We held our third Zenoti User Conference on October 15 and 16; in Las Vegas, and alongside ISPA. As we wind down from this year’s Power Of One, our CEO, Sudheer Koneru shares his reflections. "It was a great opportunity to meet several of you including some of our largest enterprise clients’ management teams. I found it an incredibly enriching experience, learned a lot, and look forward to more opportunities to engage with so many that represent leaders in our industry.

‍At the conference, I also had the opportunity to take stock of how far we’ve come at Zenoti. Today, some of the world’s largest brands, with multiple locations operating across regions are powered by Zenoti. The exposure that my co-founder and I had in operating a beauty and wellness business helped us tune into the needs of running a multi-outlet spa and salon chain. However, that experience was narrow compared to what we soon learned about the many different business models. In the last 6 years, as Zenoti built a reputable customer base, we’ve learned and evolved to addresses many different business models in our industry, including:

• Membership-based businesses like Massage Heights and Massage Green
• Luxury salon chains like Gene Juarez, Douglas J and Waxing The City
• Resort hotels which include some of the busiest in the world like MGM Hotels and Taj Hotels
• High-end spa brands like Woodhouse Day Spa and O2 Spas
• Large walk-in salon chains like Lakme Salons and Enrich Salons
• Medispas that are aggressively growing across multiple countries like Skin Renewal, Silkor, and Kaya

It occurs to me that really, Zenoti should not be here at all – a 6-year-old company with attention from the world’s largest and most successful brands. I say this because the industry has been crowded with well-funded software vendors, and it seems contradictory for us to have emerged as a leader for enterprises in this industry. Our team has been passionate about learning the nuances of each business model closely. Many in my team have taken appointments at our customers’ spas and salons (well before they were a customer) – simply to learn more.

Take our head of product management, Vamshi, who is bald and can’t get a haircut, he ventured out to try waxing, facials and every conceivable treatment to learn about each business in depth. It’s through such hands-on learning that we’ve internalized each business’ requirements, combined with our experience building enterprise technology, and great partnerships within the industry, that we’ve been able to build an industry-leading SaaS solution for large enterprises.

‍Zenoti always has been and will continue to be a product-led company. To this day we make our deepest investments in R&D and very little in Sales and Marketing. I strongly believe this is why we have been able to emerge as a leading software platform. We’ve achieved milestones with minimal investment, even as several leading VCs came to woo us. At Power of One I laid out our vision of delivering an integrated platform which enables businesses to have amazing consumer experiences that help drive growth and to further help you streamline operations.

We announced several new capabilities that respond to changes imminent in the industry, and will empower your business:

• Zenoti is the first to support bookings through Alexa with Amazon Echo and Google Home. Our live demonstration was received well as the booking of an appointment was completed through voice commands. We believe businesses have to deliver an omnichannel experience to customers across Web, Mobile, and virtual assistants like Alexa. The future of guest interactions will be with intelligent assistants, like Alexa, who help guests plan their visits and ultimately engage with customers in the way your ideal receptionist does.
• The notion of reception-less spas and salons has been much discussed in the industry. At Power of One, we demonstrated the ability for guests to self-checkin and checkout from their mobile phones, along with a rich experience that does not require them to engage with reception desk staff.
• Staying in touch with staff has always been tricky for management teams of large networks. Zenoti now supports a messaging framework via web and mobile which enables communications and notifications to be targeted to all employees or specific roles or zones or specific outlets with ease.
• Reporting has long been the biggest challenge in the industry for large enterprises. With the launch of Zenoti Analytics, we didn’t just nail the problem – we went beyond. The audience loved the power behind Analytics which will help them really understand their business and act on the findings through Zenoti’s tools like Smart Marketing.

I look forward to seeing all these capabilities translate into meaningful results for our clients. And so, I urge you to reach out to our Customer Success team, whose sole focus is to help our clients adopt these capabilities. Just email us at customersuccess@zenoti.com.

As we move forward, the team at Zenoti is very much committed to delivering a platform that helps you grow and adds value to your business.