1-page Solution Brief - Posted 4/12/2007
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Middle Eastern Hotel Group Increases Employee Efficiency with Automated System
Middle Eastern hotel group Habtoor Hospitality used disparate systems to manage reservations and generate accounts. Employees using these systems had to input a substantial amount of data manually. Working with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner AGIS, now known as Columbus IT, the group deployed Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV 3.7 business management software to automate accounts, integrate with the hospitality management system, and save finance employees hours every day.
Business Needs
The reputation of Habtoor Hospitality—part of the Al Habtoor Group based in the Middle East—relies on efficient operations and customer service. The hotels use a custom-built industry solution, Micros Fidelio, to support their front-office service. Reception employees and service workers take bookings and reservation details and enter the information into this system to generate invoices for customers.
Until recently, employees found accounts reconciliation a time-consuming process. Francisco Fernandes, IT Manager, Habtoor Hospitality, says: “All billing details had to be taken from the front-office system and re-entered into another database. As a result, reconciliation and finance management was cumbersome and slow.”
The lack of full integration between front-end and back-office processes added days of unnecessary data entry for accounts employees. Because of the time it took to collect and enter payments, each month’s billing data needed to be prepared 10 days in advance of the actual cut-off date. Consequently, financial controllers often had to delay closing month-end financial statements.
The group has four hotels in Dubai and two in Lebanon. Each hotel conducted its own back-office payments reconciliation. Although finance controllers had a central data repository, they could not view or extract financial information for the entire Habtoor Group of hotels. Planners could use only limited reports available for operation analysis, and these constraints lead to delayed financial decisions.
Habtoor Hospitality looked for a solution that would automatically transfer all customer data into its accounting systems. It also wanted a customisable and easy-to-use interface to simplify accounts management and provide managers with the flexibility to generate comprehensive reports for debtors, creditors, and ledgers.
Solution
Habtoor Hospitality examined the market for solutions, but quickly decided that Microsoft® Dynamics™ NAV 3.7 business management software had the best integration capabilities. The solution also offered the most user-friendly interface and delivered the fastest and easiest deployment. Fernandes says: “We evaluated various local products, but they were not as feature-rich or easy to deploy.”
In 2003, the group enlisted the help of AGIS, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner now known as Columbus IT, to roll out the solution. In just one month, the technology was fully customised to meet the group’s specific needs. Microsoft Dynamics NAV integrates seamlessly with all in-house applications—including front-of-house and accounting systems—to offer a complete set of business data in a single view
Supported by Microsoft SQL Server™ Enterprise 2000, the solution helps employees extract information from the financial databases and export it into tailor-made reports. The user interface remains the same. With the integration of front-end and back-end systems, payments are automatically correlated with original invoices. Workflows are also generated automatically, and manual processing is reduced. Fernandes says: “Decision makers have a comprehensive, up-to-date, single view of expenditure and revenue across the entire hotel business operation.”
Based on the rapid deployment and ease of training involved in the initial implementation by Columbus IT, the company soon plans to upgrade to a newer release, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0.
Benefits
Accounts-processing employees are working faster and more efficiently, saving up to three hours a day with automated invoice reconciliation. Finance controllers can work much better with fast, accurate, and up-to-date financial data at their fingertips and create any type of report they require. Employees now have greater flexibility and scope for future expansion with Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
Using the solution:
- Accounts-processing employees save up to three hours per day on routine data entry now that invoice details are transferred to an accounts database automatically.
- Users can streamline invoice reconciliation. The hotel group has been able to increase the cut-off point for receiving monthly billing information by 10 days.
- Financial controllers now have access to accurate information much faster than before.
- Financial decision makers have a much better view of financial data across the entire Al Habtoor Group.
- Employees can generate any kind of report needed to analyse all aspects of hotel management quickly and simply.
- IT workers can deploy upgrades easily. Local partner support from Columbus IT—combined with a familiar, easy-to use interface—greatly reduces transitional delays.
- Because the solution integrates with in-house applications, the company gains significant business benefits with low overheads.
