At CiMSO, our customer events are about more than showcasing new developments. They are an opportunity to listen, learn and have meaningful conversations with the people who use our software every day.

This year, CiMSO hosted customer events in Eswatini, Nelspruit and KwaZulu-Natal, with our Namibia event planned for November. During these CiMSO Live events, we share new developments, integrations and industry insights through our power sessions, while also creating space for customers to share their own experiences.

One of the most valuable parts of these events is our customer feedback session, where we ask:

What challenges are you experiencing in your day-to-day hotel, lodge, resort or club operations?
What industry trends or operational needs do you believe software could better support?
What CiMSO enhancements, features, reports or integrations would improve your daily workflow?
What ideas or suggestions could benefit other CiMSO users?

We don’t ask these questions simply to collect feedback. We take the responses seriously. Some of the challenges raised can already be addressed through functionality within CiMSO, while others are helping us identify areas for future development and improvement.

Here are some of the key themes our customers raised — and how CiMSO can help.

1. Challenges in Daily Operations

Limited visibility of electricity, water and other operational costs

Understanding operational costs is essential for effective management, particularly when it comes to expenses such as electricity, water and other utilities. Customers highlighted the need for easier visibility of these costs.

How CiMSO can help

CiMSO already provides a range of reports that can give users insight into specific accounts, including those relating to electricity, water and other operational expenses.

Where standard reports don’t provide exactly what a property needs, CiMSO can also create a custom F808 report that brings selected accounts together. This means the report can be specifically targeted to the information a particular property wants to monitor, rather than requiring users to work through information that isn’t relevant to them.

There is also an opportunity to automate the delivery of this information. ProcessScheduler can automatically email selected Console Reports to specified email addresses at user-defined times and frequencies. This means management can receive the information they need regularly without having to remember to run and distribute the reports manually.

Looking further ahead, CiMSO is also developing a Management Dashboard, planned for release in 2027. The dashboard will allow users to take information from reports and display it in a personalised dashboard, making important operational information easier to access and monitor at any time.

Staff levels and training

Staff turnover and ongoing training remain practical challenges for hospitality businesses. Customers highlighted the difficulty of maintaining consistent knowledge and skills, particularly when new staff members join the team.

How CiMSO can help

As part of an implementation, CiMSO provides comprehensive training, together with Daily Task Sheets for each department, customised according to the property’s unique SOPs.

Additional training can also be arranged where required. However, we understand that ongoing training costs can become a challenge, particularly when cash flow is under pressure.

For this reason, CiMSO also provides process-specific training videos at no additional cost. These short, practical videos can demonstrate tasks such as creating an individual reservation, creating a purchase order, reversing an invoice and other common system processes.

This gives new employees an opportunity to learn at their own pace, with additional one-on-one training available where it is genuinely required.

2. Industry Trends and Operational Needs

Increased automation of guest communication

Customers are increasingly looking for ways to automate communication with guests before, during and after their stay, without losing the personal touch.

How CiMSO can help

CiMSO’s MAILMerger functionality allows properties to create communication templates that are automatically triggered when specific events occur.

For example, a property can configure an email to be sent when a booking status changes to confirmed or when the guest reaches their departure date and a feedback request should be sent.

Guest feedback can then be captured directly against the guest’s profile, helping the property build a more complete picture of the guest relationship.

Increased demand for mobile-friendly solutions for managers and staff

Hospitality teams are increasingly mobile, and managers and operational staff need access to relevant information without always being tied to a desktop computer.

How CiMSO can help

The planned CiMSO Management Dashboard will provide users with easier access to key information in a personalised format.

In addition, CiMSO is currently developing a new application designed to extend mobile access for both guests and staff. Among the functionality being developed are features that will allow staff to log in and access information such as commissions, housekeeping statuses and daily spa and activity bookings.

The aim is to make relevant information and operational functions available where staff actually need them — on the move and in the operation.

3. CiMSO-Specific Enhancements

Simplifying financial information and reducing duplicate data entry

Customers highlighted the need for integration with mainstream financial systems, particularly to simplify financial-year data migration and reduce duplicate data entry.

How CiMSO can help

CiMSO offers its own fully integrated financial system, which connects with the other CiMSO modules.

For customers using the integrated finance functionality, operational and financial information flows within the same system. This removes the need to repeatedly capture information between separate systems, helping to reduce duplicate data entry, minimise errors, improve reporting and keep information in one place.

Automated guest messaging based on bookings, arrivals, activities and departures

Automated communication was another recurring theme in customer feedback.

How CiMSO can help

As mentioned above, MAILMerger already provides automated email communication based on booking-related triggers.

CiMSO is also currently rewriting its SpaScheduler and ACTivities modules. Future released versions are planned to include automated SMS communication for bookings, further extending the ability to communicate with guests without relying entirely on manual intervention.

Electronic and mobile registration for check-ins

Customers also highlighted the value of electronic check-in to reduce queues at reception and allow guest information to be captured before arrival.

How CiMSO can help

CiMSO’s CMobi E-registration allows guests to complete the registration process through a browser on their phone or another device.

Guests can upload required documents, update their information and confirm that they have read and understood the indemnity form — all in one place.

The information submitted is automatically updated on the guest profile, reducing manual data capture and allowing the reception team to spend less time on administration when the guest arrives.

4. Suggestions to Benefit the Wider CiMSO Community

More practical training during CiMSO Live

One suggestion from our customers was to include more practical training during CiMSO Live, particularly sessions focused on real hospitality problems and how these can be solved using CiMSO.

Our response

CiMSO Live is not structured as a formal training session. Instead, we place strong emphasis on new developments, updates and integrations, many of which provide practical solutions to challenges our customers are experiencing.

Our power sessions also give us the opportunity to engage with hospitality leaders and industry representatives about the challenges they face in their operations — and, importantly, to hear how they have addressed these challenges using INNkeeper.

This creates a different kind of learning opportunity: customers are not only learning from CiMSO, but also from the experiences and solutions of other hospitality professionals.

And the conversation doesn’t end here

The feedback we received at our events covered far more than the areas where we could immediately point to an existing CiMSO solution.

Some of the suggestions highlighted opportunities for us to look at how CiMSO can continue to evolve. These are areas we will take back to our Operations and Development teams for further consideration and action.

Your Feedback Helps Shape What Comes Next

Not every piece of feedback has an immediate answer — and we don’t believe it should.

Sometimes the most valuable outcome of a customer conversation is identifying a challenge that we need to investigate further.

That’s why these conversations matter.

The feedback shared at our CiMSO Live events helps us understand what is happening on the ground, what hospitality businesses are struggling with, what is changing in the industry and where software can provide greater value.

Some of the solutions are already in CiMSO. Some are currently being developed. And some have now been placed on our radar for further investigation.

We will continue listening, learning and working to make CiMSO more useful to the people who rely on it every day.

Because the best software doesn’t just respond to the industry — it listens to the people working in it.