours on end takes away from time that could be spent training employees and engaging clients. After investing in Tanda’s workforce management software, the whole process was cut down to just 15 minutes. According to John, “From a management standpoint and from the ability to multitask, there’s nothing better than having your time freed up.”

Read more: From Battlefields to Boardrooms: Finding Good Managers with William Gooderson

Motivating a Lean-and-Mean Staff

“The biggest obstacle I’ve ever faced is always managing people. It’s not managing processes, [because] you can put processes in place. The people are the ones you got to get motivated, and keep them that way,” John muses. To that end, they use their workforce management software not only to publish shifts and process payroll but also to increase employee engagement. “Everybody here uses the app,” he says, “We literally use Tanda for everything.” Tanda’s app has given John’s staff the ability to check their schedule and pay and file for time off, all from their mobile phones. “There’s really no reason for our staff to not ever have their schedule because it’s so readily available to them,” he adds.

As a General Manager, he also knows how important it is to be able to motivate staff. “Again it goes back to the ability to manage your people,” he says. Through the program, he monitors his staff better, and notes how the team can improve. “Tanda sends me an alert to let me know that, hey, I’ve got two of my housekeepers that have run a pass on their target time”, he relates. Whereas monitoring used to involved guesswork, everything is now highly transparent. With the right data accessible in real time, John ensures all the work is done and the staff is paid correctly, at a fraction of the administrative cost.

Read more: Why employees love Tanda’s Workforce Success software

Modernizing Kansas Hotels

John believes that workforce management software can do wonders for the hotel industry in Kansas and beyond. “As a manager, we always want to know if we’re hitting our numbers, especially in the hotel business. We want to know what our labor costs look like,” he says. Hotels, whatever the size, should invest in a one-stop-shop program that can schedule staff, integrate with payroll systems, ensure compliance, and even generate reports. “The other thing that I love about Tanda is that it will take your income per day and it will show you what your labor costs are. Those, once again, are things that you can’t get for that kind of money.”

Today, the hospitality industry in Kansas makes up 9.2% of the total private sector employment, with a retail sales volume of $2.99 billion per year. It’s a robust and growing industry, with a notable boom in Kansas City, where more than 15 hotels are opening by 2020. John encourages all hotel managers and owners across the US to find workforce management software that works for them. “People would be very wise to go ahead and jump on board now, as opposed to waiting until this thing really takes off and then they’re going to spend more money [on a program],” he said. Doing so will enable hotels to use data to increase employee engagement and drive profits, while decreasing administrative costs.

Read more:  3 Strategies to Master Your Wage Costs in 2019

Keeping Sleep Inn and Suites Future-proof

Exciting things lie ahead for John and his staff with new investors looking at their hotel. Once they secure new contracts and grow the business, they’ll be able to use Tanda to their advantage even more. Tanda is no stranger to managing businesses of all sizes, with previously small operations taking Tanda with them upon expansions. Plus, with multiple payroll partners, there’s no conflict with existing systems. “With this new group, I will definitely have to manage my expenses probably a lot closer. Tanda is gonna really help me. And if there’s that revenue portion that can help me generate more revenue, that that’s going to help me in the process as well,” he says.

Efficient, innovative, and future-proof — these are just three things that Sleep Inn and Suites can pride itself on. Coffeyville has been through its fair share of challenges, but the community has always pulled through. There is no better testament to this than this three-storey hotel on 11th street. It is even motivating local hotels to develop a whole new management standard. And with a promising hospitality industry that sees more local and international tourists checking in every year, success may well be here to stay in Kansas.