The Modern Hotelier #183: Craftable's Procurement to Payment Platform | with Tony Ross
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Steve Carran: Welcome to a special episode of The Modern Hotelier. We are coming to you from the Dallara IndyCar Factory here in Indianapolis, Indiana. Now we are joined by Tony Ross, director of Sales from Craftable. Thanks for sitting down with us. Tony, how are you doing today?
Tony Ross: Very good. Thanks for having me. 
Steve Carran: You bet. So Tony, we were talking about before you've been in hospitality for 12 years. I'm assuming this isn't your first HITEC.
Tony Ross: This is not my first HITEC, and I've been in hospitality more than 12 years, many, many years. And so yeah, I enjoy it. Every year it's a good time to see old friends, old partners, so I love coming back to HITEC.
David M.: So take us through, I mean, as we've been interviewing and talking to people, what problems you're, you're solving right now for the industry? 
Tony Ross: Well, so look, there's a lot of challenges in the hospitality today, right? Our, our partners, our operators are suffering what we call profit profit pressure because costs are higher, right?
Food and labor costs are higher, uh, revenues are higher as well, but not quite to manage that increase in food and labor costs and everything else. There's a lot of challenges. There's a lot of new builds out there. So again, managing that profit pressure is what we do at Craftable. 
Steve Carran: That's great. So Tony, AI automation data, all hot topics this year in hotels. How are you leveraging those things to bring value to hotels this year? 
Tony Ross: Well, certainly if you're not leveraging AI then you're, you're catching up with everyone else, so, yes. We leverage AI both on our, um, AP automation side from a invoice processing perspective, as well as our GL coding and so forth on the front end of the solution. So yes, we're leveraging new technology every day with Craftable for our operator. 
David M.: Yeah, and so one of the biggest challenges, and you and I know this well, every year, more and more technology, more and more added to the tech stack. Let's talk about integration and how you guys are helping make things easy with integration.
Tony Ross: Well, certainly we've got an extensive library of integrations today, right? API is our method of choice. We'll work with our partners to see what that looks like, but ultimately the beauty of Craftable is our transformation. Typically, our solution could come in and look at a tech stack and help you reduce that tech stack with a single solution and that solution being crafted.
Steve Carran: That's great. So what is CRAFTABLE promoting this year at HITEC, and what's next for you all? 
Tony Ross: Well, so Craftable, the interesting thing about Craftable is we've been around for 10, 11 years. We were born in the food and beverage side on the restaurant side, but now we're a full procure to pay solution, pre procure to pay platform. HIAnd so this is really our coming out experience at HITEC. Although we've got some terrific operators in our, our clientele today that have had it practicable for years. This is really our coming out year here in this space. That's great. 
David M.: Well, we wanna thank you for sitting down with us. We wanna wish you a great HITEC, and hopefully enjoy yourself tonight.
Tony Ross: Thank you very much.
David M.: Thank you.
Steve Carran: Thank you, Tony.