PMI is a productivity management tool which looks at the productivity per department in the hotel. PMI calculates the productivity by looking at the cost driver (typically revenue, room nights or covers) for the department. PMI then takes the cost driver and divides it by the number of hours used for a specific day, or the hours planned for a specific day in the future.

With this calculation, PMI can suggest a plan for future days as well as analyse past days. In order to integrate with an external time keeping system (TKS), all hours used, as well as planned future hours per department need to be imported to PMI.

For the initial setup, a minimum of two years of historical data beginning from the 1st of January two years prior is required.

What data is needed from your time keeping system?

The purpose of recording hours in PMI is to keep track of paid hours incurred and paid hours planned/scheduled per department/operational unit (e.g. Housekeeping, Front Office, Breakfast etc.).

The data needs to be extracted daily. Each extract needs to include yesterday plus 30 days prior and all scheduled hours for today, including a minimum of 45 days ahead (preferably more if possible).

Key clarification on the use of TKS

The following questions will be addressed during the discussion on how the integration should be set up.

1. If a staff member belongs in one department and performs a task for another department, will the hours be recorded accordingly in TKS, i.e., will two separate departments codes be used?
2. What time categories will be extracted? Examples? (See point 6 above)
3. What job categories will be extracted? Examples? (See point 8 above)
4. All hours recorded need to be imported to PMI daily. Does your extract support this, or is it restricted to only “approved” hours?
5. All future/planned/schedule hours need to be separated between productive and non-productive (e.g vacation, training) “tasks” in PMI. Does your system support such separation?
6. If the data cannot be provided trough Webservice or API, the extract should be divided into two files; one with Actual (yesterday minus 30 days) and the other with Scheduled/Planned (today plus 45 days).

For more details on data transfer methods, please see the article How to transfer data to PMI.