The Modern Hotelier #184: Improving Productivity For Hotel Teams & Operations | with Mahwish Saleem
===
Steve Carran: Welcome to an episode of The Modern Hotelier. We are coming to you from the Dallara IndyCar Factory in Indianapolis, Indiana. We are joined by Mahwish Saleem, the head of sales for FCS Solutions. Thank you for joining us. How you doing today? 
Mahwish Saleem: Thank you for having me. 
Steve Carran: Absolutely. So I understand this is your first HITEC. What's your first impression so far? 
Mahwish Saleem: It's great. I think it's a great way to collaborate, meet different partners, meet a lot of clients, within the industry itself. So I think it's a great opportunity where everyone comes together under one roof for like a couple of days. It's not only just meeting on the trade floor, but even meeting, you know, everyone around and these kind of parties.
David M.: Yeah. So take us through, uh, FCS and what problem you're helping hotels solve. 
Mahwish Saleem: So SCS is a guest service optimization solution. It helps in improving operational efficiencies, so basically, it's automating your processes when it comes to jobs, maintenance, housekeeping. You know, incident management lost and found.
So what we're doing is we're helping, um, properties reduce their tech stack and make it all in one so that they can track, they can manage if there are any issues, they can resolve it. And then more, more than that, just improve the productivity of the teams. So that's what we're focused on. And also improve efficiencies within the operations. So you see at as an end result, it improves guest service experience, right? Because people are getting things done faster. 
David M.: Yeah. That's fantastic. 
Steve Carran: That's great. So AI automation data are all hot topics Oh yeah. In the industry right now. How is FCS. You know, utilizing those things to deliver value to hotels, right?
Mahwish Saleem: So we're a fully automated solution and that's what we're doing is bringing efficiency through automations. So whether it's your job orders, whether it's your maintenance, it's all automated so that people don't have to do things manually and you know, and they're just out there doing, using the application, using the software itself in order to get work done within the properties itself.
David M.: Yeah, so as Steve and I interview people, and as the year goes by, it seems like every year there's new technology introduced to the hotel. The tech stack gets bigger and bigger. Talk to us out what your approach is with integration. 
Mahwish Saleem: Okay, so that's, that's a very good question. I would say, so tech Stack gets bigger and bigger. One of the unique things that we do is we're an all in one solution. So when we get into the property, we're actually helping them reduce their tech stack. So it's, instead of going to like different multiple vendors and working with them, we're ensuring that there's one vendor that's helping you reduce, um, what do you call it?
Everything, it's all consolidated in one because with all the different departments that we're working with. So that really helps. And what we do is we interface with all the PMSs, or even perhaps like you know, vendors that they're using at their properties. We interface with them and we connect and integrate together. So that helps in eliminating a lot of tech stacks, right? Yeah. 
Steve Carran: So as head of sales, you're talking to hoteliers every day. What are new trends that you're seeing here in 2025? 
Mahwish Saleem: Great question again. I love that, so well, what I'm finding is everyone's looking to reduce their text stack. Everyone's looking to automate a couple of processes, you know, so that they don't have to work extra in terms of getting things done, because we've got technology that's in place right now. So that's the number one thing. And then AI and all, all the things that technology provides us, you know, that's, that's making a big difference for sure. 
David M.: That's great. That's great. Well, we want to thank you so much for sitting down with us. We want you to have a great HITEC, but more importantly, have a great night and it was great talking to you.
Mahwish Saleem: Thank you. Appreciate it.
David M.: Thank you.