Hospitality

Middle Eastern hotel group, Habtoor Hospitality, used disparate systems to manage reservations and generate accounts. As a result, employees had to rekey data and work with out-of-date information. Working with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Columbus IT, the group deployed Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV 3.7 business management software to automate accounts 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 its efficient operations and customer service. The hotels use a bespoke industry solution, Micro Fidelio, to support their front-of-house 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, accounts reconciliation was performed manually. Francisco Fernandes, IT Director, Habtoor Hospitality, says: “All billing details had to be taken from the front-of-house system and re-entered into another database. As a result, reconciliation and finance management was becoming cumbersome and inefficient.”

The lack of automated accounting processes added days of unnecessary data-entry by 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 Consequently, financial controllers often had to work with out-of-date information.

The company has five hotels in Dubai and two in Lebanon. Each hotel conducted its own back-office payments reconciliation. Without a central data repository, finance controllers struggled to view or extract valuable financial information for planning and implementation for the entire Al Habtoor Group of hotels. Planners were also unable to generate specific or detailed reports for operations analysis. Such inefficient use of employee time was limiting the company’s growth.

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.

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. Francisco Fernandes, IT Director, Habtoor Hospitality, says: “We considered a local product called Gala, but it was not nearly as feature-rich or easy to deploy.”

In 2003, the group enlisted the help of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner 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 finance employees extract information from the financial databases and export it into tailor-made reports. The user interface remains the same, and with the integration of front-end and back-end systems, payments are automatically correlated with original invoices. Workflows are 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, the company soon plans to upgrade to a newer release, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 4.0.

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 accurate, up-to-the-minute financial data at their fingertips and create any type of report they require. 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 have more accurate information to plan with now that accounts employees can process payments quickly.

·         Financial decision-makers have a single view of financial data across the entire Al Habtoor Group of Hotels.

·         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, combined with a familiar, easy-to use interface, greatly reduces transitional hold ups.

·         Integration with in-house applications means the company gains significant business benefits with low overheads.

Habtoor Hospitality

Web Site: www.habtoorhotels.com

Dubai

Hospitality

Columbus IT

Habtoor Hospitality is a division of Al Habtoor Group. Its business operations encompass seven hotels in Dubai and Lebanon.