colour-logo-new

How did they achieve an INSPIRATIONAL service?

About Royal Holloway University of London

 

Organisation type:

  • University

 

Challenges solved:

  • High error rates by using a mix of in-house-built system and Excel spreadsheets.
  • Lack of easy accessible overview of the internal operations.
  • No flexibility and efficiency in managing customer requests, creating event proposals, sending event quotes and invoices, and increasing space utilisation.
  • Lack of ability to create insightful and detailed reports.
  • No effective way to manage cleaning rota's and update room information.
  • Not being able to view all catering orders received.
  • Lack of internal communication and understanding of other departments' activities.
  • Challenging management of the student arrival, induction and room inspection process. 
  • No simple and modern way of booking student accommodation, accessing information and reporting any damage occurred by students directly to the operations team.

 

Size of operation:

  • 10,615 students
  • 3,471 bedrooms
  • £105.5m in student income
  • £24.7m residential, catering and conference income
  • Income increase by 12% in 2018

 

Client since:

  • 2004

 

Product suites:

  • Conferencing & Event Management
  • Student Accommodation Management
  • Residential Management
  • Catering Management
Jonathan Main

Jonathan Main, Head of Residences

Our journey began as one of Kinetic’s earliest customers in the university sector starting with a system to deliver basic internal hospitality business, adding conferencing, then web accommodation bookings. Then the university’s entire student halls accommodation application process became integrated, which was a major milestone having any occupant of any room at any time visible on the one system. We are now working on bedroom inventory management and inspections as well as paperless electronic check-in as we continue to evolve our business.

What makes Royal Holloway special?

One of the leading top 25 universities in the United Kingdom

Received ‘Premier’ status in Hospitality Assured assessment

High level of student satisfaction in the National Student Survey

High-quality accommodation, catering, conference and event services

The university was founded by two social reformers in 1886, who pioneered the idea of education and knowledge for all who could benefit. Since then, the university has expanded and grown into a leading research-intensive organisation and successful commercial operation with an income of almost £18m in 2018.

Over 133 years later, Royal Holloway is committed to offering a wide variety of high-quality accommodation, catering, conference and event services, underlined by high standards of customer care. On a yearly basis, the organisation deals with over 10,500 students, managing around 3,400 bedrooms and a large number of various events, incl. language school bookings with over 1,000 attendees at a time, generating in excess of 80,000 room nights.

Royal Holloway describe themselves as a “strong, successful and sustainable university making a valued contribution socially, economically and culturally throughout the UK”, which has been confirmed by various commercial and student surveys conducted.

 

Future goals and aspirations

The ambitious team at Royal Holloway would like to be consistently recognised as one of the top 25 universities in major league tables, as well as hold their place amongst the world’s top 200 universities. They aim to grow the student numbers beyond 10,500, whilst still retaining the sense of community and continue to invest into high-quality facilities and services.

 

The inspiring and imposing Founder's Building is complemented by outstanding new facilities that will meet the needs of today’s students and encourage collaborative, multi-disciplinary learning. Following significant investment in a new library, Student Services Centre, a new Department of Electronic Engineering building and town-house accommodation for 620 people, a new Cyber Security and Innovation Centre and Centre for Performing Arts are currently being planned.

Royal Holloway, just as many other universities, have to constantly adapt to changing demands from students, conference guests and other customers. Besides this, they are always aiming to find new ways to give their customers and students a truly remarkable and inspirational experience.

At the moment, the team is rethinking how some of the spaces can be utilised, overhauling their range of accommodation contracts to offer greater choice to students, and updating catering items to be more healthy, energising and sustainable. With increasing financial pressure within the higher education sector, and the need to monitor the profitability more carefully, Kx allows Royal Holloway to track their costs and forecast revenue to ensure that the financial reporting is as accurate as it can be.

royal holloway campus2

Powerful combination

Kinetic is proud to be supporting Royal Holloway’s operations, by providing them with student accommodation, conferencing and event management, catering and residential management software. 

 

Kinetic enables Royal Holloway to effectively manage an accommodation portfolio of over 3,400 bedrooms, for both student term-time lets and many thousands of short-term vacation lets from conference guests, residential groups and language schools. Combined with over 50 bookable meeting rooms, 7 dining rooms and 4 kitchens delivering award-winning conference, event and internal catering, Kinetic allows Royal Holloway to manage any booking from initial enquiry, proposal, invoicing through to event delivery and feedback, supported by useful forecasting, reporting and marketing capabilities and full integration with separate management accounting and electronic payment gateway software.

Benefits of Kx for Royal Holloway

The one-stop-shop solution that supports every department using Kinetic software. This has resulted in better communication across the organisation, increased productivity, efficiency and income.

Kinetic has helped the Commercial team at Royal Holloway to grow their business.

Royal Holloway have been piloted for the introduction of KxParcels. Even years later, the system still suits the organisation's needs by helping manage the delivery and distribution of over 120,000 parcels.

System is giving the flexibility in managing events and makes it easier to deal with additional customer requirements.

KxCatering and WebCatering modules are supporting the commercial operations by managing the internal catering operations stretching across 4 kitchens, 7 dining rooms and various cafeterias on site.

The system allows the conferencing departments to understand the student experience and vice versa.

Helping the Housekeeping team to stay organised and up-to-date through the KxInspections add-on, whilst managing over 3,400 bedrooms.

Different departments are encouraged to come together to discuss the best ways to develop their use of Kx and review the internal processes.

KxResidential is helping to streamline the room booking operations with 30 rooms being available all year round and around 3,400 rooms being usually fully booked during the summer period.