Suite Hub streamlines bookings and increases conversions with Dynamics 365 Sales and Power Apps

Curated business travel

Suite Hub provides serviced accommodations for business travelers globally. It specializes in safe, clean, and private apartments with the flexibility of a hotel that are ideal for stays of a week to a year. Suite Hub perfectly fills the gap between expensive hotels and long-term fixed rental contracts.

Using Microsoft Power Pages and Power Automate, Suite Hub developed a unique platform for the business travel industry that connects both corporate bookers and accommodation providers in one place. Bookers submit requests for a traveler or a whole team in a given city, and then accommodation providers in the area submit available options with the best prices in a new transparent environment.

By using highly secure webpages through Power Pages, accommodation providers can view real-time market intelligence within each quote before it’s closed and submitted to a corporate booker. Using Power Automate flows, providers receive notification updates for key changes to open quotes, supporting smart, on-the-spot decisions to maximize the chance of winning business. The corporate booker quickly receives a list of options that perfectly matches their needs from area accommodation providers, and they can book instantly on the Suite Hub platform, which is built on Power Pages.

To track customer journeys, Suite Hub adopted Dynamics 365 Sales several years ago as its customer relationship management (CRM) platform, streamlining processes and ultimately increasing the level of service the company delivers to both corporate bookers and accommodation providers.

Continuous enhancements

Suite Hub continually fine-tunes its platform with the future in mind. By using ever-evolving Microsoft technologies as a foundation, the company paves the way to increase automation and eventually incorporate AI into its booking service.

Accommodation providers have the flexibility to use plug-ins from Microsoft and others with Power Pages, so they can choose whether to sync booking calendars and automate the options they provide, further reducing the time needed to gather and present options to a corporate booker. Suite Hub also migrated complex workflows to Power Automate and performed portal integration enhancements, such as adding mapping software plug-ins to improve its customers’ experiences when comparing options on its platform.

Providers will also be able to choose whether the Suite Hub platform uses AI to amend pricing and offer other services automatically. The company uses this combination of Power Pages, Dynamics 365 Sales, and Power Automate to drive the innovation it delivers to the serviced accommodation sector.

“Accommodation providers stay in the know by viewing market intelligence for each quote on our platform, giving them an exciting opportunity to amend options before they’re presented to the booker, maximizing the chance of winning business,” says Gary Moore, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Suite Hub.

A new invoicing solution that’s specifically designed to accommodate all the complexities of the serviced accommodation sector was also created by using Power Automate, delivering customers an efficient and fully automated billing service. “Just one click of a button launches the flow for Power Automate, which creates all the invoices in the system, simplifying a process that used to be complicated,” says Aneal Sadiq, Commercial Director at Suite Hub.

Low-code development for agility

Suite Hub teamed up with AlexaCRM, a Gold competency member of the Microsoft Partner Network. AlexaCRM helped Suite Hub build the Power Automate flows and ensure the interfaces were optimized for a seamless experience between customers and suppliers. By using a low-code solution like Power Apps, Suite Hub can quickly pivot to customer needs and flex with the changing market. “We’ll continue working with our partner, AlexaCRM, for the more complex flows and visuals, and we can build a lot of the low-code apps in-house, too,” says Moore.

Even though business has been affected by the COVID-19 crisis and restrictions on global travel, Suite Hub is increasing agility and setting itself up for future success by focusing on its core business. “By using Dynamics 365 with Power Pages, we have the opportunity to focus on delivering the best experience to customers and suppliers rather than worrying about developing, updating, and managing all our own tools,” says Sadiq. “Our relationship with Microsoft has delivered a strong ROI on our IT time and costs compared to if we’d developed our own systems from scratch.”

Improved efficiency and data security

Suite Hub previously performed many of its tasks and processes by using spreadsheets, manually syncing different databases and heavily relying on emails and phone calls. This approach was inefficient and exposed its customers’ sensitive data to security risks.

“With Dynamics 365 Sales, we’ve been able to combine every task and process in one CRM system and database that’s based on and protected by Microsoft,” says Moore. “We believe customer data is now as secure as it can possibly be. With Power Pages, we can deliver a platform where customers and accommodation providers view and update the same database that we use in our CRM, reducing human error and syncing issues.”

Corporate bookers and accommodation providers can interact on one platform that’s unrivalled in terms of stability and data security. Both parties can make important updates and share sensitive information without relying on back-and-forth emails and phone calls. Since customizing Power Pages, Suite Hub has dramatically increased efficiency across the business for its corporate bookers and accommodation providers.

“Now, everything related to the sourcing and booking of serviced accommodations happens seamlessly on our platform with the combination of Dynamics 365 and Power Apps,” says Moore. “By building a platform on Dynamics 365 Sales and Power Pages and extending it to connect tools, streamline workflows, and automate processes, we’ve been able to increase the overall efficiency of our booking processes by more than 60 percent.”

Increased booking conversions

Choosing to use Power Pages has resulted in an overall increased booking conversion rate of more than 30 percent for Suite Hub. By taking advantage of real-time market intelligence on the Suite Hub platform, accommodation providers can maximize the value being offered on quotes, often reducing prices or adding more services prior to sending the quote to the customer. This value extends to the corporate booker that receives the list of pre-negotiated options. Naturally, conversions have increased because bookers can just focus on which options to book without the time and hassle involved in trying to find and negotiate options by themselves.

Suite Hub also recently connected its platform to a partner’s map plug-in that displays the list of presented options as a set of pins on a map, where customers can click between the pins to display travel distances and times relative to specific destinations. This addition has simplified and sped up the process that corporate bookers undergo when comparing which options to book.

“Suite Hub’s integrated map functionality has been a game changer,” concludes Moore. “Options now clearly display on one map, and our bookers can click between the options to view travel distances and directions in real time. With Power Pages, we’ve increased how effectively we display options to our bookers, and we’ve seen at least a 30 percent lift in booking conversions.”

Find out more about Suite Hub on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.