Is Your AI Saving You Time? (Jerimi Ford, Actabl)

Jerimi: What I hope AI and technology in general does for hospitality is provide more time for hospitality.

Josiah: Are you seeing some evidence that there's a world where this could be the case?

Jerimi: Yes. You think about people like a general manager of a hotel who's the face of the hotel, knows everything going on. The less time they have to spend in front of a computer at a screen figuring out what they should be doing versus something telling them, here's what you should be doing, or doing it in the background. Agentic AI, saving them time. I have to compress. If I was a GM, I had to create these reports. It takes me an hour each day or two hours a week or whatever. If I don't have to do that, I can have more time with the guests, with our associates. So truly being more hospitable. And I think those are the kind of things that we see as advances that help you do that.

Josiah: I think what's also interesting is to think about what needs to be true for this kind of a world to happen. I wonder if you could speak to this a little bit because I know over the course of the last few days we've been talking a little bit about some of these foundational layers. What needs to be true to get to this world where we're giving time back to our teams so they can be more hospitable?

Jerimi: So obviously you need to have the information to provide it. You need data. Data is at the heart of most outcomes because it's like I can observe this data, and then when I see this and I take these actions, now I can see the result of that. So it's a feedback loop. You need that feedback loop, you need a good source of data to do it. And that's what ultimately we're doing at Actabl, trying to give you that.

Josiah: I think that might be a good segue into talking about a new capability that we introduced recently with AI Asset Setup. I will link in the show notes to a previous conversation that we had. I think people would be really interested to hear about your approach to product development, very customer focused. But maybe if folks are listening to us right now and they haven't heard that yet, maybe if they've never experienced or interacted with Transcendent yet, I wonder if you could just tell us at a high level, set the stage for a few moments. What is Transcendent, what does it do, what does it provide hospitality professionals?

Jerimi: Sure. Transcendent is a full asset management, capital budgeting, CMMS system. So this is about asset preservation. Being able to have process at scale. I think that's one of the superpowers of Transcendent, is as your portfolio grows, even small or big, it's hard to have process at scale and consistency. And that's truly how you win, is when you can have a repeatable recipe at scale. And that's what we do really well. Capital budgeting. When you have assets in the system, they automatically plan for the replacement. It is inevitable. You will be replacing assets, and we can out of the box, once you populate our database, show you here's the replacement and your capital budget. We're gonna have a 10 year plan for you in minutes.

Josiah: When we're talking about assets in this context, you're talking about things within a hotel building, right?

Jerimi: Correct.

Josiah: Some examples of that would be?

Jerimi: All the mechanical equipment. Boilers, chillers, the HVAC equipment, ice machines, all of your fire life safety, your fire panels, your fire extinguishers, your fire valves. Everything that makes the hotel operate that typically it's called back of the house. People don't see it, but without it, it wouldn't operate. You would have cold water if the hot boilers don't work, or the hot water heaters don't work. If your elevators don't work, you're gonna have guests that are not gonna stay at your hotel. So everything that makes your hotel operate, that's what we focus on, and we ensure that the associates have what they need so they know what to do, when, why, how, who, and they can get it done. And they know the difference they made. It's really good when an associate sees like, okay, I am extending the life of this asset. I am making a difference at this hotel.

Josiah: Because you think about a great hotel, great hospitality experience, there's so much that needs to happen behind the scenes. And so these assets you're describing are expensive often. One little thing goes wrong and a lot of guests are really unhappy, so the stakes are high. You've created technology that allows all of that to run seamlessly. The people on the front lines taking care of this stuff are able to see what they need to do and have proof. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that loop that you're providing, because this is a concept I think that has resonated with a lot of hospitality professionals, understanding kind of what's going on and then going through that loop. I wonder if you could describe that.

Jerimi: One of the things that we just launched is AI Asset Setup. So back to our AI conversation, in order to get your data in the system, before it either was a manual process or we're importing spreadsheets, if they did have an asset register, previously maybe just a spreadsheet. But now what we have is we've used AI to actually allow either us or the hotel associates to collect really rich data for their assets just simply by taking a picture of the asset from afar. So the system will try and identify what it is and give you a hint. Hey, I think this is an air handler. I think this is a boiler. This is an ice machine. This is an exhaust fan. Then step two is you take a picture of the manufacturer plate, and now we have truly really good data. We have the manufacturer, the model, the serial number, any other data on there about that asset. And what this allows us to do is build that database. As we talk about capital budgeting and the whole life cycle, now because we have this really rich data starting off, we can at scale know what is in our ecosystem. So as we grow as an organization of hotels, whether we have hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands, millions of assets, they're all now really enriched data that you can use. Economies of scale for purchasing power and other things like that. It truly does make a difference in how we're doing it.

Josiah: I kind of feel two things when I think about AI. I'm excited about the potential, but I'm a little bit bored when it's just abstract and we're just talking high level. What I love about this is you've been very thoughtful around understanding what are the bottlenecks to getting the benefits of AI. You spoke before around the importance of data being that foundational level, but then a gap that you and the teams were seeing was that setup can be tough sometimes with technology, right? You have to have someone there. And so this is where AI and optical recognition becomes a big thing, right? You have all this data that is saving time, but the data capture is huge.

Jerimi: Yeah. This is magnitudes faster, and more accurate. Imagine trying to transpose 10, 15, 20 digit serial numbers of things. What we found was at the end or somewhere early on, they just said, nah, that's not that important. But you're really losing some good information because now we can use that serial number to go look at manufacturer information, figure out dates and service and other things, warranty information. So it turns into like, this is really mission critical. And some of the other things that we're on the horizon with, using that data, some other integrations that we're gonna have, we'll be able to really use this in a super powerful way to actually allow other maintenance activities on the equipment from the associate, which typically would require some backend operations. Maybe go through two or three people to do what I'm talking about. Now we're gonna get it to where the associate who's actually doing the work can do something that would've taken days potentially to do.

Josiah: So from days and maybe multiple people we're cutting it down to snapping photos.

Jerimi: Yeah. It's probably about a 15 to 30 second process to capture an asset now.

Josiah: 15 to 30 seconds from days to 30 seconds.

Jerimi: It would take you walking around a property, there's a lot of manual labor, a lot of handwriting, or some people would just take pictures and then go to their computer and type it in. This totally eliminates that. They're with their phone. This is all mobile. So they're on their phone, they go take a picture, they capture the other information, and within 30 seconds this asset is now part of their database. And truly, the time savings and accuracy. I can't stress that enough. We're gonna be able to do a lot because of this. Not only the time savings is the benefit, but the long-term benefit of the data integrity.

Josiah: It's funny because I have spent most of my career in technology, and I feel like that has always been the promise of technology, that you're knowing everything so that you can run efficiently. It feels now though, and you've built an amazing career building companies in technology, it almost feels like now we're finally at the stage of actually delivering on that promise. Does it feel that way to you?

Jerimi: Yeah. This was a really fun piece to add. Definitely not the end. This is really just a starter for what we're doing. But to be able to use AI so fast, when we think about it, it's really just a couple of years old, and now we've got it as part of a key part of our system onboarding and getting assets into our system. I think that's a pretty fast turnaround. And the opportunity for AI and just the benefits of it really are just at the start.

Josiah: I would love to get into some of the details because I think you described earlier the high level benefits of Transcendent, and then now you have this capability where 15 to 30 seconds we're setting something up. The time savings is one benefit, but talk to me a little bit about some of the business benefits either for that operator or for the owners. Where does this start to play into money saved or part of the investment cycle? What are some of the benefits that you're seeing from customers that go through this process?

Jerimi: Well, it's really knowing truly what you have, rather than just I have an air handler. I know what type of air handler or what model of air handler, the serial number as I mentioned, which gives us, now I know what type of filter does it take, what are the belt sizes? I can actually link to manufacturer manuals and do purchasing of parts directly from Transcendent maybe at some point. So there's like, I said it's a true thing. This was the foundation and everything will just scale from there. It also goes into capital budgeting. So now we have true, accurate data so we can get better pricing out of there rather than just replacing an air handler, but what type, how much, what's the capacity of it, so that I have better and rich data so that they can make more informed decisions.

Josiah: Interesting. And at dinner the other night we were talking a little bit about how there are some organizations that are finding some creative ways to save money at a larger scale. When you're thinking of the data that you have now, I'm thinking about just on the capital planning and preventative maintenance. This is exciting because maybe something that had an expected lifespan of five years, maybe you're taking care of it and now it lasts 10 years or whatever that extended life is. You reduce guest complaints because things are just running well. But also just in the procurement process, as you're thinking about different vendors, is there a play here maybe for once all this stuff is digitized, now you have more data on how it's actually working in your business? Do you think there's a play there?

Jerimi: Yeah. So one of our strengths at Actabl is to be able to have comparative comp set data. And what this ultimately will give is, now again with this enriched really accurate data, we're able to compare. How are you doing? How am I benchmarking against others? When we take a domestic hot water boiler or hot water heater, we can go tell you, are you getting the maximum life out of it? So the system will be able to, I go back to what we're building with our actionable insights, the system will be able to tell leadership both on property and above property, you need to take some action here because you are not performing at the level that your peers are. And maybe you're missing PM cycles. Maybe someone's not spending enough time there. Your PMs, they're for five minutes. There's no way they PM'd the machine in five minutes. It should be taking 15 or 25 minutes. That's the kind of data that we will be able to drive to the owners of our software. Help them get results and achieve really good results. And I think that benchmarking is critical because it ultimately is like everybody wants to know, how am I doing? How am I doing compared to everybody else? And that's what we're able to provide.

Josiah: Right. And the benchmarking is interesting because people on the front lines of making all this stuff happen, you can do some things there. Above property there's a play there with ownership. There's an opportunity. Last night we were together with a customer who has seen tremendous value in Transcendent, one of the biggest hotel companies in the world that has seen incredible value from this. He was telling me that working with you and the team has been amazing because they created this culture of excitement. He was describing it as almost like a game. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how leaders listening can think about creating this in their organizations, because maybe they hear our conversation and they say, hey, maybe the technology has potential. I'm thinking about removing the blockers to get the value of that. So one of the blockers is the setup. AI Asset Setup, scan something, you get this all set up. And then there's also the how do we engage the humans that are using the technology. And it seems that you have done an amazing job with your customers there. How can our listeners build that excitement on the ground of getting the use out of it?

Jerimi: Yeah. So we have two things that we do. One of them is at the associate level. You show up, you do your job, you get a paycheck. That means I did my job well, I guess. And then that's the end of it. And that's fine. But I had an idea a couple years ago and the team and I built this really cool feature called Associate Engagement. And what that does is it makes it to where when you're just doing your day job, you're doing your day job. You just do as you do. You get work assigned, you go do the work you're supposed to do, you take care of what you need to do, and then we tell you how you are doing. Did you meet all your requirements? Did you do it on time? Did you do all the requirements for the task? Then when you're getting, we have badges in the system. It's truly a gamified interface to where it tells associates the difference they make. And that was critical for me because we also have a gamification engine where hotels compete against hotels. So in my portfolio, and then I can have different cohorts in there as well, but in my portfolio I could have multiple hotels and I set up a game of what we're trying to accomplish this year. What are we doing for sustainability? What are we doing for just our straight up preventive maintenance? What are we doing for our equipment preventive maintenance, our room preventive maintenance? What are some initiatives we're working on? Maybe sustainability initiatives. So I set all this up by being the operator that we work with. We work with the hotels to do this, and we'll set this up at the enterprise level. And then we run the game throughout the year. And then there's milestones, typically monthly. There's milestones and then there's winners, or we have a leaderboard so everybody can see how their hotel, this is at the hotel level, how their hotel is ranking. So we have ranks and the amount of engagement that we had and the amount of change and actual cultural involvement, like you said, the excitement around it was truly amazing. I would always joke and say, if we had a process that didn't run at midnight one night, by 1:00 AM we're getting an email or I'm getting a text message. If they know me, my personal phone, they're like, hey, I think something's off. And I'm like, whoa, we'll look. Because they are so engaged. It really did drive behavior change, and it made it so that the operators at the leadership level were able to make their team focus on what truly mattered and what they had said as a strategy for their organization. Like, how are we gonna be better than the competition? How are we gonna make our associates feel engaged? It really did that. It's truly one of the neatest features that I had. I love to build. It was so fun.

Josiah: Amazing. I'll include some links in the show notes. I want people, if they're interested in this, to learn a little bit more about how this could work in their organization. And people can have a conversation with us about this if they want to.