“AI is becoming an integral part of the function of the hospitality sector” – Dr. Ameet Patil, Founder & CEO of Ecobillz Private Limited

Can you provide an overview of what Ecobillz is and how it functions as a SaaS-based digitization platform?

Ecobillz was established in 2016 as an innovative AI-led digitization and automation SaaS platform offering comprehensive modules such as digital check-in/check-out, Account Receivables (AR), Income Audits, E-Invoicing, C-form automation, etc.

This platform captures, reads and accumulates documents and data in real-time, which is used for document management systems, advanced business process automation and to churn the data for generating valuable insights of any business. The key component of this B2B SaaS platform is that it was built to eliminate the use of paper by providing innovative real-time digital solutions and automating backend operations.

The main advantage of Ecobillz is that it requires no change in the existing software or process of the organization. Hotels, therefore, can quickly adopt Ecobillz without making any changes to their existing systems and processes.

Over the years, Ecobillz has forayed into multiple domains such as hospitality, hospitals, automotive etc. Today, Ecobillz is being used in more than 150+ premium luxury hotels all across India and abroad. Ecobillz has a strong mission to help large organizations adopt advanced digitization using AI in order to increase productivity with process automation and data mining with the aim to save trees and time—thus transforming businesses to become more responsible.

Why is AI of utmost importance to the hospitality industry?

Customers today demand the best possible hospitality experience. This is only possible if the staff is well-versed with its customer base. Ecobillz’s AI-enabled application plays a major role in churning out all the details about the customers from their previous visits assisting the staff in instantly creating a customised package with their preferred room location, food and beverage choices and preferences, etc. This technology also ensures accurate billing, availing discounts, upgrading customers to premium memberships among various other factors. This in itself heightens the hospitality experience. Customers’ feedback is also registered for future use to help the hotel staff serve accordingly despite changes in the workforce. Ecobillz’s data and analytics-based technology has been integrated into every major hotel chain across the country to heighten the hospitality experience. AI is also being implemented in the hospitality industry for payment technologies, automated cleaning services and voice driver smart bots and smart security services.

How does Ecobillz differentiate itself from other similar platforms or services in the market? What unique features or offerings does it provide to its users?

Ecobillz does not have any competition in the true sense as our services are unique and cannot be compared. Our products are being used by almost all premium hotel chains. The solutions offer a full round package as compared to other offering in the market that are disconnected and one-off solutions.

Our unique offerings are designed to be the least intrusive and can be integrated into the existing system as a plug-n-play digitization module requiring no change in the existing system. As the platform magically works with any PMS and POS software without requiring any tight integration, its implementation cost is also minimal.

The response to the adoption of Ecobillz’s technology has been overwhelming. With ZERO sales team, we are now a go-to name in the hotel industry. Ecobillz platform and its products are being used by more than 200+ premium 5-star hotels across the country. The product has sold itself, convincing the users of the need and has created significant demand in the market for us.

The hospitality industry is constantly evolving, with new trends and sustainability practices emerging. How does www.ecobillz.com keep up with these changes and ensure that its platform remains relevant and adaptable to the industry’s evolving needs?

We are constantly reinventing ourselves to be in sync with the ever-changing industry dynamics. Our products and technologies constantly evolve to address traditional terrains of business operations and give them a modern outlook by integrating them with AI technologies.

AI is becoming an integral part of the function of the hospitality sector, aiding in streamlining key business procedures and assisting in strategic decision-making, with minimum turnaround time for the business owners. Ecobillz integrates its AI technology to smartly assess the challenges and offer solutions.

For instance, Ecobillz’s innovative product, Ecobillz ARC: Automated Reconciliation, uses AI right from bots to capture data, to clean data, to churn data and to reconcile transactions that arrive from multiple sources at the backend. Ecobillz Reconciliation uses AI-driven bots to get onto every related portal, search for the right data on behalf of the customer, export/download the relevant reports, and build a data lake for the hotels. Thus, even if the hotel gets aggregated payments from payment providers at the end of the month, they do not have to struggle to reconcile the payments against each of their guests.

There are various other areas where Ecobillz has designed customized future-ready solutions to leverage the growth of the hotel and tourism industry.

Data security and privacy are significant concerns in the digital era. How does Ecobillz ensure the security and integrity of the data it handles?

As an organization, we take cyber security very seriously. Ecobillz is certified under ISO 27,001 and we are also Service Organization Control Type 2 (SOC 2) compliant. Thus, our security standards are at par with the highest organizational standards. When it comes to European customers, we store data in a proper encrypted standard format that is expected of any company adhering to these standards. This makes our platform fully secure for our customers. 

The adoption of SaaS solutions is growing rapidly. What sets Ecobillz apart from other digitization platforms in terms of features, functionality, and ease of use?

Firstly, our platform is extremely agile and flexible to adapt to changing requirements. This was proven during the COVID times when businesses needed digital solutions promptly to continue their operations. Ecobillz was the only platform that quickly adapted to the global unprecedented situation and provided digitized solutions aiding organizations to continue their operations while maintaining the norms of the times.

Secondly, we are the one-stop solution that connects a lot of incoherent, disjunct and heterogeneous software components. Typically, large organizations use multiple software products. Ecobillz connects all these platforms together to provide the organization with a bird’s eye view of the business in one place. A lot of our customers prefer our platform to bring in this seamless centralization and collation of data from multiple sources. Ecobillz automatically churns this data and presents a quick, agile, error-free and easy-to-comprehend analysis. This real-time data of various operations in an organization generates instant analysis and results. This further helps organizations to make swift and informed decisions to change the course of organizational growth.