Global Hyatt Corporation Selects Birch Street for e-Procurement and Back-Office Automation


Major Hotel Company Makes Birch Street its Worldwide Standard to Streamline Purchasing, Inventory and Food Cost Management

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., July 31 - Birch Street Systems today announced that Global Hyatt Corporation has selected the Birch Street Application Suite as its standard e-Procurement and back-office solution for use at all Hyatt locations throughout the world. As part of the agreement, Global Hyatt will use Birch Street's e-Procurement, receiving, budgeting, approvals and back-office features with plans to add its inventory and recipe management module in the future.

As a leading provider of e-procurement and back office automation solutions to the hospitality industry, Birch Street's applications are perfectly suited to meet the needs and demands of its hotel and food service customers. The Birch Street Application Suite is a comprehensive back-office business system that automates the "Procure-to-Pay" cycle, cutting inefficiencies out of the process while strengthening financial controls.

After carefully considering several solutions Global Hyatt selected the Birch Street Application Suite because of its many features that are specially designed for large hotel and food service companies. "During our research we were particularly impressed with their expertise in the hospitality and food service industries," said Anne Hanch, Hyatt's vice president, purchasing. "We were drawn to Birch Street because of their demonstrated expertise in our industry and strong references from several large hotel company customers. They definitely know our sector."

Birch Street's ability to integrate with a wide variety of industry suppliers was a key factor in Global Hyatt's decision. The application suite leverages Birch Street's network of over 30,000 suppliers that service the hospitality industry. In fact, a comprehensive analysis demonstrated that approximately 70 percent of Hyatt's major US suppliers where already registered online with Birch Street.

"Our applications are an ideal choice for large hotel companies such as Hyatt, and we are thrilled that they have chosen to work with us," said Doug Sanborn, president and CEO of Birch Street Systems. "We offer global solutions that can support many different languages and currencies, making us a prime choice for hospitality chains, such as Hyatt, that have a large number of properties scattered throughout the world."

Global Hyatt signed a worldwide deal with Birch Street that involves a phased rollout and interfaces with Hyatt's financials system and centralized AP processing. The first phase of deployment involves all full service Hyatt hotels in the United States. The rollout will begin in September 2007 with completion scheduled for the first quarter of 2008. Further deployments in Hyatt's international properties and for limited service properties in the United States will follow. In all, the agreement covers over 700 properties in 41 countries.

About Global Hyatt Corporation

Global Hyatt Corporation, one of the world's premier hotel companies, offers today's travellers over 735 hotels and resorts (over 136,000 rooms) in more than 44 countries. The company's affiliates own, operate, manage and franchise Hyatt branded hotels and resorts under the Park Hyatt®, Grand Hyatt®, Hyatt Regency®, Hyatt Resorts®, Hyatt®, Hyatt Place(TM) and Hyatt Summerfield Suites® brands. Global Hyatt Corporation is also the owner of Hyatt Vacation Ownership, Inc. operator of the Hyatt Vacation Club and fractional residential properties and U.S. Franchise Systems, Inc., which franchises Hawthorn Suites and Microtel Inns and Suites.

From the U.S. and Canada, reservations for any Hyatt hotel worldwide may be obtained by calling 1-800-233-1234 or logging onto http://www.hyatt.com/.

About Birch Street Systems

Birch Street delivers its solution over the Internet, using the "Software as a Service" (SaaS) model, which reduces the total cost of ownership compared with the traditional method of buying and maintaining enterprise software. Birch Street delivers its on demand eProcurement and back office solutions to some of the world's leading hospitality companies, including Hilton Hotels Corporation, Marriott International, Interstate Hotels and Resorts, Carlson Hospitality and The Marcus Corporation.

More than 1,000 hotels use the Company's full-featured, full-service procure-to-pay solutions combining flexibility, reliability and scalability with the operating advantages of an outsourced service. Multi-lingual and multi-currency capable, Birch Street's solutions provide "best of the Web" capabilities to mid-tier and global hospitality companies. Birch Street allows customers to reduce the risk, complexity and cost associated with large-scale procurement and back-office solutions, while empowering business users and delivering unprecedented ROI.

The application suite leverages Birch Street's network of more than 30,000 industry suppliers and includes e-procurement and RFQ; budget tracking and workflow; recipe management and menu engineering; inventory and receiving; AP automation; and capital projects.

Headquartered in Newport Beach California, the Company is managed by a team of hospitality and enterprise software veterans. For more information, visit www.birchstreetsystems.com/.

Source: Birch Street Systems

CONTACT: Birch Street Media Contact, Bob Menzies of Lages & Associates,
+1-949-453-8080, bob@lages.com

Web site: http://www.birchstreetsystems.com/

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