PAN PACIFIC KUALA LUMPUR AUTOMATES ACCOUNTING PROCESSES, RAISES PRODUCTIVITY WITH MICROSOFT GREAT PLAINS

SITUATION
Pan Pacific Kuala Lumpur (PPKL) is one of the leading hotels in Malaysia’s capital city of Kuala Lumpur. It is located in the heart of the city adjacent to the Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) and one of the country’s largest shopping malls.

An award winning hotel, the 554-room property features a graceful, contemporary design, which is accented by tropical orchids and Malaysian textiles. It is part of the Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts which currently encompasses 23 hotels in 11 countries throughout Asia, the Pacific and North America.

Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts takes pride in balancing the needs of all of its stakeholders, owners, guests, and the communities in which it operates. It also believes in personalized care for its customers, and delivers this through a focused and detailed approach to operations and management. And it is this which sets the hotel apart from other companies.

Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts (PPHR) corporate office based in Singapore made the decision to implement Microsoft Business Solutions - Great Plains for all its offices in the Asia-Pacific region.
In the case of Pan Pacific Kuala Lumpur, Great Plains replaced the currently used accounting module of. The other hotel management modules are still being used though it will eventually be replaced by Windows-based solutions.

The deployment of the Great Plains solution started in September 2003 and went live in January 2004. The modules installed were General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Multi-dimensional Analysis and Integration Manager. The solution runs on Windows Server 2003 out of a single server.

Pan Pacific Kuala Lumpur engaged Microsoft Certified Business Solutions Partner, Dynamic Business Solution, to handle the implementation of the system. This included customization of reports, modifications to the system and integration of Great Plains to the hotel’s hospitality management system. MIS Manager S. Thinagaran says the deployment was relatively smooth, adding that Dynamic Business Solutions provided excellent support throughout”.

He explains that Great Plains was chosen because it was a powerful integrated, feature-rich and user friendly business solution. “Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts corporate office was impressed with the capabilities of Great Plains,” he confirms.

For example, Great Plains is the only such software which comes with a ready-made business portal able to run on the corporate intranet or the Web. With the portal, Pan Pacific Kuala Lumpur could broadcast relevant accounting and corporate information to its staff. “This was a major plus point for Great Plains,” he adds.

Pan Pacific Kuala Lumpur is already leveraging on this feature by setting up a portal for the accounting department. It plans to extend the usefulness of the portal by incorporating information from other departments.

BENEFITS

Raising Productivity
The deployment of Great Plains has enabled Pan Pacific Kuala Lumpur to automate a number of processes which were previously handled manually. “With Great Plains, our work processes are so much easier and efficient now as it saves us from doing a lot of manual work,” says Finance Manager, Abdul Ali Wahab.

Because Great Plains is tightly integrated not only between the solution’s modules but also with Microsoft Office System products, the need to re-key information between these applications has been eliminated.

“Now we can export information from Great Plains to Excel, and vice-versa. We no longer need to re-key in the information. That’s a big advantage for us,” he adds. This also reduces the incidence of errors being introduced into the financial system.

Because of Great Plains’ comprehensive information capture capability, staff and management can now gain greater insight into its business operations without having to struggle through a sea of paper documents.

“We can easily drill down to source documents without having to search for the hard-copy invoices, vouchers or files. The information is now available from the system without us having to dig around for it.”

Unlike the previous solution, Great Plains allows documents to be scanned into the system for easy retrieval and viewing. Ali says the department has started scanning the relevant documents.

“We can now email the Profit and Loss statements to the respective department managers. Previously, we had to print it out and send it to them by hand,” he says. Ali acknowledges that Great Plains enables Pan Pacific Kuala Lumpur to overcome the limitations of operating in an environment where information is contained in silos.

Time Savings of 30 Per Cent
The automation of business processes and productivity improvements resulting from the implementation of Great Plains has speeded up work processes by at least 30 per cent, confirms Ali.

For example, the tight integration between the Accounts Payable and General Ledger modules enables the accounting staff to be more productive and efficient. This enables them to finalize the accounts faster.

“Before Great Plains, my staff would have to work overtime to close the accounts. Now they don’t have too,” says Ali. More importantly, this frees them to focus on higher value added tasks such as doing more financial analyses.

Real-Time Reporting Capabilities
The Great Plains solution provides Pan Pacific Kuala Lumpur with real-time access to a wealth of business information crucial for running an efficient and profitable business. “Great Plains offers us very easy-to-use and powerful reporting tools,” Ali adds.

“Great Plains allows us to key in more information than the previous system. For example, we can drill down to the source documents to get details of expenses, determine the reason for a purchase and why budgets were exceeded.”

“Previously, we had to print the relevant reports, highlight the additional information required, and instruct the staff to find the hardcopies. This was a laborious and time-consuming affair.”

Ali explains that Great Plains eliminates this manual process and provides Pan Pacific Kuala Lumpur with timely information vital for its decision-making.

Great Plains also help promote a self-service culture among Pan Pacific Kuala Lumpur’s business units. “In the next phase, we plan to give them access to the Great Plains system. They can drill down to see their expenses and do their own analyses without us doing it for them.

“Great Plains is flexible and user-friendly. If they need more reports and analyses, they can easily pull the information into Excel to churn out the reports,” comments Ali.

Integrated Growth Platform
The Great Plains system and the Windows platform are expected to be the foundation of Pan Pacific Kuala Lumpur’s IT environment for the future.

“We have made a policy decision that any new hotel systems introduced will need to be Windows-based systems so that they can be integrated with Great Plains,” says Thinagaran.

He explains that the overall integration process would be much easier if the new systems were on a common platform – the Windows platform. He points out that the current hotel systems were not directly integrated with Great Plains because these were running on the UNIX platform. “Our future expansion will be based on the Microsoft platform and Great Plains will enable us to move forward,” he adds.
Thinagaran concludes: “The Great Plains solution is very stable, flexible and powerful. We are happy with it.”

End.