Broadwater Hospitality

A new financial solution with help from Eclipse

Broadwater is a respected brand name within the hospitality industry and is well known for its prime locations, unique architectural styles and luxury furniture and fittings. Its hotels, resorts and apartments are located in Perth and elsewhere in Western Australia and, by the end of 2004, it will have eight high-quality properties in its portfolio.

When the company went looking for a new financial solution, SunSystems was high on its lists because of its reputation in the hospitality sector.

 “I had previously implemented SunSystems at a large resort in Queensland”, said Alex Farrell, Broadwater Hospitality’s Group financial controller.“ So I knew its transaction codes and single ledger structure had the analytical power we were looking for. I hadn’t worked with SunSystems for a while so I thought it best to go to market and see what else had become available”.

As well as SunSystems, Farrell reviewed Microsoft Business Solutions, Greentree and Attaché.

Scoping the market

Farrell had a number of key criteria in mind when appraising potential solutions. Broadwater already had two locations in Perth and a further three in Western Australia’s South West. With three new hotels under development, the new system had to be flexible and scalable to meet the business’ strong growth.

“Our first priority was to implement a centralized system that could handle each site uniquely and provide standardized reporting. We also wanted the flexibility to roll out this solution to each site when we were ready,” Farrell said. Important site requirements included integration of the incumbent front-office systems with the new financials. Farrell explained: “We have a number of different front-of-house systems with integrated back-of-house modules at our sites. But none provided the reporting and analysis we needed. We weren’t going to replace the front-of-house systems, so we had to be sure these would still integrate with the financial system and eliminate the need to rekey any data. We also wanted to capture more information in the financial system and be able to recall and analyze it easily. Being able to combine statistical and financial information using analytical and benchmarking tools is what really drives well informed business decisions.”

So why SunSystems?

“SunSystems was the obvious choice for Broadwater given the customer’s integration requirements,” said Eclipse senior consultant, Peter Tiede, who led the implementation team. “Broadwater required strong business work flow and automated process control and SunSystems could easily manage these requirements. It really stands out from the competitors for these features.”

Working closely with Eclipse throughout the implementation, Farrell explained: “We were really comfortable that Eclipse understood our business and knew how to build the solution to achieve real results. Eclipse’s advice on setting up the structure meant that we could easily produce the reports we needed in a fraction of the time”.

The results speak for themselves

Broadwater embarked on a staggered implementation of SunSystems core financial modules and the SunSystems Vision suite of business analysis tools with the first two businesses operational in around five weeks.

Today, information from the front-office systems is brought into SunSystems automatically during a nightly batch process. The process manager automatically validates the data using condition clauses and business rules to ensure data integrity. Using the form designer capability, Broadwater established a standard set of processing and business rules. These were then customized to reflect the individual requirements of each business without compromising the original configuration integrity.

“Instead of the business forcing the processing methodology, SunSystems handles the workings of the individual businesses on a day-to-day basis and gives the accounting team exposure to all our businesses instead of just specializing in one,” Farrell explained.

But reporting and analysis is where Broadwater is already realizing the biggest time and cost savings benefits and sees the greatest potential. Says Farrell: “We really love using SunSystems Vision. It’s just so simple that we do nearly all our reporting using its tools.”

SunSystems Vision allows customized data interrogation at a reporting level and extraction of data directly into MS Excel where it can be manipulated and analyzed to provide an unprecedented level of information. “We’re able to generate timely and accurate information on key performance indicators to help our managers run their businesses more effectively. This can also be achieved at a group level with consistent account numbering across all databases allowing information to be consolidated very easily.”

One of the biggest time-savings so far at Broadwater is the production of monthly owners’ statements. In the past this was a whole day affair, involving re-keying large quantities of data with the very real possibility of errors and imbalances. “With the power of SunSystems Vision this process now takes no time at all. It’s a huge benefit and has really improved month-end morale!,” says Farrell.

Looking ahead….

With three new hotels in Bunbury, Kalgoorlie and Geraldton coming on line in the next twelve months, Broadwater is a busy operation covering most of Western Australia. To ensure the finance and management teams keep up with the pace, the SunSystems general ledger has been built with a consistent and reusable format. When a new hotel comes on line it is simply a matter of adding a new business unit by copying the existing structure – the process takes about 25 minutes and the new operation is established. From here the unique business rules are applied to suit that concern. “It can’t be simpler to manage growth than that! As our skills and knowledge of SunSystems increases, I’m sure we’ll use it in a financial and business management sense with much greater scope than we imagined when we first decided to go down this route There certainly is a great deal of potential!”