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Sircle Collection was created by the award-winning, Amsterdam-based entrepreneur Liran Wizman and includes the lifestyle-driven brands Sir Hotels, Max Brown Hotels, and Park Centraal Hotels. Founded in 2011 Sircle Collection enjoyed expansion to its current portfolio of 13 properties. “We are independent and this allows us to create truly magical offerings,” the group’s CEO Bram Van Der Hoek said. “We all love to work from scratch when it comes to new projects or brands. Various things attract us to a project, but usually, it’s an interesting city, neighborhood, or even building. We pull from the history, design, surrounding culture, and the energy of the people to make a project come alive.” Providing exceptional hospitality had been a priority from the beginning. “Our leadership team is very passionate about making sure our guest experience is not only enjoyable from a product and design standpoint but every personal interaction creates a positive experience,” observed Wietse Bijzeit, Sircle Collection's Group Director of Technology and Business Solutions.
Challenges in growth
The focus on providing a differentiated experience has earned Sircle Collection recognition from both media and guests alike, but its technology operation had become reactive and was starting to limit the company's growth ambitions.
“Sircle Collection was looking for someone to further develop a strategic overall vision of how technology could support the business and empower both guests and employees,” Bijzeit reflected. It was an opportunity that motivated him to join the company to lead its technology organization.
“We knew we wanted to work with great partners and innovate together with them and with each department within our company. We wanted to make it easier for our employees to do their job - engaging with and serving guests - instead of focusing on systems. We needed to think about what processes could be unified across our brands and identify and take away pain points for both our guests and associates.”
The search for a solution
This journey to solving these challenges started with Bijzeit and his team defining five core goals for the business:
- Modernizing IT infrastructure
- Future-proofing the technology stack
- Exceeding privacy and security expectations
- Building high-performing teams
- Being data-driven
With this framework in place, the search began for foundational technology that would support all of these goals. “If you have a core base layer of technology that is open and can connect with point solutions, you maximize your options in the future,” Bijzeit noted.
Integration was key for areas such as revenue management technology. “We needed to know if the systems could integrate to a level that would support the strategies of our revenue and commercial teams. This required meeting with each functional team in our organization to understand their goals before anything else.”
One thing that was clear from the start was how critical security would be. “Our approach to this depended on the nature of the system and the data being processed, but we looked very carefully to understand data protection controls and how each solution ensured security.” This included understanding the capabilities of in-house Security Operation Centers (SOCs) and Network Operation Centers (NOCs), and what support was available.
Overall, Sircle Collection needed to find the right partner that would allow them to innovate. “I’ve seen the wrong technology providers can actually slow down innovation. We wanted to find partners that would work with us to build the dream we had of balancing human touch and technology. This required cultural fit as much as product fit.”
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