Kempinski Hotels picks Novell for collaboration

BANGALORE: Novell today announced Kempinski Hotels, the management company for 56 exclusive five-star luxury hotels, residences and resort properties in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, has chosen Novell Teaming to increase collaboration and communication among its international workforce. Novell Teaming, a team collaborative application that includes enterprise social networking and workflow capabilities, allows Kempinski Hotels to centralize, manage and organize its knowledge assets, empowering employees to create and share information either across the hall or across a continent. According to to the press release, With collaboration solutions from Novell, Kempinski Hotels is able to reduce costs and boost productivity.

"Novell Teaming is helping us create a corporate culture in which all employees are part of a single community working together to run successful individual businesses," said Jeremy Ward, senior vice president of Information Technology, Kempinski Hotels. "We are allowing the solution to grow organically with the direction and content chosen by the users themselves. Once there is a critical mass of information in Novell Teaming, we expect the usage and benefits to grow exponentially."

Working with Novell partner, ID Integrated Data SA, the company designed and deployed a new collaboration environment built on Novell Teaming that serves as a repository for all corporate information. In addition, to support Kempinski Hotels' property expansion over the next three years, the company plans to roll out this solution to 6,000 employees and allow staff in each hotel to create their own information resources, wikis and shared workspaces.

To reduce the cost and time required to complete administrative tasks, Kempinski Hotels leveraged the advanced workflow functionality available in Novell Teaming to automate and streamline processes ranging from purchasing approvals to vacation requests. The company is also in the process of creating a portal - which will include financial applications, dashboards and tight integration with Novell GroupWise® for e-mail - to provide employees with a single workspace and enable greater efficiencies in management reporting, workflow processes and communication.

"Collaboration is a critical component of maintaining the quality and consistency guests expect from Kempinski Hotels no matter where in the world they travel," said Kent Erickson, senior vice president of Novell Workgroup Solutions. "Promoting communication and collaboration by giving users the ability to discuss and learn from each other, Novell Teaming helps capture the knowledge each individual contributes to an organization's success and leverages that learning to benefit the entire enterprise."