The Modern Hotelier #79: Over 50 years of Innovative Accounting Solutions for Hospitality | with Jill Wilder
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Steve Carran: Welcome
to another episode of The Modern Hotelier. We're coming to you from the Aptech booth at Hi Tech and we're joined with Jill Wilder.
Jill, welcome. Thanks for having, thanks for coming on. How are you doing today?
Jill Wilder: I'm Great, thanks.
Steve Carran: Great. So Jill, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background, where you grew up and kind of how that shaped you into who you are today?
Jill Wilder: Sure. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh and still live there today. and Aptech is Pittsburgh based. so I was raised by a, Father who was a CPA, so of course he was very interested in me being in the accounting world, and, um, I went to school, to a Robert Morris College, [00:01:00] which was a business college at the time, so I was pretty well versed that this was, I was going to be in some form of business.
took a job right out of college, working for a country club in the accounting department, implemented Aptech software, and I pretty quickly had that turned around, and um, Jay was a member at that country club, and he said, when you're interested in moving on, how about coming and talking to And, um So I did, and two weeks later, after that episode of a couple of years in the industry, I was then working for Jay. Aptech was just at the point of taking off, and um, he asked me if I'd start his support department. And so that's what I did, I started his support department, and I've been with him 38 years this month.
David Millili: Wow, that's awesome. That's great.
That's great place. So we were talking just a little bit earlier, so we both have been to 20 plus HITECs. Absolutely. Absolutely So, real quick before we get into it a little bit more about your company, different about this HITEC [00:02:00] for you? How do you feel? I feel like people coming out of COVID and then Dallas and all these things, what are your
Jill Wilder: it was the first thing I said to Steve, I feel like we're back. I feel like this is the first HITEC that we can say it's like the old app, like the old HITEC used to be. Because this was where so many people, this is where you saw everybody.
This is the people you competed against, but the people you were also best friends with. That was what it was all about and, and we're back. You know, I'm seeing people I haven't seen in years. Where have you gone? What have you done? Have you changed jobs? Have you moved? You know, This is it. Yeah, I think we've got a good place going forward 
now.
Steve Carran: Definitely a buzz. Definitely a 
Jill Wilder: Oh yeah. 
Steve Carran: So 
for those that might not be
as familiar with
Aptek computer systems, can you give us a little brief overview, maybe a little history of the company 
Jill Wilder: as
well?
Sure. 
absolutely. So Aptek's been in business now 54 years. Same owner, founded by Jay Troutman. back in 1970, started in the country club accounting business.
And so, hospitality has always been the thing. Aptek has done other things, but it's always been based on [00:03:00] accounting. So that's always been our, kind of our background and our strength has been accounting. And then when we got specifically into hotels and just working in the hospitality industry, we became the leaders and we brought new ideas that were Troubling our clients.
We brought solutions to those, and that's how our products were formed. So we've had several generations now of the accounting application, which is now called PVNG, standing for its, its predecessor was Profitview. We internally named this one PVNG, and our clients loved it. So we kept Profitview Next Generation.
That's what it is.
So we were one of the, first to bring business intelligence to the industry, because I'd written, you know, had Profitview, we had written Profitview, and we then said, okay, what's next? Well, you know, clients, what do you need? They said, bringing data together is a nightmare. How do we get this all together?
How can we compare them? How can I look at this hotel over that? So, went to work, and we developed our business intelligence module. Brought that to the industry, [00:04:00] taught the industry what business intelligence is all about, and now that's 
the buzz. 
Yeah. that business intelligence we introduced in, um, AI two years ago.
So people are saying, what are you doing in AI? I'm like, we've been doing AI. You know, you can, we can create things, talk to the computer and it'll create it for you in front of you. we consider ourselves definitely the innovators in this industry. and then the next phase was what else is on your plate?
What, what else do you really need? Well, budgeting and forecasting. There's just not a simple way. Distributing that out to the field, bringing it back in, it's just a nightmare. So thus we created TargetView. And TargetView is our budgeting and forecasting platform. And it does just that. it's one version of the truth.
This is where it goes. Nobody has to distribute anything. It's all web based, they come on, they put their numbers in, all the calculations, nobody can break anything, and away you go. So, now we're, now we're gonna go after what's the next thing that we need to put in these modules, and, and what's the next pain point?
Definitely integration. Integration is the [00:05:00] next thing. open APIs, interfacing, and so that's why I think a lot of this networking is so important, because it's saying, okay, we have an API, API, can we work with you, what do we need to do? So I think that's played a big part in this HITEC as well, is getting the, getting together, I mean, with your competitors and the other companies you work with, and saying, Hey, we have clients that use you and us, so let's make it work seamlessly so we both are heroes.
And so I anticipate that's going to only be stronger after this show today.
David Millili: that's great. So, with App Tech, what are some of the, Some of the things that you have that are different 
Jill Wilder: I will tell you the number one thing at Aptech and if you talk to any of our customers, they tell you the exact same answer.
We have a department of phenomenal people and Aptech as a whole is long term employees, long term clients. We're relationship based. So a client success person, which many people would just call a support person, but to us, it's a lot more than that because they're not just answering a [00:06:00] telephone.
They know that client, they know what that client does they're part of their team, per se. So, absolutely, hands down, it's our client success department. Because at any point, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, our customers can talk to one of our people, who know them.
that's absolutely Aptech's claim to fame.
So we've got great products, but by far, it's that team of 
people. 
Steve Carran: I love
that. I love 
that. 
And 
congratulations, 
you 
just were named 
president on Valentine's Day, so a few months into the role, 
and you've 
been at Aptech for 38 years, like you 
said before.
How have you seen Aptech change? And, you know, after being in a company for 38 years, and now you're the president, how, how, what 
does 
that mean to you?
Jill Wilder: Extremely
proud. 
Extremely proud. It's kind of like it's, they've had the bulk of my life and I've brought Aptek along as I raised my kids and we've all helped to raise each other's kids, and some of our kids winding up in the hotel industry because of what we did. yeah, it's, it's so [00:07:00] exciting. It, there's just so many great things to talk about it and I'm so proud that that's where I decided to spend my career.
Steve Carran: What 
are, how, like, you've seen Aptek grow, obviously, in the last 38 years. What are some of the, I guess, most exciting changes or things that you've seen that you just see in the company and you're like, this is amazing.
Jill Wilder: Its clients are so important. I mean, visiting clients, I told you I'm ba I've been born and raised in Pittsburgh.
Hate the cold. 
Absolutely hate it,
I 
collect flamingos, so I visit all my Florida clients, January and February. It's where I hang out. And client visits are really important to us because being with people face to face, especially in this industry, sit down with them, say what's going on. So I would say Aptech's growth is attributed to people.
It really is. And those relationships. So,
David Millili: that's fantastic. So, tell us more. You announced here at HITEC the dashboard, the PVNG. Tell us a little bit [00:08:00] more about that. Some more, maybe some specifics
Jill Wilder: Absolutely, so it's a funny thing people said you want to put a dashboard on accounting like everybody thinks accounting is so boring but accounting isn't really that boring it's like a puzzle sometimes
but we wanted to be able to give our users a glance of what they come in in the morning and they need to see how does it look and they don't need to go to a business intelligence system and you don't want them to have to run reports as a director of finance they want to come in they want to see what's going on So, what we did is we took those key things, some of them are user, user definable, so we took their bank reconciliation, so they know exactly how much money is in each bank.
We took the accounts payable aging, so how, does it look, who do I owe, you know, and how much is sitting out there that needs to be paid. And then, who are those top five outstanding people that I need to pay. And then the user definable part comes into place. Key metrics. What's important to you? So put it on the screen.
You get five of them and put them in any order you want to and they're there [00:09:00] and you can change them. If today these are the most important to you, that's fine. Go and maybe, maybe next month there's something different. So if that GM's saying, how does our food and beverage labor look? How's it going this month?
You know, month to date. How's it look compared to a year ago? You've got it right there on the screen because you're doing the pulse. The accounting team has the pulse of what's going on and they feed operations. And so, critical good numbers are important. So if the accounting system's not strong, you can have the flashiest dashboard in the world, but your numbers have to be good.
And so that's what we focus on. Good numbers and then bringing that to a graphical view.
Yeah, so that's what, that was our big announcement. 
David Millili: I love that. Yeah.
So you have
said multiple times during our conversation how good and customer support. You know, when you have customers all over North America, like you do, Can be a little overwhelming and almost a daunting task when things don't go right.
And we're in technology, things [00:10:00] go wrong. It just
happens. How
do you 
manage all those customers across North
America and give a timely
response and provide that high level of customer service that you're 
Jill Wilder: you're known for? Absolutely, we keep them informed, is what we really do. We do a newsletter once a quarter, so they know Um, then we do webinars.
So that they can look at the latest enhancements in the products. We do tooltips online, so people can, we do a 10 minute tooltip to do at lunchtime once a month. So they have an opportunity to see some of the, the, the secrets inside the software that they maybe forgot about. it's really just keeping them informed and then having the right things in place, so that they can get to us at any point.
The other thing that we do too is the developers come to the support team and say, listen, What are the most common things you're seeing? Is there anything we can do to make that better for them so that you don't get those calls all the time? And so we do focus on that and we definitely spend, we typically do about three releases a year.
We typically put one of those focused on just functionality and things to make, make things 
better.
Steve Carran: make things better. [00:11:00] Yeah, absolutely. I think that's so important because I think, you know, technology companies sometimes in hospitality will, you know, once it's installed 
it's kind of Set it and forget it, right? And, uh, you know, so I think it's so important to keep those customers because it's, you
Jill Wilder: those customers you
know, yeah,
absolutely 
David Millili: things to make things better. HITEC was kind of back, things were getting better, and seeing old faces again, and there's emerging companies here.
So for Aptech, what are some what are some of the goals you would like to achieve before next year's HITEC?
Jill Wilder: Definitely focusing on integrations and working with people. That's the big thing. isolate yourself. You want to put your arms around it, embrace everybody, and just integrate better to benefit the customer.
Because at the end of the day, we're all working together for a common goal, and it's not drop, software, and run. We're in this for the long term. And how can we make it better for the customers? So the best way to do that is to get along. The sense of [00:12:00] not getting along doesn't
make 
sense anymore 
David Millili: doesn't make sense anymore. Yeah, I agree.
That's fantastic. I got one more question 
Steve Carran: for 
David Millili: you, 
and I 
Steve Carran: I feel like 
it's going to sum 
up the 
conversation. 
What gaps are 
you 
David Millili: seeing in the
industry 
from the accounting 
side? 
How 
is Aptech 
Steve Carran: Tech
David Millili: solving those problems 
or 
Jill Wilder: Oh, wow. That takes a little bit of thought 
there. 
That's 
David Millili: not
just 
Jill Wilder: a drop in the 
David Millili: bucket kind of 
a question.
Jill Wilder: I'd say the biggest thing that I'm seeing in GAPS is people need to understand how to work, they don't have one vendor. Maybe they use us for just accounting, but they have other vendors for other solutions. And they're, they need how to manage that, how to help them, and still labor is a problem. So people are still struggling with labor.
So you really have to help them to provide services. You know, help take some of that, alleviate some of that for them, and be there to make suggestions. Suggest other products and companies you've seen to make it better for the customer. we can't all do everything, so I think it's important that we, we focus on that.
And, um, [00:13:00] accounting's the furnace of the house. You know, it's, it's got all the good numbers. And so, in many situations, we wind up with the result of all those other systems. So I think it's important that that we all get along and send good numbers back and forth.
Steve Carran: Well, we really appreciate you letting us stop by and chat with you during HITEC and I think you're right. The buzz is back. There's definitely a feeling around here. So we're gonna probably have a great night tonight at a few happy hours and things like that. So thank you again for having us and this was a great conversation.
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of The Modern Hotelier and have a great day.
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